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.
With so much talk of sex scandals and secret “gay signals” in the news lately, it is interesting to see how Hollywood (via the movie poster) has been marketing a few recent films and how different audiences might interpret them.
Jodie Foster is starring in a new film called The Brave One. In the movie, Foster’s character turns vigilante after her fiancé is brutally murdered. Some of her fans on AfterEllen.com (a site for news, reviews, interviews and commentary on lesbian and bisexual women) have heralded The Brave One movie poster as the “Best. Jodie. Movie. Poster. Ever.” Reviewing the alternate artwork for The Brave One foreign poster, the AfterEllen.com site asks: “Hey, why did they replace Jodie Foster with Zac Efron’s 14-year-old blond cousin?” The site goes on to list several examples of “butch movie posters” from the past. It’s interesting how different audiences react to depictions of women in media, including what some consider a “glass closet” icon.
At the other end of the sexual identity spectrum (or perhaps in the very same spectrum) is the omnipresent How can we work in a visual joke about balls? creative direction that has been issued by many film account executives. One-sheet posters for the two recent films Balls of Fury and Mr. Woodcock are here to add to that growing list. Of course, invoking imagery of said male gentilia as a visual pun in film advertising is nothing new.
All this talk of balls and fury brings back harsh memories of the year-and-a-half long comment flame war centered around the Brokeback Mountain movie poster.
By now most of you have probably heard about the controversy surrounding Captivity billboards as part of the film’s outdoor ad campaign in Los Angeles and New York. Captivity is a horror (some say “torture porn”) film starring Elisha Cuthbert. The billboards (featuring key art designed by Art Machine Digital) depicted four panels with the headlines “Abduction, Confinement, Torture, Termination” along with the appropriate modern horror florescent lighting color scheme and scary visuals:
This film outdoor campaign outraged some residents in the Los Angeles area. In some sort of modern ad speak for “My dog ate my homework”, CEO Courtney Solomon of After Dark Films (the studio that produced the film) claimed the wrong files were sent to the printer and all the executives were in Las Vegas attending ShoWest at the time. We have no idea whether this was the case or not, but we don’t think the Adobe InDesign final production mechanicals sent to the printer were labeled “TOO SCARY. PLS DO NOT USE. FOR YOUR FUN ONLY!”.
And if you have wondered how film execs really talk, Solomon went on to muse:
Personally, I wasn’t going to go with this campaign. I thought it was OTP (over the top). Nothing like this can ever happen again.
Is this “OTP” quote meant to publicly lay blame elsewhere, like he (the CEO) was some sort of “lone voice of reason in a wilderness of ‘oh no, we’re producing this sucker whether you liked the comp or not’ ad design approval craziness”?
Although the offending outdoor billboards were eventually removed (and replaced by a not-as-OTP “Captivity Was Here” billboard), the proverbial outrage pile-on had already begun.
Speaking of pile ons, one thing that is being held captive is a rating for the film. The MPAA has put a one month hold on the ratings process for Captivity, which puts the May 18th release date in jeopardy. According to MPAA Senior VP of Advertising Marilyn Gordon:
“The sanctions in this case are severe because this was an unacceptable and flagrant violation of MPAA rules and procedures. After Dark Films presented their ads for approval, as all companies are required to do if they wish to receive an MPAA rating. However, their ads were summarily rejected for their graphic depiction of a woman’s torture and death. Yet After Dark proceeded to post them on billboards anyway, and these ads appeared in some of the most prominent public locations in Los Angeles and New York. It is now up to After Dark Films to restore good faith with the MPAA.”
The MPAA is technically a trade group — it was created to “advance the interests of movie studios” (it sues alleged movie file sharers on behalf of the film studios, for example). What most people do not realize is that those “interests” being represented are those of the six major studios: Sony, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Fox, and Warner Bros. Since the smaller studios responsible for Captivity (Lionsgate and the producer of the film, After Dark Films) are not “signatory” agencies of the MPAA (and this sort of ad approval controversy has happened before), it’s not surprising the MPAA came down hard on the “little guys” in this case. All studios voluntarily submit films (and ad materials) for review by the MPAA, otherwise they cannot advertise in most outlets or be shown in many North American theaters. It remains to be seen how this will effect the release of Captivity, or if this bit of publicity will help the film gain any useful “OTP” exposure.
