Posterwire.com is a movie poster weblog. From images of the latest Hollywood one-sheets to vintage movie posters, this film poster weblog hopes to offer a bit of insight into film key art.
Steve Carell is The 40-Year-Old Virgin. As the title suggests… Well, the title pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the film’s plot. More importantly, let’s discuss the funny portrait photograph used in the The 40-Year-Old Virgin movie poster.
Reader Martin S. writes:
Maybe you can explain why the poster linked above feels so different from other posters, it’s like so vacant, with a sort of Devo-ish image. I don’t know, I think it’s incredibly attention-getting.
The look and effectiveness of The 40-Year-Old Virgin poster can be summed up in one simple phrase:
Perhaps you remember it from your childhood. Maybe it was offered at your local mall. Regardless of when/where/how, the trappings of the cheesey family portrait remain the same: the innocuous muslin backgrounds, posing on the little round swivel chair, the photo subject looking away to the left (or right) of camera, and of course, the forced smile. As with all things schmultzy, it’s only a matter of time until the “Sears Portrait Studio” look is re-appropriated.
The “ironic” family portrait photograph became popular among rock and alternative bands, a famous example being when the Red Hot Chili Peppers visited their local portrait studio for band photos. But the trend wasn’t limited to music: the creators of South Park (Matt Stone and Trey Parker) have also made a portrait studio visit.
For The 40-Year-Old Virgin poster, posing the subject via “Stepford”-ized portrait photography, the goofy expression, not to mention the photo’s slightly skewed bright color palette, gives actor Steve Carell just enough punch to make this a really memorable image — which is saying a lot for a movie poster that relies on a simple image of the film’s star. (The “Better Late Than Never.” tagline helps too.)
Let the finger pointing begin. In interviews about the release of his film The Island, director Michael Bay laid some blame of the film’s box office disappointment on the film’s marketing, including The Island one-sheet:
Bay bemoaned that the movie had low awareness. Even before it opened, he had sharp words for the marketing campaign, complaining in a Times interview that the effort wasn’t generating interest and that a poster made costar Scarlett Johansson look like “a porn star.”
So much for the commentary on the look of star Scarlett Johansson in a piece of key art. Considering Bay’s directing style and reputation, there seems a bit of hypocrisy there.
As the gossip site Defamer.com points out, one of the seven stages of box office grief is to blame the marketing department at the studio. It’s a very old ploy, that sometimes has no basis in reality, but still popular nonetheless.
In 1995, the executives at Universal fired the head of studio marketing as a response to Kevin Costner’s mega-flop Waterworld. Nevermind that the marketing chief wasn’t solely responsible for the advertising campaign of the Waterworld film, as he was newly installed in the job after that film’s campaign had already been underway. And it’s the job of studio publicity (not advertising) to manage the news/media campaign associated with the film, for better or worse. In the case of Waterworld, the negative news stories and coverage of the film’s infamous production problems helped “drown” chances of box office success. (For the record, Waterworld eventually made a small profit through foreign sales and other markets.)
Good film advertising essentially works in two ways: to help generate buzz or to help minimize damage. For example, when Sony executives got their first look at the 1998 soon-to-be stinker Godzilla, the first thing they did was immediately increase the number of ad buys (TV commercials) before the film’s opening. This was already on top of the film’s massive ad campaign. They threw more money at the problem — they “bought their opening weekend”.
But with millions of dollars devoted solely to a film’s ad campaign, a movie’s marketing plan begins to look more like a catastrophic disaster insurance policy than anything else. Does a Hollywood film live and die based on it’s marketing? Returning to Bay’s bashing his film’s one-sheet (which he likely had approval over), what 27″x41″ piece of artwork can help carry that kind of burden? Has anyone ever seen a film because of, or in spite of, the look of a movie poster?
Dark Horizons has a high resolution picture of what they report to be the final Superman Returns logo. This is the second variation of the logo to appear online, following an earlier silver version of the Superman logo from a month ago. (Then there is the third version of the Man of Steel’s logo, which appears on the Superman suit worn by actor Brandon Routh.)
