Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with the film “Abduction” or it’s marketing.
The first time i saw the billboard for the New Taylor Lautner film “Abduction”, the one of him sliding down the side of a building with a gun in hand, something really bothered me about it. No, it wasn’t that Taylor Lautner was allowed to act again after Twilight, it was something about the design of the poster itself.
Having had been a background layout artist on “The Simpsons” for 3 years, i worked with 1, 2 and 3 point perspectives on a daily basis. I know perspective like the back of my hand. I had a firm grasp of and was reproducing M.C. Escher concepts at 14 years old. Some people KNOW baseball…I KNOW perspective. The problem is that it’s hard to explain concepts of perspective without visuals. Luckily I am self taught in Photoshop and also know it like the back of my hand. There are a few things that are wrong with this poster from the standpoint of…oh i don’t know….. elementary physics. Either the poster designer didn’t know what he/she was doing or the design department didn’t care about portraying the real physical in this poster. Let me explain-
The poster is very dramatic, Jacob is sliding down the side of a high rise with a gun, three buildings tower over him and at the very top of the image a helicopter seems to be chasing him. He is facing the viewer, as he should for he is the star of the film. Through the magic of photoshop, i went ahead and de-constructed this composition so that I may walk you through my thought process. First, I removed everything in the composition except the 3 buildings and the helicopter:
The buildings are all pointing upwards, in perspective this is called “1 point perspective” meaning that all the lines seem to vanish into one point, creating the effect on the viewer looking at a three dimensional scene in ONE direction only (1 point perspective). In this case that one direction is UP.
Think of it as if you were lying down on the floor looking up at the sky, you are looking only up, not at any side or angle. Second, I added a figure, a body falling downwards through the sky, if this body were falling straight down it would be facing the viewer, in essence the body would be parallel to the ground like so:
Third, I added Taylor Lautner into the composition with out the building in the foreground that he’s sliding on. Check out the similarities between the previous and this next picture:
You’ll notice that Jacob is Facing the viewer and is in essence falling straight down! Following is a diagram of what it would look like if you were looking at the scene from a building across the way:
If you wee looking at this from another building, you would see this werewolf in human form falling from the sky, straight down. Now, thank goodness, he is sliding down a building, we know this because we can see that his hand and both feet are in contact with a building surface:
But here’s the problem, if you were lying down on the floor, looking straight up, any surface that you would see would either be the bottom or the sides. It’s impossible to see the top of a building from the ground, think of a box suspended above you, the only surfaces you’d be able to see are the bottom and sides but not the top. So with that reasoning, the surface of the building that Jacob is sliding down must be either the side, a 90 degree angle, or the bottom, because if it is the top, that means that the whole building is toppling over while he’s surfing it…not likely, unless this is an Inception/Matrix film. If its one of the sides or the bottom, then he’s Spiderman, again, not likely. More likely, the poster designer(s) may have wanted to put his sliding down a 45 degree angle of a building, like so, which make sense:
but again, it’s impossible to see any surface, even 45 degrees, if you the viewer are looking up from the ground, as the composition is set up. So here’s my solution if i were to have worked on this poster. I would have used a 2 point perspective composition, meaning that the viewer can see the corners of buildings and had them at an angle, so as to give a more realistic effect that the 45 degree angled surface belonged there:
BEFORE
AFTER
This, to me, looks a bit more believable and look, i brightened up Jacob’s face for the enjoyment of all his loyal tween fans!! I hope you enjoyed this practical journey through the world of perspective!
~CNIII