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.
The Weinstein Company is running a movie poster design contest to create a Factory Girl movie poster. This poster is for the contest only, not to design the actual Factory Girl movie poster one-sheet used in theaters. Our opinion of “Design a Movie Poster” contests is well known, so we won’t rehash that again. Well, just one rehashed point: No major film studio has ever run a contest to design a movie poster where the winning entry was used as the domestic theatrical one-sheet for a film key art ad campaign. This contest is no different. However, since the film studios seem to be inching closer and closer to this idea, we predict it will happen eventually.
Update: Reader Hargon points at that the studio used the Resident Evil movie poster contest winner as it’s domestic one-sheet. We were under the impression that Resident Evil poster was a limited run promotional poster only — but Sony wiped the movie poster design contest details from their site years ago. Apologize for the error.
What is more interesting about the Factory Girl movie poster design contest is the promotional materials included in the “production kit” for the contest. The downloadable contest kit (ZIP) includes “15 different images from the film, 6 different Title Treatments, and the billing block”. It also offers a step-by-step guide (PDF) to how they “created” the film’s (pseudo silkscreen look) movie poster. This is offered as “inspiration” along with instructions on how to create a movie poster:
BEGIN TO BUILD YOUR MOVIE POSTER!
Open your photo program and begin with a 2×3 proportioned canvas (e.g. 6”x18”, 12”x18” or 24”x36”), at whatever dpi you choose. We recommend at least 72dpi at 24”x36”, or higher the smaller the canvas.In a separate window, open an image from the included selection, or scan or import your own images/drawings/sketches/renderings. Just remember, you cannot use any copyrighted artwork or images of trademarked materials or people/places without their permission.
Now the fun part! Crop, colorize, filter, distort, invert (or anything in-between) the image to make it just how you want it to look on the poster. Check out ‘Treatment Ideas’ for some cool ideas. Next, copy the image and paste it onto the ‘poster canvas’ you first created or save the image and use your program’s ‘import’ tool to bring it into the poster. Repeat this step with as many images as you choose, adding each to the canvas.
Add a tag line to the poster. Either write your own, or see the ‘Official Poster’ and use ours!
Add the film name (title treatment) to the poster. You can either choose from one of our included ones or make your own. Have as much fun as you want, but make sure people can read the name of the movie!
Lastly, add the ‘Billing Block’ file to the poster at the bottom. This makes it a legal poster (with the production people’s names and the company logos). Don’t forget to save the file as a .jpeg, .GIF or .BMP file.
If only it were that easy.
A more accurate simulation of the film poster design process might be to run a poster design contest where a winner is picked from all the entries, have that winner go through several rounds of revisions altering their design completely, with each round of changes handed down by different sets of executives at the studio, and then have Harvey Weinstein step in at the very last minute and pick a completely different contestant’s movie poster and declare that person the winner instead. Granted, this may read as an extremely glib scenario, but sadly, it is an accurate one. Snarky comments aside, the raw design materials offered by the contest could make for an interesting challenge to anyone who aspires to design movie posters.
The contest is an interesting contrast to the themes surrounding Andy Warhol and “The Factory” (which is a backdrop to the film’s story of 1960s “it girl” Edie Sedgwick) and how others produced Warhol’s pop art. Could the contest be seen as the modern equivalent of all those Warhol assistants reproducing all those Marilyn Monroe prints?
Korean cellphone provider SK Telecom has introduced a new service that allows people to walk up to a movie poster and use their cell phone to purchase movie theater tickets via the poster itself:
SK Telecom presented ‘U-theater service’ that allows people to get movie tickets by scanning RFID tag attached on the movie poster with their cell phones. They can view short movie highlight video clips, reserve seats at a cinema, download movie soundtrack for ring-tone and etc. If you purchase a ticket, you receive a confirmation number through SMS and there is no need for extra ticket printing process.
This interactive poster via mobile phone idea has been around for a while — in many countries, users can download trailers and other digital content to their mobile phone from posters and other outdoor advertising.
