Around this time last year, I discovered what, in my opinion is the greatest poster ever made. The version you will see on that link is the only version I have ever, ever been able to find. It's a measly 300px high and is not even a slightly reasonable candidate to send to Kinko's for them to blow up to a poster-size. This is my goal.
I even went so far as to drive to the film festival that the poster was paired with JUST to see if I could get my sloppy, Kurosawa-fanboy hands on the poster. However, the people running the film there had no idea what poster I was talking about.
Which brings us to now, my best efforts at reinventing the poster from scratch, using my Criterion DVD of Seven Samurai as the source:
As I began to grab screen captures, I realized quickly that my DVD source, and the poster's were different. Mifune's head is visible on the left-most portion of the frame in the original's source, in mine it is cropped off. Shimura has much more white space visible on the original, and not mine. In addition, the rain didn't come through NEARLY as well as I'd hoped. This all leads me to believe there is an even higher quality version than the Criterion out there... somewhere. In addition, there were three seperate frames I couldn't find anywhere, after over twenty frame by frame reviews of the entire final battle. Those I could not replicate, I added my own choices in. Seriously, who's going to know the difference other than those who read this post?
Despite the difficulties in re-creation, in the end, I'm perfectly content with the finished product and I am currently researching the methods necessary to get it blown up, poster-size on my wall.
I even went so far as to drive to the film festival that the poster was paired with JUST to see if I could get my sloppy, Kurosawa-fanboy hands on the poster. However, the people running the film there had no idea what poster I was talking about.
Which brings us to now, my best efforts at reinventing the poster from scratch, using my Criterion DVD of Seven Samurai as the source:
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The Original | My Reinvention (large) |
As I began to grab screen captures, I realized quickly that my DVD source, and the poster's were different. Mifune's head is visible on the left-most portion of the frame in the original's source, in mine it is cropped off. Shimura has much more white space visible on the original, and not mine. In addition, the rain didn't come through NEARLY as well as I'd hoped. This all leads me to believe there is an even higher quality version than the Criterion out there... somewhere. In addition, there were three seperate frames I couldn't find anywhere, after over twenty frame by frame reviews of the entire final battle. Those I could not replicate, I added my own choices in. Seriously, who's going to know the difference other than those who read this post?
Despite the difficulties in re-creation, in the end, I'm perfectly content with the finished product and I am currently researching the methods necessary to get it blown up, poster-size on my wall.
