My tagline sucks! Any ideas?

I've got just a couple days to make a new promotional poster, with a local screening impending. I'm convinced that I need a tagline.

Here's the trailer and plot synopsis - www.antihero-movie.com

The first couple taglines that come to mind are kinda lame:

"What happens when an alcoholic petty-thief gains a psychic power?"

--or--

"Slacker. Alcoholic. Petty-Thief. Psychic."

For the new poster, I'm thinking it will be a massive hodge-podge of stills from the movie, in a comic-book layout, with one massive still rotoscoped and placed on top of the photo montage.

Perhaps this one (rotoscoped just to our main antihero):

screenhunter08mar230559.jpg


Or, to highlight the fact that this movie is really just a bunch of slackers goofing off, maybe this one (also rotoscoped):

edward40hands.jpg


Imagery, I think I'll probably be able to figure it out. Any ideas for a better tagline?
 
I personally feel like taglines shouldn't describe the plot too much. For FOTF I went with 'Life's a bitch' cos that plays on the idea that the movie is about things going wrong, but also has the added implication of the film being a bit glib and sweary, AND the pun of the fact that 'bitch' also means female dog which is what the film's about. Clever, huh?

For Antihero, I'm going to spitball some ideas:

Psychic/Psycho
Time for shots
Time for the little guy to become a medium
Here comes the Beer Seer
It's got a psyKick
Sober of body and mind
Justice by inebriation
From 6% to Hero/6% a Hero
To your good health!

I'll think of something better later...
 
Haha, I like that. And I appreciate your point about not being too on the nose with the tagline. How about this one?

4.9% HERO/VOL.

This, of course, is to match the government mandated labels on the side of beer boxes/bottles/cans (not sure if it's the same on the other side of the pond).
 
Ok, I was a little bored this afternoon (it was snowing! In England!) so I knocked this up. I chose the tagline that I liked the most and just used one of the low-res stills from the website to give an idea of how i would visualise this. I've never even attempted a movie poster design before, so apologies. Also, I went for the quad rather than the portrait poster- just cos of the lack of images.

antihero.jpg


EDIT: I'd certainly recommend doing a portrait poster too, it would just need a much higher quality version of that photo to be remotely effective.
 
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Nice. I think posters should definitely be portrait not landscape, but I definitely like where you've gone with that, Nick.

And C-Funk, my fav tagline is definitely the 4.9% Hero/Vol. Hell, since you've got permission from Pabst, why not try something like this (total mock-up so bear with me)

3fYzsc7.png


And obviously then you'd put the film credit block in the little text area at the bottom.

Just my .02 though. Congrats on theatrical run 2.0!!
 
OMFG, that's awesome! I'm not sure that I have permission to use their logo in printed advertising; I'll have to look into that. Regardless, I should be able to make enough changes that it's not technically trademark infringement, but close enough that people will recognize it.

Nick, yours is really cool, too. And though I've decided to move forward with Dready's concept, you definitely got the ball rolling in the right direction.

Coincidentally, I actually had already batted around the idea of somehow incorporating the People's Beer of Richmond logo ;), but visually, I just couldn't see how I was gonna make it work. The way you've got it layed out is just perfect. I'm not 100% sure I'll want to make it a beer can, the logo might be enough to sell it (plus, I'll need space for festival laurels).

Thanks, guys!
 
Thanks, glad you liked it. :) And yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think it should be just the ribbon and maybe the red lines as well. If you want to send me a high-res version of the trio, I can do a much better version this afternoon in Illustrator.
 
That's looking really good, the illustrator work looks really nice and I reckon that's a better job than trying to cram the entire can onto the poster (although that might make the beer business more obvious). I'd add some weathering effects to the negative space though, maybe making it look slightly like a crumpled beer can exterior?

I also think there might be a better font for the title, but then again I'm a typeface nerd. You want something that looks, marketably, like something that might be used by a beer company, but also has that superhero vibe that creates an amusing juxtaposition with the slacker nature of the image.
 
Cool, thanks for the feedback. I like the texture idea for sure. I've never done that in illustrator before but I've found some tutorials so I'm gonna play with that.

As far as the font goes. It was really a filler. I happen to be totally horrible at picking fonts. And as far as graphic design goes, I've heard using a font as-is is a cardinal sin on the level of using magic bullet presets for a film. So I know I'm never gonna make something that doesn't scream 'amateur' to even any graphic design student.
If anyone who knows more than me is up to the task, I won't complain. :)
 
Hey, thanks again for the excellent ideas! There's no question about who the idea for the design goes to, but I actually have a friend who is a graphic designer, and he said he's willing to pick it up from here.

The main reason I want to get rid of the can is just space -- I want the title and the picture to take up as much of the width as possible, while still fitting the overall concept.

For font, I'm thinking I'd like to come as close to matching the original as possible (and we'll probably be able to come really close. In the open space up top, that's where we'll put the obligatory festival laurels.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed doing this, cuz I definitely appreciate you handing me such an awesome design. And, I believe I owe you a poster. I like this design enough that I'm going to get more than a few printed. :)
 
Looks great! But a question and comment:

I always expect to see a credit block in a movie poster, did you exclude it on purpose?

If you stuck with the silhouette version of the talent, you'd possibly be able to save quite a bit on printing, as it's only a handful of colours instead of a full colour print.

CraigL
 
Cool, thanks Craig. If you peruse movie posters from major releases, quite a few of them do not have credit blocks. Since my movie has a bunch of names that nobody would recognize, I just figured I'd go for the clean look, and use that space for something else.

A silhouette would definitely be much cheaper, but then you wouldn't be able to see the 40s duct-taped to their hands, and that's kinda the whole point of using this picture. Also, I really wanted to colors to pop -- one of my favorite reasons for borrowing the look of a well-known logo is that the red and blue colors are bright and eye-catching.

Cheers! :)
 
Nice! Dready, that was a super clever idea and certainly fitting for film's content and lo-fi (also meant to add lo-brow*, too!) vibe. Glad Cracker ran with it! Fun tagline, too, Nick. Fun stuff. :clap: Always a treat when long distance collaboration comes through.

* but not to be confused with Lowenbrau ;)
 
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Hmm... I'll have to take another look. It had always seemed to me it was the Coming Soon or character promo posters that didn't, but the actual movie poster did. I suppose now-a-days though, anything to help stand out!

Gotcha. No, I think you're right about that. We'll just say then, that this is a "coming soon poster", cuz I just don't want to clutter up the space with a bunch of names that nobody recognizes. :)
 
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