These Superman shields reflect the current trend of 3D rendered film logos in film advertising. The Dark Horizons site claims that this will be the “final logo to be used in the poster” for Superman Returns, but if we’ve learned anything about movie posters (and Warner Bros. and their superhero franchises), nothing is final.
Director Walter Hill created a stir with his ode to 70s era gang warfare with the 1979 cult classic film The Warriors. The film follows the adventures of a New York City gang known as the “Warriors”, wrongly accused of a gangleader’s death, fighting their way back to their home turf of Coney Island. The film has had a surprisingly wide reach for what some consider a cheesy 70s flick. This includes the new Warriors videogame from Rockstar Games, not to mention the upcoming 2006 remake.
The Warriors movie poster features a memorable illustration of key “members” of the various NYC gangs, including star Michael Beck, leader of the “Warriors”. A member of the everyone’s favorite gang, the “Baseball Furies”, is also depicted. Another nice touch is the haphazard spray paint style of the film’s title treatment.
The film is often mentioned with the piece of trivia that it incited gang riots in large city movie theatres when it was released. While that claim may have been true to an extent, I seriously doubt the film’s one-sheet played any role in the mayhem:
After several violent incidents that occurred at various showings of the film, the producers decided to change to poster as a way of cutting down on the violence. The original poster featured the logo as well as a picture of several tough looking gang members. The second poster just featured the logo against a white background. (from the IMDB.)
There’s a common saying among movie poster designers and art directors when designing film title logos: “When in doubt, use Trajan.”
And why such a mantra? “Clients love it. They love it’s elegant look and always gravitate towards it or similar style typefaces.”
A better illustration of the use of the Trajan typeface in movie posters can be found in the excellent short film available from the stock agency Veer: “Etched in Stone” by Cheshire Dave.
Trajan was created by font designer Carol Twombly in 1989. As mentioned in the Veer “Etched in Stone” short film, the type is based on the classic etched style of ancient Roman era serif lettering. As a display typeface, it’s influence is wide reaching in the world of one-sheet logotypes — even film logos that aren’t technically using Trajan are using similar looking fonts or typefaces derived from the Trajan lineage.
Speaking of type, if you need help in identifying the likes of Trajan (or any other typefaces used in movie posters and elsewhere), look no further than the Type Identification forum over at the great site Typophile.com. You can also try IDing a font by uploading an image sample to WhatTheFont.
Continuing his film poster pictorial book series, Tony Nourmand journeys back to an early film era with Film Posters of the 30s: The Essential Movies of the Decade.
A common theme for films from the period was escapism, mostly in response to the Great Depression of the time. The book covers movies of the 1930s by organizing the film poster one-sheets by genre, such as: romance, adventure, comedy, war, and so on. The book includes over 240 images and features work by internationally famous artists including Albert Hirschfeld, Alberto Vargas and James Montgomery Flagg.
As shown on the book’s cover, the 1930s decade features three of the most timeless films of all time: The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, and King Kong. Those popular films have used many different one-sheet “looks” through the years, with posters that differ from their initial ad campaigns from the 30s. For example, the original 1933 King Kong film has had many one-sheet variations through it’s many re-releases.
Is 007 back? Well, not really, but… Jason Statham returns as a rough and tumble mercenary driver for hire in The Transporter 2. For The Transporter 2 one-sheet, the film’s advertising executives decided to pay homage [cough] to that iconic touchstone of sexy spy film posters, the one-sheet for the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only.
For the 1981 Roger Moore Bond film, legendary movie poster art director Bill Gold created a photo illustration of Bond seen in perspective between the legs of a thong wearing femme fatale armed with a crossbow. Designer Gold was well known throughout the industry, particularly for his work on poster key art for Clint Eastwood films, including the “Dirty Harry” series in the 1970s. Needless to say, the For Your Eyes Only poster created controversy in some venues, with later versions featuring retouched shorts on the crossbow wielding model. Newspaper ads for the Bond film covered the leggy assassin even further by painting on a black mini-skirt.
