For a while I tried to use either the record or gold heart locket from my film as framing devices which I also liked, but in following this line of thinking I was unable to land on something I was totally happy with, then since my film has a lot of background work in it I thought it would make sense to feature a piece of it in some capacity, but again nothing clicked for me. I was also having trouble in trying to figure out a background beyond plain white a lot of the time, though I did like the idea of using colours from my film, namely blue, pink and green, which hold special relevance to the narrative.
I was at one point enthusiastic about was the compositions below with two leaves side-by-side to make the shape of a heart. The second iteration, with one leaf decayed, withered and brown and the other one alive and green, was my favourite of the two- I thought it nicely summed up the themes of nature, romance and mortality nicely- however, when it was pointed out to me that it resembles a sympathy card I decided to keep trying.
The purple and green design on the bottom right was a direct reference to a poster for the Joan Crawford thriller Mildred Pierce (1945).
Below, these sketches show iterations based on various reference points and ideas. 5,6,8,11 and 12, for example, are based on antique Art Nouveau book cover designs that I thought would tie nicely into the film, since the protagonists palace is covered in books and I took a lot of aesthetic influence from the early 20th century.
Beyond these, I used a drawing of the two main characters in the film’s memory sequence as a starting point. I liked these designs, especially number 5, with the figures cropped out of frame. I thought it portrayed a loving relationship through the character’s postures and the dappled light, it gives a good sense of the past because of the focus on the Edwardian costumes, but by cropping the figures it generates an element of severity and tension which is obviously relevant to the story. I was advised against this because of the lack of faces, which would make it more difficult for people to connect with it, and as much as I liked it I agreed.
At this point I was also re-evaluating my title, thinking of going from ‘I Remember Spring’ to just ‘Springtide’, which sounds flowery and literary in the right way, or ‘I Love You Still’, which is a lyric from ‘It Had To Be You’ (the song I use in the film).
The type I used at points in these designs came from a tracing of an early 19th Century book of typefaces I came across on Internet Archive. I couldn’t find a digitised version of this script (called Double Pica Script in the book), which encouraged my use of it further.
This next batch are based on the second of the previous designs, using a closer shot of the characters.
Below is the idea I landed on- a torn portrait of the two contented characters hanging crooked on a decaying wall, but with a shaft of warm light hitting the painting. It felt like it could be depicting a corner of the character’s house we don’t see in the film, which I liked a lot. It also references the two portraits featured in the film, as well as the background for my opening titles.
And here is the final poster:
I was able to re-use a wallpaper asset with a subtle heart motif that I made for use around the house, which brings a nice sense of unity and furthers any atmosphere of romance.
Instead of the aforementioned font, I ended up using ‘American Scribe’. I wanted something that looked ornate but still hand-done, as though it was taken from an antique love letter, to make it feel more intimate, and I found this type did that well. I stylised the title with quotation marks because that was commonplace the 30s and 40s- probably to distinguish it as the title from any other text- but also because I found it worked better compositionally since the top line takes up more horizontal space.