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.
Entertainment Weekly has a first look at the movie poster for 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to the horror film 28 Days Later. The article is a bit underwhelming, but it does have an interesting quote by Fox Atomic senior VP of print advertising Karen Crawford. Discussing the “concession” of re-using the biohazard title treatment logo from the previous 28 Days Later poster:
“I’d like it to not have that logo. But, of course, this is a movie we’re advertising.”
We can easily imagine a cynical tone in her voice when saying that.
The why-oh-why-must-we-be-shackled-by-this-logo-from-the-past anecdote reminds us of a light bulb joke about designers (or anyone in a creative field, for that matter):
Q: How many graphic designers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Does it have to be a light bulb?
If you chuckled at that joke then you probably are a designer, or work in a creative field. This light bulb joke also happens to be the ONLY joke about graphic design that we know of. Niche jokes aside, the Fox exec quote seems to explain why the 28 Weeks Later poster tries to hide the biohazard symbol by fading the edges of the symbol behind the logotype. This is an unfortunate choice since the faded red of the logo clashes with the duotone street art style of the rest of the poster’s key art. It also doesn’t help that fading the color red can sometimes read as pink in color. It looks like the biohazard logo fell victim to death by half-hearted inclusion, which many designers are familiar with.
XYZ RBG offers high resolution scanning services for film, television, video game, and other media companies. The company has worked on films in The Matrix series, Lord of the Rings, and King Kong. Through the company’s XYZ Imaging, it also offers holographic printing services. A hologram is defined as: “A three dimensional image; unlike regular images which are usually two dimensional, a three dimensional image, or hologram, appears to “pop out” of the media on which it is printed or illuminated from.”
The Ottawa Canada firm has created technology that allows eight seconds of video to be manufactured as a paper thin three dimensional hologram movie poster:
The film industry is the first target for what XYZ RGB bills as the next-generation movie poster. The company can place a short clip right in the poster, giving people a chance to view a scene without going into the theatre.
The technology is turning heads around the world. When he heard about it, Titanic director James Cameron couldn’t believe the 3-D posters were possible.
“He said to me, ‘if you have discovered imbedded video in plastic, you have discovered the holy grail of advertising,’” said Jan-Erik Nyhuus, vice-president of business development for XYZ RGB Inc.
The company demonstrated this printing technology by producing a custom made three dimensional Terminator 2 movie poster and presenting it to director Cameron. The claim is that this hologram movie poster is more advanced than past lenticular movie posters (such as the recent Spider-Man 3 lenticular poster).
Sony Pictures has released a three dimensional teaser movie poster for Spider-Man 3. The Spider-Man 3 lenticular movie poster features the chest torso of Peter Parker’s red Spider-man suit that morphs into the black and white “symbiote” costume (which will presumably end up as the basis for the villian Venom). The Spiderman lenticular poster 3D effect happens when the viewer changes angles when looking at the poster.
A 3D lenticular movie poster image is created by a convex prism lens over the surface of the printed poster, which shows different parts of an image depending on the perspective of the viewer. The process has been around since the 1900s, but has become more popular in recent years as a collectible item. Past movie poster lenticulars include Species 2, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
While lenticular movie posters tend to be popular with collectors and fans, film studios do not create lenticulars very often. This is due to several reasons: they are more expensive to produce, they require (for best results) being backlit in a movie theater lightbox frame, and most importantly, smaller poster details (such as text) are difficult to read.
We often cite Wikipedia.org in our postings because it’s such a great online resource of information on most any subject. For those unfamiliar with the site, Wikipedia is known as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”. From the Wikipedia.org About page:
Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference website on the Internet. The content of Wikipedia is free, written collaboratively by people from all around the world. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia, simply by clicking the edit this page link (with a few minor exceptions, such as protected articles and the main page).
For being such a far reaching reference on so many subjects, it’s a bit surprising that Wikiepdia’s entry about the term movie poster seems to be lacking. Since the power of Wikipedia is that it is collaborative, we were hoping our appeal to any Wikipedia editors (or would-be contributors) who are reading this site might be able to help make the movie poster article better and more informative. The current Wikipedia discussion about the article seems to be whether the entry only serves film poster collectors and dealers.