We’ll leave it to you to judge the Transporter 2 movie poster and whether it’s an effective one-sheet. (We did notice that the model in this modern poster is cropped a bit more modestly than the Bond original. Is that considered progress?)
Leave it to the film advertising executives to approve a rash of illustrated movie posters in recent months just as we’re spending so much Posterwire.com weblog space lamenting the death of the traditional illustrated poster.
“Drawing” on today’s most recent example: the stylized 1930s avant-garde look to the A Good Woman one-sheet. It’s hard to resist the vibrant “Fauve” color palette of this Art Deco style painting. The poster reproduces many traits of the Deco movement in it’s artwork, including the sweeping lines and floral motifs. (And for a modern comparison, you need to look no further than A Good Woman official UK website to see a traditional “Big Heads Floating in the Sky” photo composition take on the film’s key art.)
It’s nice to see a movie poster for a 1930s period film that actually uses the look of an art movement from that era — it serves as a reminder how innovative Art Deco posters were at the time. (Unfortunately, as with all things related to film advertising, it’s difficult to find out who created this one-sheet.)
For the new film Lord of War, Nick Cage plays an arms dealer dealing with the moral implications of his line of work. As a gun runner, Cage is (at least as he’s represented in the movie poster key art) literally made for the job.
A Lord of War teaser banner spelled out a “Got Guns?” tagline (derived from the ubiquitous “Got Milk?” campaign) with the lettering composed entirely of guns. That photo mosaic via firepower idea is taken a step further in the Lord of War one-sheet, with a portrait shot of Nicholas Cage formed out of bullets. This particular style of illustration invokes a magazine cover/editorial feel, which is probably appropriate to the film’s subject matter. That and people love guns.
Another interesting feature of this one-sheet is the placement of the poster’s billing block. Rather than running the credits at the bottom, the Lord of War credit block is on a single line running around the 4 outer edges of the poster. While some film advertising art directors love doing this, this type of credit block placement rarely makes it into a final one-sheet design. The reason: if there’s one thing that producers hate is not being able to read their names in the already tiny/compressed credits on a one-sheet, much less running upside-down, sideways, and so on. (The only other example of an outer edge billing block we can remember on a one-sheet is for the Miramax film 54, starring Mike Meyers.)
In honor of the 4th of July holiday, lets discuss two distinctly American things: Uncle Sam …and ripping off his image to sell movie tickets. (Or rather, pay “homage” to his most famous depiction.)
The most famous version of Uncle Sam appears in the 1917 Army World War I recruitment poster by illustrator James Montgomery Flagg. (The finger pointing “I WANT YOU” Uncle Sam painting was itself a copy of a British recruitment poster of Lord Kitchener.)
The familiar U.S. icon lives on in countless parodies, re-workings, and other artistic interpretations, not the least of which is the use in film advertising over the years. Whether it’s John Belushi as “Wild Bill” in Steven Speilberg’s ill-fated war comedy 1941, or Bill Murray moving from Saturday Night Live into the Army (and movie super-stardom) in Stripes, the familiar recruitment style finger pointing has been called into service many times. It’s even been used to help get Burt Reynolds laid.
Joaquin Phoenix stars as legendary singer Johnny Cash in the upcoming bio-pic WALK THE LINE. The film chronicles the performer’s early career, including his work at the legendary Sun Records in Memphis, alongside icons Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. The film also stars Reese Witherspoon as wife and collaborator June Carter. The title comes from the singer’s “outlaw country” hit “I Walk the Line“.
The Walk the Line teaser poster features a woodcut style illustration of Phoenix as “the Man in Black” wearing his guitar. It’s interesting that only a few simple “carved” lines (such as in actor’s hairline) in the poster immediately identify the image as being that of Johnny Cash. The typeface and woodcut technique are also a good fit for the country music subject matter, without falling into the trap of looking like an album cover. Needless to say, this is a departure from most movie posters, both in style and the fact that it is illustrated.
