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.
Famed movie poster illustrator Drew Struzan returns to the warm embrace of his long-time client Lucasfilm with the release of the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull teaser poster. Struzan last illustrated the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith movie poster for Lucas, and this marks his return to illustrating many of the one-sheets in the Indiana Jones series. (Although the first and perhaps best Indiana Jones movie poster illustration credit goes to artist Richard Amsel.)
The poster feels like a visual sequel to the previous Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom teaser poster, with a similar theme of Dr. Jones casting an impressive figure in a backlit entrance promising more things to come. There seems to be some debate about whether this piece of key art depiction of Indiana Jones accurately reflects actor Harrison Ford’s age, but looking at Crystal Skull promo photos it is hard to say how much “wear and tear” the archeologist will be showing on the big screen.
One thing we did notice is that the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie poster is using a different Indiana Jones logo than the previously released official Crystal Skull logo. Rather than an exact recreation of the original “Indiana Jones” logotype, this new teaser poster version of the logo differs significantly — using different letterforms, sizing, and kerning overlaps. Does this revised logo represent more unnecessary George Lucas title tinkering? Have they not settled on the logo for the Indiana Jones brand?
In the new Pixar animated film WALL-E, Earth has been overrun with trash, mankind has left, and the last remaining robot still continues his lonely duty of cleaning up the garbage.
The WALL-E (which stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth-class) robot bears a bit of resemblance to the robot Johnny 5 from the movie Short Circuit.
A interesting selection of Wall-E art can be found in a series of promotional postcards the studio released at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. The Wall-E postcards feature a mixture of 1950s and 60s retro (what what some would call a “paleo-future”) style of artwork promoting the film’s robot conglomerate Buy n Large. The Wall-E movie poster does not evoke the retro-futurism and populuxe look of these promo postcards, which isn’t surprising since the look of the film doesn’t seem to be based on those types of design influences, unlike Pixar’s previous film The Incredibles. This design disparity isn’t uncommon — for example, you wouldn’t know about the fantastic look of The Incredibles solely based on the look of The Incredibles movie poster artwork. Although, it would be difficult to work an Eichler into that movie poster.
The official site for Troublemaker Studios — the production company of director Robert Rodriguez — has released a set of what they are calling “limited-edition” Grindhouse teaser posters. Gindhouse is the double-bill feature ode to exploitation films from directors Robert Rodreqiuz and Quetin Tarantino, with each creating their own movie as part of the double feature. Rodriguez is directing Planet Terror and Tarintino helms Death Proof.
Released as exclusive posters at this year’s Comic Con, we are guessing “limited-edition” means “not approved by the MPAA and will not be displayed in theatres“. Since there is no MPAA rating on the posters, perhaps the studio isn’t submitting these as theatrical one-sheets to the MPAA’s Advertising Administration. (We have no idea if any of these are destined for your local theater lobby — would the MPAA have a problem with a poster of actress Rose McGowan’s amputated leg replaced with an assault rifle?)
In the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly, director Rodriguez “dissects” the three Grind House teaser posters:
THE VEHICLE “It’s a slasher movie with a car instead of a knife,” says Rodriguez of Tarantino’s Death Proof, which stars Kurt Russell as a psychotic stuntman. “We did that poster as a silk screen. We wanted to imply an alternate film universe.”
THE GUN In Rodriguez’s zombie-esque feature Planet Terror, Rose McGowan’s go-go dancer-turned-amputee sports a unique fake limb. The poster’s aged look, Rodriguez says, was achieved by the high-tech means of “dragging it around a parking lot.”
THE NEEDLE The director is tight-lipped about why actress Marley Shelton is holding a hypodermic needle in another Terror poster. But he’s more verbose on the subject of Grindhouse sequels: “Yeah, there may be a couple. One might be kung fu. One sexploitation. They’re a blast to make!”
