Earlier tonight Kevin Smith tweeted out a link wishing us all a Happy Halloween and this was our treat; the first poster from his new horror film RED STATE. The film is being done independently and hopes to pick up distributing during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Smith said this about the poster:
Moody, weird, and pitch-perfect for the tone of the film. If I went out to an ad agency here in town, I’d be billed close to 20 grand for a campaign that’d maybe… maybe… include this poster. But this piece of artwork (I call it “The Holy Ghost”) didn’t come from a top-tier ad agency: Jon Gordon is my RED STATE producer, and this poster was created by his assistant, Melissa Bloom. So we’ve got a marketing image that was put together by someone who was on set every day, integral to the process that produced the film which inspired this image. This isn’t the work of some gun for hire who’s doing six other campaigns; we’re not just one of many. The marketer is actually family, RED from pre-production all the way through wrap, so she’s got an insight into the flick that no ad agency could ever boast (not even one-time Glo-Coat golden boy Don Draper over at SCDP). I’ll take passion over pedigree any day.
When we first looked at Melissa’s poster, someone said “You should give this to the ad agency as a guideline.” Guideline? Was an ad agency gonna make us any happier than Melissa’s image made us? The Holy Ghost is kinda perfect, and more importantly? It gives us a starting point from which to launch our home-grown marketing campaign. There’s an immediacy to it, but also: anybody could’ve taken the initiative and did this themselves. If folks were wondering why Melissa was skating up near the blue line, far from the corner where the puck was, it’s because she saw where the puck was gonna be, and just waited to make her rush on goal. She shoots, she scores.
So Melissa (with a Gretzky-like assist by Ming), the person on the RED STATE crew least likely to spearhead our marketing campaign, gets the collar for this arresting image – and I fucking dig that. That’s what I mean by self-reliance: why go outside the family for shit we can do ourselves? Promote from within – the way Harvey taught us.
In fact, we’re doing everything the way Harvey taught us. That’s why Jon & I decided to call the RED STATE production company The Harvey Boys – as a shout-out to an Indie Icon who once said “Fuck this traditional bullshit, I’ll do it my way…” and gave us a metric shit-ton of awesome flicks.
If you’re wondering what Jon & I are doing skating off toward that blue line, The Harvey Boys are hoping to take their shots at the top of 2011…
I am excited to see this during Sundance in January, assuming that it gets in, which I am sure being an alum, that it will. What do you guys think of the poster?
I like it. Even more, I like how Smith is thinking about this. I’m a graphic designer myself and it’s nice to hear people being given opportunities like this. Nice write up.