Calling All Graphic Designers - Movie Ads!

[jadeshand]

I am going to be looking into the possbility of the FWA using a slide advertisement in movie theaters, possibly in NYC, LA and Chicago - the three largest cities in the United States and also offering the program as a Do-It-Yourself media project.

I will be contacting the people at the following website:

http://hollywoodads.com/

I'm going to call them on Monday, but they may want to know exactly what we want on the ad before they can give us a quote. So I'm asking the Graphic Designers to come up with a design that fits there specifications and templates.

If you go to their website, click on customer service and it gives all the instructions on how to create the slide. I'm thinking the more ornate the slide, the more expensive, so we need to think simple and there can only be 15 words or less on the slide.

The slide should be aimed at the new episodes starting in January as we are looking to do this (if fiscally possible) during the Christmas break holidays, the highest attendance time in movie theaters.

[Deanna T]

We don't have this type of advertising in Australia. I'm a bit unclear as to how it works.

Do you get one slide or a few?
Is it just a picture or is there accompanying music, sound, etc?
Do the standard copyright rules apply?

Anyway, I attached an image to hopefully get the ball rolling. It's an idea that was part of the development of a postcard, but it wasn't really taking off. It's not the most dynamic, but the idea behind it is that if you put some upside-down text in front of someone's face, their natural inclination is to try to read it.

[jadeshand]

A lot! :D

No, it's just one slide. It's basically how the theater can make some advertising money. The slides themselves usually don't have any music, but the theater is normally playing something to go along with the slideshow. It's primarily about 10-15 slides of different advertisers, and then the previews of the upcoming movies start. Usually takes anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes of slideshow-previews before the actual movie starts. Funny thing is, more people pay attention to those ads than the ones on television because it's a captive audience and they have no other place to look!

[mycattoldme]

Ok, not as clever as Deanna T's but here's an idea.

http://www.cathairstudios.com/fs_art/movie.jpg

[mycattoldme]

Okay, one more...I think.....

http://www.cathairstudios.com/fs_art/movietwo.jpg

[jadeshand]

:D

I'm off to LA in the morning, but I'm checking in to this stuff as soon as I get back next week. Have a few days off for Thanksgiving, so I'll have a lot of time to work on it.

[thxprincess]

Holy Moses. Those are amazing. Is this a for sure deal? I don't know much about slides in big theaters as I come from a podunk town of 15,000 with a five-plex, but crap, if I saw one of those slides on a huge screen...I would definately be intrigued. :)

...course, I'm a bit biased ;)

[VoY]

Wow! These are sooo awesome. Jadeshand, I hope to meet with you in Burbank to discuss the Chicago area.

VoY

[nhfearme]

Yes, my husband & I or my son & I always sit and mindlessly read off the slides. Usually the slides are just font on against blank. After 10 mins of it I feel like my intelligence is dropping or my brain is melting... until they start the slides with questions of movie trivia.

It isn't the movie trivia per se ... it's the questions that give me relief from the mind numbing experience. So I would *definitely* say to ask a question and do as Deanna T suggests and put something upside down... like the answer :ewink:

Peeps will go nuts waiting for the slide to come around again to catch the answer! :jedi:

Hopefully it will intrigue them enough to tune in Dec & January :D

[Deanna T]

Aw shucks. Thanks for all your kind comments on my little effort, everyone.

nhfearme, I think you have some very interesting ideas. I wonder how much extra it would cost to purchase two slides.

Cat, I think your designs are beautiful. I also thought your images from this thread...
http://www.watchfarscape.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=5222&perpage=15&pagenumber=1
were very intriguing. Maybe it would be worth entering them also.

If I can ever figure out Photoshop properly, I may have another design up soonish.

:)

[mycattoldme]

Denna T - Your overall concept is really fantastic - right on target!

Glad you like my designs! The mouse pad ones were fun to make, but not enough contrast for the movie ad - I tried playing around with the background but the colors just became dull :( - oh well.

Yeah - the only way to learn PS is to just keep playing - and if anyone ever tells you they are an expert - just laugh - 'cause there aint no such thing!

[nhfearme]

mycattoldme,

That's a shame. The pattern & colors are intriguing on those.

[mycattoldme]

Okay, had one more....

http://cathairstudios.com/fs_art/moviethree.jpg

[jadeshand]

How about this for an idea.

