OUTLAST US ALL

For the movie poster, I chose the phrase “outlast us all” from On Photography by Susan Sontag. The phrase comes from the quote, “While real people are out there killing themselves or other real people, the photographer stays behind his or her camera, creating a tiny element of another world: the image world that bids to outlast us all” (Sontag 11). This quote speaks to one of Sontag’s themes about photography–its immortality. Sontag implies that photography essentially gives images immortality by trapping the image of an event in a moment. In addition, the immortality of images means that photography will outlive humanity, and we see this through historical images in history books and photographs of deceased loved ones. Individuals and events will pass and will never be relived; however, the preservation of the subject captured by cameras will continue on as a frozen memory of time. The life of the subject in the photograph will never end; therefore, it is immortal and will outlast us all.

In the creation of this poster, I used a horror theme as I was inspired by Sontag’s beginning statement of the quote, “While real people are out there killing themselves or other people, the photographer stays behind his or her camera” (Sontag 11). One of the few tropes that came to mind from this quote where people are “killing themselves or other people” is zombie-oriented media, which inspired the idea of using zombie illustrations in the poster. Zombies are classified as dead creatures and contrasts with the title “Outlast Us All.” Furthermore, I wanted to showcase Sontag’s immortality theme through the illustrative camera in the middle of the poster. As zombies represent dead humanity, photographs represent immortal life. The camera’s association with immortal life due to its ability to preserve images influenced my decision to have the camera facing the audience to appear as if the camera will take a photo of the audience. In the midst of dead creatures and blood streaks in the poster, the camera facing the audience symbolizes life preserved through the simple action of taking a photo. Life of the viewer that will become immortal if a photograph were to be taken.

If this film were hypothetically produced by A24, I would picture a found footage or pseudo-documentary style of filming where the main character photographs and records the zombified state of the world and their survival. Each of these examples has a horror-like element to them, which encouraged my decision to pursue a horror-themed movie poster. In addition to the selected theme, I chose the color palette of red, black, white, and orange, as those colors are associated with the Halloween, which is indicative of horror elements.  decided on the font “Jeepers” as this font is commonly used in Halloween-inspired media, and chose it for the studio name, title name, and the date the film would be released in theaters. The font “Braggadocio” was chosen to provide a contrast to Jeepers, to give credit to the director, and to notify audiences of the movie’s adaptation from On Photography.