An example of what could help expand the article about movie posters: Is the term for a standard size theatrical movie poster spelled one sheet, one-sheet, onesheet, or 1 sheet? (We use different spellings for the term, but we believe the proper spelling is “one sheet“. But is this how Thomas Edison spelled “one sheet”?)
If you’d like to help edit the movie poster (or any other Wiki) article, you can read Wikipedia’s Tutorial to learn more about the editing process.
The weblog Ironic Sans points out that movie posters for the new Ivan Reitman comedy My Super Ex-Girlfriend are using the same Uma Thurman head strip on two different bodies.
“Someone grafted the exact same head onto this poster, too. If they weren’t going to do a good job, couldn’t they at least make it less obvious that it’s the exact same head?”
It’s interesting the Ironic Sans site chooses to focus on the “cloned Umas” while giving the less than ideal Luke Wilson’s body double on the My Super Ex-Girlfriend poster no mention. It is all another example of how difficult a movie poster body double / actor Frankenstein creation can be to pull off.
Using the same head on different bodies isn’t uncommon (and sometimes a necessary evil). A possible explanation in this case might be that the head shot in question was the only “approved image” of Uma Thurman available for use at that time. Or perhaps a deadline forced the second poster artwork to use the same head shot. Or… we could speculate endlessly.
Most well-known movie stars have approval (either contractually or as a professional courtesy) over ALL photography of themselves available to a film’s marketing campaign. For example, when images from a film (in unit shots, special shoots, etc.) become available, the images are first given to the actor for approval. Contact sheets (also known as proof sheets) of all the photography are sent to the actor, which are then sent back with a lot of red Xs — known as “kills” — marked through photos that the star (or more likely, their manager) don’t want used. This can be frustrating for designers working on the project if some/most/all of the best shots are “killed”. This power to “kill” can be taken a step further when a star (or producer, director, etc.) has approval over the movie poster design of the final one-sheet. This is why one of the first questions asked by many art directors on many key art projects is: “Who has approval over this movie poster?”
Lionsgate has released the U.S. domestic one-sheet for their latest horror film import called The Descent. The movie, which has been receiving great reviews, is about an all-female caving expedition that goes horribly wrong.
The Descent movie poster features six young women posed into the image of a large glowing skull. This “skull orgy” may look familiar to many of you, as it is based on the same skull image featured on the “death’s head moth” found in The Silence of the Lambs movie poster.
As we mentioned previously, this skull pose is based on a famous photo of artist Salvador Dali, entitled Salvador Dali In Voluptate Mors. It’s interesting to compare the incidental take on that photo in the original Silence of the Lambs poster, versus this new (and much less subtle) version in The Descent poster. This new version inverts the lights/darks from the original, with clothing taking place of the suggestive nudes of the Dali photograph. (Sadly, the spelunking women of The Descent poster, with their attire and prominent hiking boots, don’t invoke quite the same feeling as the previous Dali nudes skull.)
We’re not really trying to pick on Sharon Stone… (If we were, we might ask, why is she auditioning for American Idol with a microphone in hand?) Nor are we interested in mentioning Basic Instinct 2 again. But the IMP web site recently pointed out the new Basic Instinct 2 Korean poster features an altered version of the original Basic Instinct 2 poster key art. The Korean poster uses the same artwork, but replaces Sharon Stone’s head with a different headshot with wet hair. The only problem is they forget to also replace the original (and dry) hair reflected in the mirrors behind her. Oops.
Photoshoping an actors head onto a different body pose (or a completely different person — a body double) happens all the time, and is known as a head strip. This can be taken further when an actors image is composed of many different “parts” — a face from one image, hair from another pose, body from yet another, etc. — resulting in a sort of “Frankenstein” creation as the final result. This sometimes doesn’t work that well. There are a variety of reasons why actors may find their heads moving from body to body double, the most common being that they haven’t posed for special shoots that some movie poster concepts might require. As an actor reaches a certain popularity, the likelihood of that movie star being unavailable for a needed marketing photo shoot increases exponentially. The solution is a head strip.