A slide of a wormhole with the words "Let Farscape Suck You In!"

Then across the bottom:

Action - Adventure - Romance - Fridays on the Sci-Fi Channel

I love the ones you've done, but this just crossed my mind on those long plane rides. If not for the movie ad, maybe it could be used for something else.

[Deanna T]

That's a pity about your other image. Still, it would make a nice mousepad or a postcard.


Originally posted by mycattoldme
Yeah - the only way to learn PS is to just keep playing - and if anyone ever tells you they are an expert - just laugh - 'cause there aint no such thing!

LOL. So true. I take comfort in knowing that somewhere that program has features hidden away that will allow me to make any image I want to, and then fill the rest of my days trying to find those features.

I like the wormhole image muchly, I'm a big fan of how you arrange your text. I think Jades' idea is clever too.

Ok, one more for the road. See you folks in a week.

[mycattoldme]

Deanna T - awesome! Hummm....now I have to figure out how to do that!

jadeshand - something like this?

http://www.cathairstudios.com/fs_art/wh_movie.jpg

[nhfearme]

Deanna T & mycattoldme...

These last two designs each carry a most illusive quality sought in the campaign...

1.) Deanna T's distinctive font to EKG and

2.) mycattoldme's distinctive sucking font & wormhole design

Kids! You *may* have just bottled success!

Congrats!

[nhfearme]

sorry mycattoldme,

the colors from your mouse pad idea submissions haunt me I just had to try once to get something similar.

[akimbo]

Jul has posted a "Help Wanted" thread on Movie Ads that you may want to take a look at:

http://www.watchfarscape.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5484

In fact, if you really want to create a movie slide check out this specifications sheet.

Slide Specs:
http://www.ncnads.com/www/html/specsslide.html

I know jadeshand and I are contacting advertising people on Monday. If it looks feasible, we'll be back here begging for slides pretty quickly. :)

Akimbo

[akimbo]

Here are the specs from ValMorgan

I am still waiting to hear if we can make it in time for the 12/27 flight. If we still have time to get in, I will most likely need to have a contract signed and slide material yet this week! Which I'm still thinking is too fast for us. Otherwise we'll be going for the 1/10 - 2/6 Flight.

The artwork must be provided in 2 different specifications, as follows (they have 2 different fullfillment houses):

1.Pro Motion Slides specs
Live Area (area which actual ad will be): 6 in by 3.25 in
Background (border): 6 in by 4 in
Resolution: 300 dpi
Program: Adobe Photoshop
Unflattened Photoshop .PSD file preferable, Flattened JPEG or TIFF acceptable
Preferred method of delivery is by disk (100 mb ZipDisk). Email is acceptable

2.Val Morgan specs
You can supply files created from the following programs: Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. All elements (such as logos or pictures) need to be saved separately.

Photoshop Users: Ensure files are saved as Photoshop 5.0 documents with layers in RGB mode, not CMYK, Black and White artwork should be saved as GRAYSCALE not BITMAP. The dimensions for our files is 1014 pixels wide by 676 pixels high. This is the entire picture area, the safe area is 864 pixels wide by 398 pixels high. The resolution is 300 pixels per inch.

Illustrator Users: Files can be saved as Illustrator 8 documents. If your type is not outlined please supply any fonts used.

File Compression: The only compressed files we can accept are Photoshop saved as JPEG at maximum quality.

Disk Types: You can supply documents on floppy disk, Zip disk, or CD. We cannot accept Quark documents for use in an artwork. You can supply a Quark document as a visual guide.


More as I get it.
Akimbo

[jadeshand]

both NCN and Regal and all I get or "Leave a message and we'll get back to you." Hopefully, soon, I'll hear something out of them.

I have found a small company in Austin that makes these slides, so I'm going to call them and see what they suggest.

[jadeshand]

http://www.ncnads.com/www/html/slideshow.html

and here's the specs for NCN for creating the slide:

http://www.ncnads.com/www/html/specsslide.html


Still waiting for them to call me back.

[blue]

These are great! I especially like the first and last on page one of this thread by Deanna T, and the "suck you in" one above by mycattoldme but modified with the colors of nhfearme below it - very striking. I think they should all have a small note at the bottom indicating that they are paid for by viewers.
How much would it cost to have several in sequence?