Access to this type of technology is not as widely available in the United States when compared to Europe and Asia. For that, you can thank American cellphone providers for “carrier locking” the types of technology, content, and access in the U.S. marketplace. However, the U.S. may catch up eventually.
In the new documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, filmmaker Kirby Dick takes a look at the MPAA and controversies surrounding the film ratings system. The documentary investigates why the mysterious MPAA film ratings board can be an endless source of frustration for filmmakers. From the film press release:
This Film Is Not Yet Rated asks whether Hollywood movies and independent films are rated equally for comparable content; whether sexual content in gay-themed movies are given harsher ratings penalties than their heterosexual counterparts; whether it makes sense that extreme violence is given an R rating while sexuality is banished to the cutting room floor; whether Hollywood studios receive detailed directions as to how to change an NC-17 film into an R while independent film producers are left guessing; and finally, whether keeping the raters and the rating process secret leave the MPAA entirely unaccountable for its decisions.
The IFC web site (the Independent Film Channel is releasing the documentary) is hosting two This Film Is Not Yet Rated movie posters. The two one-sheets each feature a naked torso (one male, one female) with the film title treatment (based on the design of an MPAA ratings logo) being branded into the subject’s skin. The IFC web site and promotional materials featured these copylines about their print campaign:
“Take a look at the ad they wouldn’t let us place.”
“See the poster they wouldn’t let you see only at ifc.com”
With headlines like that, one might assume the “they” in this case would be the MPAA, which approves all theatrical key art for films being rated. This movie poster approval process can result in one-sheets being banned, which we have covered several times in the past. In the case of what the IFC is calling their “uncensored” This Film Is Not Yet Rated movie posters, were the female branded and male branded versions of the one-sheet submitted to (and rejected by) the MPAA’s Advertising Administration?
The answer is no, these ads were never submitted to or censored by the MPAA. The “they” referenced above turns out to be various newspapers and media outlets around the country refusing to run the ads. According to Evan Shapiro, executive vice president and general manager of IFC:
The NY Times and The LA Times (among many others) both rejected our ads, because they said they were “vulgar”. Also, we had to alter the artwork for outdoor, as Clear Channel would not allow a clear shot of an ass.
However, Premiere Magazine and Time Out NY allowed the ads, as is, as did all of the alternative weekly publications, such as the Village Voice and the Boston Pheonix.
Originally This Film Is Not Yet Rated was given an NC-17 rating, meaning it could not play in many theatres around the country. After a failed ratings appeal to the MPAA’s CARA (Classification and Ratings Administration), the producers decided to release the film (natch) unrated. With the movie being unrated, the film key art is not subject to any approval by the MPAA, since the film and it’s advertising do not carry an MPAA rating.
This “ad they wouldn’t let us place” claim seems a bit misleading — while making statements like “the poster they wouldn’t let you see” and labeling these posters as “uncensored” may be technically true, wouldn’t many assume they were referring to the MPAA given the film’s subject matter? The LA Times refusing to run an ad featuring a bare female ass isn’t exactly the same thing as an unchecked governing body censoring content from the public.
A documentary film about problems with MPAA ratings system, which is being released unrated because of the very ratings system it criticizes, being marketed with “uncensored” movie posters “they wouldn’t let you see”… Is this what advertising executives refer to as branding?
The STARZ television network is running highlights from The Hollywood Reporter 2006 Key Art Awards ceremony this month. Hosted by comedian Kevin Nealon, the 2006 Key Art Awards honor the best in film marketing, most notably film posters and movie trailers. This is a rare opportunity to see portions of the annual film marketing awards ceremony, as this is the first year the Key Art Awards have appeared on television. The special features highlights and interviews with the creators of this year’s award winning movie posters and film trailers. Check the STARZ movie channel schedule to tune into the film advertising awards special.
Actress Keira Knightley, in a recent interview, reminded everyone how her breasts were “digitally enhanced” back in 2004 for the King Arthur movie poster:
“I remember we had an interesting discussion when they said, ‘We want to make them slightly larger and you’ll get approval’ and I was like, ‘OK, fine.’ I honestly don’t give a shit.
