Reza Amidi works in post-production and virtual production in the film industry. In 2021, he wrote and directed his first feature film, Bird of Paradise. We sat down with Reza to talk about the process of film making and discusses the importance of the artist’s vision, which related to his experience in commissioning an illustrated poster.
When you were writing/developing BOP, did you know what kind of poster you wanted to have for the film?
I started to think about the poster once the script was done. I knew certain elements that needed to be there. The flower bird of paradise is pretty, but it can also be shown in a sinister way depending on the context. And all posters need something human. So the poster had to show the flower and the main character in some way.
Ideally, a film poster has a creative design, represents the atmosphere, characters, and story of the film in an interesting way, and it’s great for marketing purposes in all territories.
Why were you willing to take a chance on an illustrated poster, seeing as it is not ‘standard’ in the industry?
A lot of my favorite posters are illustrated. I'm interested in the art of creating posters. However, I knew that realistically whoever did the marketing for the film would have the final say on it. I was prepared to have a minimum of poster designs, one illustrated and one more standard that uses a still frame from the film. I took a lot of risks in my approach to shooting the film, especially for a microbudget production. It made sense to take some chances on the poster as well -- at minimum it would be a conversation starter (on social media, at film festivals...). That's why I also wanted to hire a graphics artist to do the poster instead of going with a company that specializes in marketing artwork.
Do you view the BOP poster to be an extension of your filmmaking vision?
Yes. "Bird of Paradise" is an atmosphere-driven, psychological thriller that takes place in Los Angeles. I definitely wanted a poster that visually showed those three elements in some way. The events of the film are not very straight-forward and it made sense to have a poster that made the audience curious but was not too obvious as far as what it represented. The flower breaking through the character's head indicates danger and emphasizes psychological aspects of the film. Bird of paradise is the official flower of Los Angeles.
One could argue that we could've had other elements in the design that showed other important aspects of the film: something that represented Hollywood and/or the villain. However, I was never able to put all of that together in a visually appealing way (and not have it look too much like Mulholland Drive).
Tell me about your experience with streaming and distributors - why did they push for a ‘traditional’ poster and how were you able to change their mind and use the original illustrated poster?
The first distributor I was going to go with was a company in the US. They were going to create their own poster. They wanted to go more photorealistic and with something that emphasized the "Hollywood" thriller aspects of the film. They claimed that would be the best option business-wise. And they are probably correct although I would have agreed more with them if we had an actor in the film who was famous; in that case, for sure, we would want to clearly show that actor in the artwork. However, I didn't like their final revenue share offer so the deal fell apart anyway.
I ended up going with a distributor in the UK and initially I wasn't sure what they were going to do for the artwork but they decided to stick with the poster we did. There wasn't much discussion about it since it's 100% up to them. The only thing I told them was that since our poster looks different than most, it might help get clicks on streaming channels. Also, in Europe they see films more as art instead of just business so it's possible that played a role in their decision. I might be doing a deal with a company in Taiwan. Would be interesting to see what they go with.