[akimbo]

From what I have heard so far...several in sequence would be even more expensive than what we're asking for now. And what we're asking for now (one slide showing up 2-3 times per preshow) is still probably out of our league to do on a large scale.

So if this works out, how we gonna pick one slide? I've already been through the polling process with cookbooks (which was great fun) - but we had more time....

Akimbo

[nhfearme]

It was very tough making it natural looking ... I was actually going for mycattoldme's :rainbow: colors from her mousepads... :lol

[blue]

What is the range of prices? This is such a good idea it might be possible to generate some quick donations toward more screens, or more slides, if there are price goals.

[akimbo]

jadeshand and I are working on the prices. In fact jadeshand will be covering for me while I'm out of town for the next few days. (way to go girl)

I'm sure she'll post when she hears - we just started calling about it yesterday. :)

[JA_Shipper]

I can't believe I haven't posted on this thread yet to say how cool these slide images are!! :bounce: :bounce: You guys are so talented! :aok:

Suse

[jadeshand]

akimbo was working with and she has sent both pdf files and excel so I can't figure how to show them to you here on the board, but the proposal are quite extensive and have tons of information on every city.

Here's something to scare you with though, we could purchase the whole package of 1001 theaters with 9,248 screens for 4 weeks which, if I'm reading this right, the ad would be shown 32,196 times for a gross media cost of $676,186.00 and a net production cost of $64,294. :D


Now, where was that millionaire I misplaced?

[||Scorpius||]

This I have saved according to the Val Morgan specs...
as a PSD and a PDF, in RGB, at 300dpi. Needless to say that is much higher resolution and quality than this reduced jpg.

http://scorpius-farscape.tv/master/graphics/movie_slide3.jpg

For those astronomers and mythologists out there--
there is symbolism in the stars and nebulae I chose...
anyone get it?

||S||

[nhfearme]

:rainbow:||Scorpius|| Deanna T, mycattoldme, akimbo, (((((((jadeshand))))))) !!!! :rainbow:

OMG! I was gone what? 2 days and there is 5 x as much as when I left! … it all makes my stuff look like dirt! :lol

May I *please* use these to put up on a site that blue girls is building? We started it with the idear of sending out greeting cards. It suddenly got much bigger! :eek:

These are her existing sites:

http://tori.bittersweetblue.net/

http://roswell.bittersweetblue.net/

Pm me or post in this thread, I’ll see it :D

Mycattoldme, may I please also use your graphics from the mousepad thread?

@}-----

ty

--nh

[||Scorpius||]

Another movie ad...

http://scorpius-farscape.tv/master/graphics/movie_slide4.jpg

[Deanna T]

Mycat, your "Let Farscape Suck You In" image is my definite favourite.

Scorpius, your images are very interesting indeed. What program did you use for your text and your wormhole?

Nhfearme, you're welcome to use any of my images if you wish. Would you like any better quality copies? I'll be interested to see how blue girls & your efforts turn out.
And I like what you've done with the wormhole effect. I think it could make a quite effective ad, if you laid some text over the top of it. Maybe some black text with a white or yellow outline or something. It's a rather versatile image, you could use it in lots of places.

Ok, Photoshop newbie question. How do you go about changing the resolution of a image? When I go to the "Image" menu, and select "Image Size", and change the resolution there, it changes the width and height of my image completely. I can't seem to get 300dpi to fit with the requested size specifications. Do you have to set up your resolution & size before you start creating your image?

Thanks
~ Deanna T

[Deanna T]

Oh, don't worry. Figured it out. :o

[||Scorpius||]

Deanna T (lovely character, btw...got to adore her mental abilities):)

In photoshop, when you start the image, go to image size and set the 'physical size' and the resolution in dpi. THEN work on the image. It does you no good if you don't start out with the high res.

I used photoshop to do the fonts..that's the Farscape font all distorted and it took a good deal of fiddling with it to get it that way.