But then they showed me the first copy and these things must have been double-Es — and they were down to my knees.
And I was like, ‘I don’t mind you making them bigger, but don’t give me droopy breasts. They look like your grandmother’s tits.’”
Keira seems to be trying to make a point about Hollywood’s attitude about actresses and how they are marketed (News Flash: Americans like large breasts), but she goes on to admit she does have final approval over how she is portrayed in key art. In the same interview she says about appearing on magazine covers:
“I did one magazine and found out you’re not actually allowed to be on a cover in the US without at least a C cup because it turns people off.”
While that sounds more like something she heard from an intern at a magazine cover photo shoot rather than an industry wide rule, it remains to be seen how each and every magazine art director chooses to depict Knightley on a magazine cover. What is true is that images of actors (all actors) are retouched in one way or another when appearing in film print advertising. Most of the time this goes unnoticed, sometimes not.
Looking at the special shoot image of Keira Knightley used for the King Arthur one-sheet, it’s not surprising the art directors and film execs involved decided to rework her figure, as her chest appears to be flattened by a tight leather strap costume. Did the studio go too far? Hard to say. Perhaps next time they’ll be able to highlight Keira Knightley’s abs instead, which don’t seem to need any enhancing.
There’s an old adage among film advertising art directors when dealing with unnecessary pain and suffering at the hands of a studio client with an MBA: “At least I’m not a copy writer.”
There’s also an old adage among film advertising copywriters when dealing with unnecessary pain and suffering at the hands of a studio client with an MBA: “At least I’m not a copy editor.”
(I guess this “At least I’m not…” downhill progression continues until it ends somewhere around working at the front gate on the studio lot.)
The weblogs Defamer and The Velvet Blog have picked up on the frustration of virgins everywhere when a keen-eyed observer noted the missing hyphen in the title on The 40-Year-Old Virgin one-sheet, only to see it return on the DVD key art. (That missing hyphen would translate to 40 One-Year-Old Virgins versus a single 40-Year-Old-Virgin.)
We’re guessing execs at the studio didn’t really care about the proper punctuation, and simply went with the all-governing mantra of what “looked better” (to them). We’ve never heard of any film ad exec ever breaking open to read an ad placement company’s “style guide” — unless it’s spelled out in a “contractual”, anything is possible when it comes to copy on a poster.
Sniping aside, this type of punctuation pain isn’t exclusive to copywriters and proofreaders — many a graphic designer has cringed at all those “foot marks” (') taking the place of a proper “apostrophe” (’) in titles/logos/copylines/etc.
Sony Tri-Star is running a “Create a Silent Hill movie poster” contest:
Think you’re a fan of Silent Hill? Prove it. Design your own movie poster! Everything you need is right here — photos, titles, key guidelines, etc. The winning poster may be printed and may be distributed to theaters. So get those creative juices flowing, design and submit your poster by January 3, 2006. Then get all your friends to vote for your poster starting January 4, 2006 because the winning artist gets $2,500 cash, 25 passes to see the movie, and more.
We are not fans of “design our movie poster” contests run by film studios — at least the kind that dangle the idea the winning design will be used as the film’s official one-sheet.
There are many reasons for our reservations, but one that comes to mind is this type of “contest” doesn’t do anything to help the “Photoshop crap” criticism that is commonly directed at modern Hollywood one-sheets. This type of competition plays into the “Anyone can design!” stereotype that infuriates so many art directors and designers in all corners of commercial art. (See the always enjoyable Clientcopia for examples of this frustration.)
To our knowledge, no film studio to date has released a “contest poster” design as a domestic one-sheet in theatres. There have been movie poster contests in the past, most notably for the Resident Evil series (also released by Sony). Perhaps this contest will result in the first fan poster to reach your local theatre lobby. (Fingers crossed!)