Two recent one-sheets have embraced a familiar “Andy Warhol style” of silkscreened artwork. This familiar pop art panel technique created by the legendary artist can be seen in the recent Madea’s Family Reunion movie poster and the Factory Girl movie poster (which isn’t surprising for Factory Girl, as it is one of several films to cover Andy Warhol’s life). The use of multi colored panels in movie posters is nothing new, even in a movie poster designed by Warhol himself.
A cultural icon (at least for “15 minutes”) and the definitive artist of the American 1960s Pop Art movement, Andy Warhol was a true pioneer, who focused his experimental nature into art, music, and film. His embrace of painting and silkscreening supported his interest in mass produced art featuring mass produced items — including illustrating everything from soup cans to celebrities. Warhol even had assistants working at his art studio (known as “The Factory”) producing countless copies and variations of his silkscreen artwork. This serialization of his art, most notably of Marilyn Monroe, was often presented as several different proofs together as one piece, resulting in his familiar spilt-screen multiple panel style artwork.
Taking Warhol’s embrace of consumerism as subject matter further, a psudeo “Warhol style” can be applied to your favorite photos, even images of your pet. You can find several tutorials attempting to achieve a “Warhol effect” in Photoshop, or even try your hand at coloring Marilyn Monroe online in a Warhol style.
First a disclaimer or two. We are very biased when it comes to the subject of Bettie Page. (Also, some links and images in this post are NSFW.) Who is Bettie Page, you may ask?
Bettie Page is the most photographed model of all-time.
How is this “original supermodel” claim possible? It is a bit dubious, but the statement is derived from the prolific career of Bettie Page as the premiere pin-up model (and Playboy Playmate) in the 1950s. (It also helps to understand a bit about the history of mail-order pin-up photographs, “camera clubs”, and men’s magazines from that time period.) “All-time” claims aside, the impact of Bettie Page is too broad a topic to discuss in a weblog about movie posters, but needless to say: even if you have never heard of her before, you are probably aware of her influence on beauty, fashion, modeling, sex, and pop culture — even if you didn’t realize it.
Her life story is finally coming to the big screen via the dark haired bangs of actress Gretchen Mol in the movie The Notorious Bettie Page. The film covers the modeling career of Bettie Page, including the controversies surrounding her sometimes risque fetish photographs.
In The Notorious Bettie Page movie poster, we see Gretchen Mol as Bettie Page, leaning against the oversized typography of the film title treatment against a bright yellow-orange background. At least, it used to be an image of Gretchen Mol. When we compare the poster to the original photograph of the actress, we can see this Bettie Page has had quite a bit of retouching. While the real Bettie Page never needed any retouching (nor does Gretchen Mol as Bettie Page for that matter), a fact of modern life is everyone (and we mean everyone) in advertising is retouched in one way or another. You can bet that unless the image is an editorial/news photograph, it has been altered in some way. (Sadly, sometimes news organizations do alter photographs.) In this case, the poster image of actress Mol as Page has literally been painted into existence. This happens quite often in film poster one-sheets. When working with varying levels of quality of source material — a dark and blurry unit photograph for example — the retoucher, working on the final “finishing” stage of the key art, can be called upon to create all kinds of things in Adobe Photoshop. Looking at the original Gretchen Mol photograph, we can speculate that the photo was a bit out of focus and grainy, requiring extensive “painting” in the final stages… Or maybe the account executive in charge of that campaign was simply over zealous in having the composition retouched. Or perhaps a mixture of both?
The majority of movie poster artwork is created using elements from two sources: unit photography and special shoots. (And the third source would be various incarnations of stock photography, often combined with the first two sources.) We’ve covered the topic of special shoots before — photography shot especially for advertising and promotional campaigns.
