Optimism Films

Step 13

The Cannes Film Festival is a marketplace where producers look for funding and support for their latest projects. Optimism Films had produced a draft of a flier promoting Step 13, a film they had in development, and showed it to the director Tessa Sheridan, a former recipient of the Palme d’Or for best short film. Unfortunately, Tessa did not feel that it conveyed the right tone for the film – about a trio of recovering alcoholics looking for a new beginning – so they asked
me if I would produce another version.

We spent a long time discussing with Tessa what she wanted to achieve with the film: the mood; the pace; the characters; the locations; and what it would look like. Following this extended briefing, I collected together images that I thought summed up what she was looking for which we discussed further.

It’s not possible to convey a whole film in one image but what you can do is accurately represent the tone and spirit. The promotional poster/flier for Step 13 does that thanks to thorough preparation and discussion before starting to design. Sometimes good design is about listening to what a client is asking for and working out what it is they actually trying to say.

We then developed the flyer into a mood book, a more comprehensive explanation of how the film will look and feel. This works alongside the film script to raise the next stage of production funding.