Godspell – Live Theater Promotion

Theatre Baton Rouge gave me a shout again and asked if I could do the photos and design for their live production of “Godspell.”

I didn’t know much about this show so I did a quick search and found some sample promotional posters and videos. They were very much a product of their time.

Now, the cast wasn’t going to look exactly like this with all the decked out crazy costumes and stuff. I mean, the original artwork over here looks like they just raided a thrift sale, bought everything, and put it all on. Instead, the cast was going for a more modern take with modern clothing. The clothing would match the character but it’s not like they were going to be wearing picnic table cloth for shirts.

They did opt to wear a certain type of flower on their shirts though. So, each person had a little flower on their clothing.

When I arrived they were pretty much open to anything and had a couple of ideas on what they wanted. I had some ideas, too. My idea was to shoot each character in front of a bright light so we get this big starburst behind them. I wanted to have a rainbow shooting out or surrounding each character, too.

Character Pics

And that’s what we did. I put a strobe light behind each character’s head, and a strobe light at a 45° angle in front of them. I had all the stage lights turned off so that the characters were only lit by the strobe to their left and the bright strobe behind them. Here’s the results:

As each cast member came up for their photo I asked them for the character’s name and what kind of person they were. Basically, give me some buzz words.
“He’s brash, loud, self-confident.”
I’d then latch on to a word and say, “Ok, give me brash.”

So, each photo is the actor giving me a personification of their character in a one word description. Brash, plucky, tough-guy, optimistic, flirty, etc. One guy even did this air guitar pose and I just knew I would be able to Photoshop in an actual air guitar. It was tricky getting the guitar to look like air and have ethereal qualities on top of matching the perspective and hand position, but I think it came out really nice. I even got the air guitar to match the color of his shirt.

Godspell Promo Poster

Of course they they also wanted a full Godspell cast photo…and this was a large cast. Much larger than the cast that was on the original promo poster.

Well, I wasn’t about to do them all individually or in sections like with “Clue” promo. Plus, there wasn’t really any stage props around to play with at the time.

I imagined the grid of dynamic symmetry in my head and went around posing people. Ultimately I was going for a combination of an homage to the old promo picture I referenced and also mimicking the layout of a hand, i.e., I wanted the outside characters to be fanning outward and then as you look towards the center things slightly pull in.

The basic thought in my head looked like this with the dynamic symmetry lines:

I knew I wanted that Godspell logo at the top with a character elevated in the center. The guy in white was the Jesus-type character but I really didn’t want him to be in the center. I felt that this was more of an ensemble cast where anyone could be as important as the others.

Next up, I put the bench in the center and went with the blonde girl with the green top and dress; I liked her hair, how she posed naturally, and didn’t want someone too tall to intrude in on the logo. Next, I wanted to build that base so I had the guy in blue sit with his legs straight out to the side and his hand resting on the floor. This established a floor and so his head would be in the lower thirds.

The two gals to his left and right would lean in towards the girl in the green at the top. Their shoulders and heads would angle in towards her, forming that diamond shaped pentagon. Then the Jesus figure in white would be looking to his love interest to his right. The girl in yellow would be leaning back to grab that diagonal line while the other characters helped exaggerate those diagonal lines leading out. Over to stage left you’ve got the two guys in purple occupying the headspace that create the ears of the center box. Finally, the three on the stage left are motioning out in the opposite way to their counterparts on stage right.

I had to painstakingly go through this entire image to mask them all out of their surroundings so I could put them on a pure white background. This took forever and hand and wrist muscles were killing me when I was done. With new Photoshop features there are newer ways to select subjects but it just wasn’t quite selecting them in a clean way. So, the best way to mask them out was the old fashion way.

When I was done i had to map out the original perspective lines and manually paint in the shadows. The end result looks pretty vintage in style but ultimately very clean.

For fun, I duplicated the design of an older poster I saw from Godspell with the baby blue box and the text blurbs. I’m not sure if they ever used it because they never provided me with the detailed information for the lower box…so, I just made up my own names and words to go there. They did, however, use all the cast pics and the more condensed cast photo.

Thanks to the theater and cast of Godspell for being easy to work with and super receptive to my ideas.