Comments on: (Re) Touching Bettie Page

By: Girl Power « Posterwire.com « the movie poster weblog

Girl Power « Posterwire.com « the movie poster weblog — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:22:11 +0000

[...] of Bettie Page, model turned actress Milla Jovovich sports a familiar black hair with bangs hairstyle in her new [...]

By: Gene D. Noah

Gene D. Noah — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 23:56:22 +0000

It’s “its”, not “it’s”.

By: CW

CW — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:13:29 +0000

Not sure if the previous comments have mentioned this because I can’t read them for some reason, but…

This isn’t a retouched photo but a piece of original artwork using the photo as reference (and a pretty bad piece of art at that). I think they were trying to emulate the look of the Vargas, Petty ‘good girl’ art pinups.

By: Bill Cunningham

Bill Cunningham — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 19:05:11 +0000

Perhaps it’s not so much the Vargas touch that they were emulating but the “Dave Stevens” touch. Stevens was the artist responsible for re-igniting interest in Page thanks to his using her image in his ROCKETEER comic series as well as several very successful art prints/posters.

If the filmmakers and marketers are aiming for a 18-35 yr. old audience then this demographic would be the ones that would have seen Betty in The Rocketeer. They would be the ones who embraced the icon in revival magazines like Theakston’s THE BETTY PAGES or Jim Silke’s BETTY comic albums.

We also have to count in the rockabilly audience who have embraced Betty as one of their icons for all things “retro-cool.” Many people of this culture have only seen airbrushed Bettys on the sides of cars and guitars…

I don’t want to read too much into this, as no matter how thin you slice it – it’s still Betty.

By: Benjamen

Benjamen — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 01:41:55 +0000

This refers to your comment about the photo illustration of Martha Stewart on the Newsweek cover (“Sadly, sometimes news organizations do alter photographs.”): Does it really sadden you that a news source would use a photo illustration on its cover, even when it’s credited in the table of contents as a photo illustration? Is traditional pen and ink the only type of illustration a reliable news source should be permitted to use, despite the fact that photo illustration is at times much more effective and appropriate? It’s not like they were lying to their readers; after all, putting a person’s headshot on someone else’s body and calling it a photo illustration is not the same thing as putting a person’s headshot on someone else’s body and insisting it’s a genuine documentary photo.

As for this poster, they should’ve just hired a traditional illustrator if they were going for a Vargas girl look. Photos converted into illustrations through Photoshop blurring and masking techniques just look cheap and amateurish.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:36:50 +0000

More importantly, do you like this poster / illustration?

By: admin

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:28:19 +0000

Well, I did say we were biased :)

And I agree the “creative direction” of the poster could have very well been a “Vargas girl” look — however that doesn’t really fit the subject matter and doesn’t make much sense if you consider the background of Bettie Page. (The movie is, after all, about her modeling career via photography — this is depicted well in the film’s trailer). I think this depection of Gretchen Mol / Bettie Page makes the mistake of falling somewhere in the middle between a photograph and illustration.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:14:01 +0000

I can definitely see where you are coming from with the level of retouching of this photograph on the poster, but I think they made a conscious decision to bring it more into the realm of an illustration to fit with the graphic use of the typography. It just seems like having a photo in the middle of something very unphotographic wouldn’t have worked as well.

Which is not to say that things coming out of Hollywood marketing departments aren’t too polished sometimes.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:11:12 +0000

Seems pretty obvious that they were going for a “Vargas girl” look – the art on the poster looks highly stylized and clearly fake – more like an airbrush illustration than anything out of real life.

Here’s a page with a bunch of Alberto Vargas illustrations (scroll to the bottom):
http://www.thepinupfiles.com/vargas1.html

Here’s a good specific example in the style of the Bettie Page poster illo:
http://www.thepinupfiles.com/images/C-AV_164.jpg