The wormhole is a screencapture of one of my java wormhole animations--there are several on my site. I opened the cap in photoshop, made it high res and then altered it a bit. You can see the animations here:
http://scorpius-farscape.tv/master/tech/simulators.html

Someone *cough*deneba*cough* said they didn't like the wormhole sucking FS in...LOL!
"Down the tubes"
ah well but we must remember that wormholes are our friends!
<eg>

[nhfearme]

Originally posted by ||Scorpius||
Deanna T (lovely character, btw...got to adore her mental abilities):)

Someone *cough*deneba*cough* said they didn't like the wormhole sucking FS in...LOL!
"Down the tubes"
ah well but we must remember that wormholes are our friends!
<eg> :lol Scorpius!

I Love! the wormhole!

:rainbow:ty Deanna T:rainbow:

After this Saturday's meeting I'll give it my best shot! :D

[Deanna T]

Originally posted by ||Scorpius||
Deanna T (lovely character, btw...got to adore her mental abilities):)


LOL. Actually, I'm not a trekkie. My name actually is Deanna and my last name starts with a T. Didn't realise that there was a Star Trek Character of the same name until later, so that was a bit of a bad choice myself. But I guess I should be thankful that I didn't choose the name of a dimwit.

Hmm... bummer that I didn't set the resolution right the first time. Oh well, they are fairly simple images and recreating them with some cutting & pasting is not hard. So they are now officially adjustable to any size.

I do like the wormhole, but can I suggest possibly extending it down to the end of the page so it doesn't end so abruptly? Or fading it back into the stars?

Looks like I need to fix my Java

*Sometimes* wormholes are our friends. :)

[blue]

llScorpiusll Those are such amazing animations!

[||Scorpius||]

Hi Deanna T
the wormhole you mean...mine? It does fade out...and
remember that the 'effective area' of the slides is in the middle. The edges fade out on the screen anyway. The end of the wormhole tube is well into the 'faded' area...
Kitfoxer made some magnets of these.
They reduce in size very nicely. ;)

"llScorpiusll Those are such amazing animations!"

Why thank you Blue! :D
I love it when someone shares in my enjoyment of wormholes.
<eg> Don't forget to check out "Scarran Invaders" and "Marauder Tail Gunner" under training modules....we need all the skilled gunners we can get!
http://scorpius.150m.com/master/tech/games.html

Seasons Greetings Scapers!
http://scorpius.150m.com/master/greetings.html
:D

[jadeshand]

bump

[nhfearme]

Anyone wanting to use my wormhole design for the campaign, please do so. :aok:

I've just been too busy.

Sorry Deanna T :trans:

Click on the pic for your card...

http://farscape.bittersweetblue.net/johnandaeryn/thekiss.jpg (http://pro.mypostcards.com/blue3card.cgi?010610590102587)

http://farscape.bittersweetblue.net/banners/banner1.jpg (http://farscape.bittersweetblue.net)

[blue]

jadeshand-here's a question. This thread started with your post saying:
"I am going to be looking into the possbility of the FWA using a slide advertisement in movie theaters, possibly in NYC, LA and Chicago - the three largest cities in the United States..." Did it turn out to be too expensive to consider? (Also I don't see why cost should have anything to do with how ornate a slide is--a slide is a slide--but simple is better for other reasons.)

[jadeshand]

Well, that first post of mine is weeks old and I was just getting into finding out stuff. No, it doesn't matter how ornate the slide is but they do advise it not having very many words, so people willl be more prone to read it.

The FWA decided to put this idea out to all the Scapers and let them find out about doing it in their own cities rather than the FWA just pursuing those three cities.

If we can target the top 20 Neilsen cities, that would be an enormous lift to the advertising campaign.

Since the FWA has come into some considerable money in the last few weeks, we have up the ante to $500 for the FWA share of the cost for any ads purchased in a move theater.

We are hoping that people will really jump on this.

[mycattoldme]

Here's one to match one of the ads I've been working on:

http://www.cathairstudios.com/fs_art/far_movie2.jpg

[Sparky]

Bump, since this came up in campaign strat.

I love these, the way you all did them without copyright
infringement. SOOOOO Talented Are You
!!!!!!!!!!

[Sparky]

I am sorry to be so ignorant, but I tried copying your screen slides into adobe to get rid of the "Returning January..."
I can't do it.
Can you repost without the returning line at the top, or tell me how to? We want to use this on our free bags with bookmarks and other literature about FS at the convention in April (no hurry).
Thanks Much !! We are planning a rocking table in Oregon.:cool: