Another cog in Operation #SoldOutShow is creating a professional movie style poster. For this endeavor I immediately turned to the internet for inspiration.

Over the decades, Hollywood has made surprisingly large number of Robin Hood films so I had a lot to look at. I grew up watching both Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Disney’s Robin Hood. As much as I liked the Prince of Thieves poster I needed one that highlighted more actors to broaden its appeal.

Disney’s poster was better with five characters but I still needed more. As I continued my search, I came across this poster highlighting eight actors from Robin Des Bols. It’s a French comedy retelling of the classic story. I was immediately inspired by it and decided to use it as a model for ours.

In preparation for the photo shoot, we needed costumes and props. We had discussed renting costumes from Millersville University’s Costume Closet. But it got expensive for the number we needed.

Luckily even as early as the first week of September, Halloween is in full swing making costumes plentiful and inexpensive. Amazon was the cheapest option.

In addition to our online purchases, we had a few medieval costumes (mostly women’s dresses) in storage at school. To round out our collection I brought a variety of detail pieces like swords, daggers, belts, and gloves, and gold coins. In the two weeks leading up to the photo shoot, I was busy sewing Robin Hood hats. By the sixth one I had gotten pretty good at it.

As the date of the photo shoot approached the stars aligned and professional photographer and L-S alumni Chad Harnish agreed to donate his time and talent to take the pictures for the poster.

When Chad Harnish signed on things went from amateur hour to legit.

The photo shoot ended up lasting nearly two hours as we photographed the actors individually, as a group in front of a white screen, and again as a group in front of a black screen. A few hours later, Chad sent this polished photo.

With the photo in hand, all I had to do was add it to the poster I had been working on since before the start of the school year. So without further ado here it is, the official 2017 fall Play poster for The Somewhat True Tale of Robin Hood.