Dames and Dark Alleyways

"With my brains and your looks, we could go places."

That line from the 'Postman Always Rings Twice' is a fairly good summary of what Film Noir is. A man in trouble and a beautiful woman who either helps get him out or gets him deeper in. Dames and Dark Alleyways is a series of special events for a small theatre putting on a Film Noir festival. Showing the best in the genre and having traditional era cocktails builds up the atmosphere of the old glam Hollywood. I tackled this project with the main focus being to grab peoples’ attention, something that would make people stop on the street and see what this poster was about. The festival was to promote the vintage theatre and aid towards a fundraising project to preserve it.

The process from Dames and Dark Alley ways took some time but I really enjoyed the subject. I have always loved old, classic movies and the film noir genre and when assigned a poster project on anything we’d like I knew this was what came to my mind.

I started by mapping out ideas of what film noir meant to me. What images are strong and impactful? I kept coming back to the look and feel of the women in these films, so I started sketching out different women, know early on I wanted the event to be called Dames and Dark Alleyways.  I toyed with the idea of how much of the woman I would show, would it be a little or a lot? And through my sketches found I liked having a lot of the woman be on display.

My thought process behind the posters was to lure people in to the event by being slightly suggestive with the parts of the woman I was showing. And how each poster can stand on its own but in its entirety completes the image of a woman. The font colour I chose ( yellow) was to represent the street lamps and I wanted the figure in the background to have ambiguity – was he predator or prey ?  To continue the ambiguity I added the target over his chest.