Sometimes key art photo shoots can involve complete sets and props, often re-using the film’s actual sets for the special shoot. In some cases, the studio advertising department goes to the expense and trouble of creating sets exclusively for a film poster photo shoot. For the Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction movie poster, the sequel’s star Sharon Stone is depicted in a (somewhat visually “busy”) scene sitting on a bedroom chair, surrounded by various elements of danger and mayhem: cracked mirrors, a mysterious hand, her signature crossed legs, etc. Looking at some of the Basic Instinct 2 photography, we’re going to assume this was taken on the film set. What’s interesting is we can see the original photograph that became the basis of the Basic Instinct 2 one-sheet, and how that original image was changed to reach the final key art. (The French teaser poster offers a stripped down version of the same photograph as it’s poster image.)
This is essentially how some movie poster concepts begin — the entire design process might be set in motion by a film advertising art director being handed a CD full of special shoot and unit photography image files and asked to begin design work using those raw images. Ideally, the movie poster design process begins with a proper conceptual stage, starting with sketch concepts and research — but that isn’t always the case. One scenario that prevents a singular concept/design/execution process involves one ad agency beginning work on the ad campaign, only to lose the job months later to a different ad agency that starts work much later in the film campaign design process.
Four new teaser posters for the upcoming film V for Vendetta have been released. The movie, based on the Alan Moore comic, follows a freedom fighter known only as “V” who uses terrorist tactics to fight against a totalitarian English society. What makes the teaser posters interesting is the key art in each one-sheet embraces the style of political propaganda posters from the past — most notably Soviet.
Our favorite V for Vendetta teaser poster of the four features a silk-screen style limited color palette. The fan-boy site Ain’t-It-Cool-News labeled this poster as “Spanish & Argentian” in style. Not sure about that one — the bottom line is it’s recreating a poster style common to political propaganda posters from the past. (Reader Martin S. identifies this teaser as more Russian Leninist than the idealized Stalinist style.) AICN also identifies this Vendetta teaser as “German Expressionistic”, but it seems more inspired by the Russian Photomontage style as seen in this Russian propaganda poster. Since art history was never our strong subject, it’s hard to classify the specific style of each of these four teaser one-sheets. We invite everyone to share opinions on this in the comments section.
The poster as a piece of political propaganda has a long history across different cultures and regimes, including Chinese, American, Soviet, and Nazi.
We sometimes get email with questions about one-sheets. We’re happy to answer any movie poster related questions that we’re fortunate enough to actually know the answer to. (Or at least think we know the answer to.)
Marvin J. writes:
Why, in an ensemble shot, are the actors’ names not under their proper photos? Is this some Hollywood superstition? Or is it because it’s too much like a news caption and therefore too “linear”?
As with most things involving actors/talent in motion pictures, the names and likeness of actors are controlled by their almighty contract. The actor’s contract includes what can and can’t be done with their name/likeness on a movie poster one-sheet (and all other film advertising). These advertising provisions in contracts (sometimes called “contractual” or “contractuals”) that relate to one-sheets dictate things such as whether an actor’s name must appear above the film’s title (”above title credit”), the location and order of their credit (such as “first billing” or “top billing”), and even the size of their own likeness on the poster in relation to their co-stars image (”equal likeness“).
The order of actors names may be set in stone via contractuals, but the design/layout (at least in some regard) of the movie poster is not. This is the recipe for the not-so-uncommon phenomenon of actor credits not lining up with their image on a one-sheet. For example, Keanu Reeves may be getting top billing over his costars in The Matrix — his name appears first on the left side of the poster for the above title credits — but that doesn’t mean his face/image will be first on the left side of the layout. This disparity between names and faces often appears in the ever-popular “Flying V” movie poster layout (also known as the “Scream Layout” or the “Miramax Layout”). This group line-up would put the top billed star front and center on the poster, flanked by their costars, but the actor credits (from left to right) wouldn’t necessarily fall in that same order. You’ll also see the credit order versus actor groupings battle in movie posters for ensemble dramas. There are many other variations and solutions to this type of credit billing problem — for example, a star’s name could appear in the middle and above the costar’s credits and be considered top billing. (Although it doesn’t always solve the problem).
Since film advertising art directors are already limited in what they can do with regards to actor placements (both in name and likeness) in one-sheet layouts, it’s understandable that most film account executives overlook this minor credit lineup “glitch”. This is just one of the many hoops that film key art has to jump through (like the film’s themselves) before it reaches your local theater lobby.
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?