The practice of leaving key art marketing decisions in the hands of the “audience” is nothing new. (Many Hollywood film one-sheets are run through public focus groups, just like the films themselves.) But the idea of one-sheet contests may have first started back in 1995, when Fine Line Features ran a “Pick Our Poster” web contest for their film The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love. The studio posted two final poster designs (created by the ad agency working on the film) on the film’s official website, and invited viewers to vote on their favorite design. The winning design was set to be printed and released to theatres as the film’s one-sheet. The voting came and went, and a winning design was chosen… Until, at the last minute, the studio completely changed their mind, ignored the contest results, and printed a new third design that combined elements of the two contest posters, having nothing to do with the contest itself. Ironically, that poster contest result gave the public a real taste of the three Rs (”Review. Revise. Reject.”) in the film advertising key art poster design process that so many one-sheets go through.
The Sony film advertising execs seem to have learned from this type of mistake, as the Sony / Tri-Star Silent Hill poster web site clearly states: “The winning poster may be printed and may be distributed to theaters.” (Emphasis ours.) The contest does offer just a bit of interesting insight into some things considered when creating a movie poster, including guidelines imposed by the MPAA for key art:
Studio Guidelines
In order to become an official movie poster suitable for all audiences the poster must follow the guidelines listed below:
1. No nudity or sexual activity
2. No gun to camera/no shooting to camera
3. No gun to victim/no shooting to victim
4. No more than 2 guns may appear
5. No reference to drugs/drug paraphernalia
6. No offensive language or gestures
7. No blood
8. No violence towards women
9. No cruelty to animals
10. No mutations/mutilations/cadavers
11. No excessive violence or brutality
12. No rape/molestations
13. No people on fire
14. No people in explosion/people blown out of explosion
15. No exploiting/capitalizing on rating (i.e., “R has never gone this far”, “Banned in Boston”)
16. No demeaning of religion, race or national origin
So all those designers and “Photoshop gurus” out there who have dreamed of designing movie posters, Sony is giving you your chance… maybe.
Several months ago we mentioned that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has approval over advertising used to market films, including theatrical key art. Just like the film rating process, movie promotional materials such as movie trailers and one-sheets are reviewed by the MPAA. To illustrate this point about MPAA approval over key art, we cited the original Saw 2 teaser poster.
Today The Hollywood Reporter reports that the Saw 2 teaser poster and other promotional materials have not been approved, and the MPAA has ordered the studio to have them withdrawn from distribution. “It is essential that film distributors comply with the rules of the Advertising Administration so that parents retain the confidence they have in the ratings certified by CARA and that advertising and publicity material associated with rated films is appropriate for all audiences.”
Since the MPAA ratings board will withhold giving the film a rating until the studio is in compliance, it’s no surprise that a new (and less gory) Saw 2 teaser poster was quickly released today by Lion’s Gate. Perhaps a simple “snip” of the picture via a tighter crop will make this new Saw II one-sheet more acceptable to the MPAA’s Advertising Administration. With all this attention, I doubt Lion’s Gate or Art Machine, the design studio that created the one-sheet, are sweating this bit of free publicity. Movie poster collectors are also happy, as the MPAA just made the original teaser poster a collector’s item. We’re willing to bet actor Cary Elwes isn’t a fan of the Saw 2 campaign, however.
As we mentioned previously, posters for the just released comedy Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo embrace the time-honored tradition of the phallic symbol as a means of advertising. The city of Los Angeles being an industry town, drivers in Southern California are treated to some interesting film advertising billboards in this vein. This includes an “animated” outdoor billboard for Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo:
For anyone still in danger of missing the point, one version of the sign on Sunset Boulevard has the crooked tower swinging up and down in the wind, presumably from flaccid to erect.
Nothing subtle about that. But the focus of the above mentioned New York Times article is the lead time required by outdoor advertising means billboards go up before a film gets it’s final rating. This is seen as a loophole by some to allow film marketing to target underage viewers without giving their parents ratings information. “The sweet spot for an R-rated comedy is the 15-to-17-year-old range.” Considering no parent gets their ratings information about films by driving down Sunset Boulevard and looking at billboards, this seems like a pointless complaint. The only goal for any outdoor film advertising is to pass what is known in the industry as the “40 Mile Per Hour Rule”: Are you able to identify the movie in the ad and read the film’s title while driving by it at 40 miles per hour? (In the article, Adam Fogelson, president of marketing for Universal, slows the rule down to “35 miles per hour”, but he’s obviously driving too slow.)
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?
