A creative bent of mind needed: Krishna

Publicity Designer Krishna, 33, haills from Vijayawada. After a stint of two years in Chennai in the Chennai School of Arts he joined as an apprentice with Eshwar and worked with him for seven years. In 1998 he shifted to Hyderabad and started working independently, he has worked for over 100 films so far.

In a free wheeling chat with Cinema Prapancham, the talented and happening designer talks about various issues in connection with film publicity designing. 

What is the role of a publicity designer in movies? Till a film releases, not many people know what’s happening with the film, in the film, the stars, the story. From a common man in the village to a movie buff in the city, the promotion that we do all helps in giving the audience the mood of the film, the flavour and an idea as to what the film is going to look like. We create the logos, posters to fulfil the audience’s curiosity.

Krishna was involved in manual designing when he was with Eshwar and started off by cutting and pasting the stills. Every day was a learning experience. “This kind of work one needs to have an artistic bent of mind. We are given two or three months time to work on it and sometimes we got to finish it in the last minute when the film release approaches. The assignment comes late but we have to deliver the output on time. A lot of discussions take place with the producer and director before we start off with our work. Things get easier when we are granted freedom to play around with fonts, designs, etc. Sometimes we are not even appraised about the storyline and we have to satisfy the clients. We use our judgement on such occasions.”

Krishna adds that a poster or a publicity material should be in such a way that it attracts the viewer to the theatre. We adhere to certain design duties and right from every schedule we are given stills to form an opinion and that’s how we pick our idea on how to portray the hero on the poster, the weapon, etc. Sometimes the producer/director tells us what he wants on the poster and we deliver it according to his choice for example Bhagyalakshmi Bumper Draw. They had an idea and we implemented it.”

Krishna says it would be better if stars co-operate and get photo shoots done so that the output becomes striking. High resolution pictures comes from outdoor shoots. Seperate shoots in this connection helps. The interaction with the director and producer adds to the quality. He says, “It takes us around 120 days to finish the work. There were only posters before publicity but right now the vinyl/flex designs are in demand. There is more competition. Every city needs atleast 40 designs and at that rate every place in AP? Maybe around 150 designs for a film is expected from us.

We keep on working if a film is heading towards 100 days and add new designs. We cannot make one design and reproduce the rest. Each design and placement differs. For example we place a duet design on a vizag beach, an action poster in a mass area.”

The publicity designer laments there is no quality in posters made in offset printing. Right now the rates for hoardings of flex have come down, earlier it would cost 70 Rs. per square ft in 1998 but now it’s 7 Rs. About the new entrants from multimedia into publicity designing, Krishna says, “Some people after completion of multimedia training come through contacts into this field, they are given the union cards but they can never deliver creative work. The quality suffers. They can’t work under deadlines and pressure because of lack of experience. It’s nice they get introduced to movies so soon but it helps if you have hands on experience.”

“In the industry Dhani Aelay, Suresh Bujji and Kiran Poster Ads,” are popular says Krishna. He adds the success of the film is directly linked to the opportunities. It helps when you go and tell them that your previous film was a hit. About the fonts, he says, “They form an indelible impression on the people’s mind. Take for example Shiva or Gang Leader. People still remember the title design. There is no hard and fast rule, we can play around with them. Usually for an action film we use a rugged font, round ones for family movies and italicised ones for romantic films.”