It’s that time of year again when I’m working hard on the posters for Rochester Civic Theatre’s new season. I have the good fortune to learn about the new season well ahead of the general public. The next season will be formally announced on opening night for Chicago, the spring musical this year.
The way the process works is Greg draws up some small sketches for his vision of the posters. We meet, Greg shows me the sketches, and we talk about how they might actually be executed. Usually, the final poster is very much an embodiment of his original vision. My job is to execute that vision using photographs and other design elements. Sometimes, we change the direction as we talk over the design.
Next, with lots of help, we line up folks to serve as our models, find props and costumes appropriate to the design, and have a photo shoot for me to capture the images that will form the basis for the posters. We’ve done pretty well in recent years in capturing most of the needed shots in one session.
Assembling the posters is more of a graphic design exercise than a photographic one. I reach way back to some of the art skills I learned as a kid from a local artist. I try to absorb bits and pieces of graphic design from designers I know from NAPP and from Greg who is rather skilled at it himself. I use Photoshop techniques I glean from folks like Corey Barker, folks in a whole different league. It’s a stretch always, but I always learn something new and produce posters that I can be proud of. In the end, I hope they convey the themes for the shows and help get the message out to the community about the terrific shows at RCT.
This year, we managed to schedule the photo shoot enough ahead of the deadline, that I feel I have some breathing room – I’m not scrambling to complete the artwork in time to send to the printers. Thank you, Denise, for making that happen! It helps that the musical opens in April rather than March. I think the posters are progressing nicely. As usual, I have a favorite, but I’m pretty pleased with all of them.
Planning the photo shoot is fun. I often have an opportunity to do some interesting lighting effects. We had one in particular that was fun to set up and it worked just like I pictured in my head. Can’t get much better than that. I’ll have a post after the lid is off the new season and can show the posters, and I’ll talk about that lighting effect then.
Meanwhile, I was looking through my set of photos for a few I could add to this post without giving anything away. I’m pretty sure these shots meet that criterion! Greg filled in for some models for me to check my lighting, and Ben gave me a nice profile shot. Most of the time, the posters involve some compositing, so I don’t worry about little things like lights in the frame as long as my subjects have the lighting I need. And sometimes, my subject is less animate letting me shoot it at my leisure, even sometimes in my office here where my nice neutral grey walls create a terrific background.
Making progress, and only a bit over a month to wait until I can show you the new posters! Can’t wait.
