(-) OBJECTIVE
This was a semester-wide project in which a large unified set of deliverables was created to reflect a conceptual thread identified through the director’s artistic style, and common themes spanning across each film.
(+) CONCEPT
Grave happenings is a hypothetical film festival positioned around a select number of films by the Coen Brothers. The unified film festival thread is denoted by the following:
THE FOLLY OF BLIND AMBITION, FUELED BY DESPERATION, IS WHAT INEVITABLY TRIGGERS A DOMINO EFFECT OF POOR DECISIONS THAT ARE ULTIMATELY DOOMED TO DESOLATE CIRCUMSTANCES. DISGUISED AS MERE HAPLESSNESS, SUCH GRAVE MISFORTUNES ARE IN FACT A PRODUCT OF OUR OWN UNDOING; WE ARE UNAWARE THAT WE’VE BEEN IN FACT “DIGGING OUR OWN GRAVE” ALL ALONG.
(=) design
Aesthetically, careful designs considerations were made to both symbolize and capture the central themes identified in the film festival thread. A consistent photographic style was illustrated by a staged hodgepodge of seemingly random items. The visual inconsistencies inherent to a typewriterface were used to reinforce the theme of uncontrolled haplessness and instability. Nonsensically scribbled lines and circles, scattered throughout as a graphic element, were also applied in the same vein.
As an extension, core materials used were scuffed paint, worn wood, and rusted metal to communicate a sense of deterioration and the exposure to the unforgiving nature of circumstance. In keeping with this notion, burnt and wrinkled vellum paper was also consistently applied across all printed materials. Deliverables were encased in salvaged containers (a pipe, film reel canister, tool box, etc.) as a point to house each item within cases that they don’t necessarily belong in.