The term grindhouse refers to the exploitation genre of films and movie theaters that showed those types of films in the 1970s. The Weird World of Seventies Cinema defines grindhouse as “inner-city theaters in disrepair since their glory days as movie palaces in the ’30s and ’40s. Known for ‘grinding out’ non stop, triple-bill programs of B-movies. By the late ’60s and into the ’70s they specialized in movies with sex, violence and other taboo subject matter.” This grindhouse cinema has long been an influence for director Tarantino.
The Grindhouse teaser posters and their artwork have embraced all the trappings and style of vintage 70s exploitation posters, including the previously mentioned screenprinted look, distressed edges, poster folds (which seem to be popular recently), and the colorful sensationalism of exploitation movie poster art. We especially love the screenprinted Death Proof movie poster, which replicates the cheaply produced screenprinted posters that were used by some theatres and drive-ins, complete with a blank space at the top of the poster that allowed the local movie theater owner to print their own local theater name, address, showtimes, etc.
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 just received the first Saw 3 teaser poster for the upcoming Lionsgate horror film sequel Saw 3.
It’s no secret that Posterwire.com is a big fan of the previous Saw one-sheets. Continuing with a variation of the “body parts” poster theme from the previous Saw campaigns, this “Meth Mouth” teaser poster key art incorporates the three (remaining) teeth of the victim as the numeral stand-in for the “3″ in the Saw 3 poster title treatment. While this Saw III poster may not have quite the same dark wit as the two fingers of the banned Saw II movie poster, anything invoking the thought of dental torture certainly raises the stakes in creepiness. We also enjoyed the poster’s “Opening Wide this Halloween” copy line. We are going to assume the Saw 3 movie poster was created by Art Machine — the film ad agency that designed the previous Saw movie poster campaigns — but don’t quote us on that.
More than many other film genres, horror film marketing campaigns have embraced the internet as a way to reach a target audience. Since many horror films are comparatively low budget, online advertising remains a cost effective way to reach horror fans. One of the latest genre films to take to the web is Silent Hill, based on the survival horror video game series of the same name. Coming on the heels of their recent “design” a Silent Hill movie poster contest, Sony Pictures has released a new set of character teaser posters.
The Silent Hill Character teaser posters present various characters from the film — a rogues gallery featuring “The Miners”, “The Red Pyramid”, “The Nurses”, “The Gray Child”, “Dahlia”, and “The Janitor”. Each character also gets their own set of desktop wallpapers, PSP wallpaper, and of all things, iPod skins. The teaser posters have a familiar “Seven” sepia color palette, but the creepiness of the characters still comes across well.
The film follows a mother’s search for her sick daughter in a haunted town. Silent Hill is the latest of the much-derided “video game to screen” adaptations — a trend that seems to see little success with audiences. Regardless of the fan-boy reaction, Hollywood will continue to make films from video game properties, as the billion dollar video game industry is just too big to ignore.
The New York Times has an interesting article about one of the teaser posters for the new horror film Hostel using a daguerreotype. (You might be asking, what the hell is a daguerreotype?)
A daguerreotype is a photograph created through an “early photographic process with the image made on a light-sensitive silver-coated metallic plate.” (This early photographic process was common in the 1800s.)
For the Hostel teaser poster, Lionsgate executive VP of marketing Tim Palen was looking for a different type of image to market the gory film:
Palen figured that a poster with mangled bodies wouldn’t do the trick. So he dropped by the airy, tastefully decorated Manhattan studio of the Australian photographer Mark Kessell… But it was Kessell’s “Florilegium” (or “collection of floral images”) daguerreotypes that caught Palen’s eye. Each image is a close-up of a surgical instrument, so poetically rendered that it seems almost organic. Some of the macabre implements resemble exotic flowers.
“We were sort of blocked, and all the pieces fell into place once I saw that image,” Palen said. A deal was made to use that daguerreotype, which actually shows a surgical clamp. It now appears in theaters and on widespread promotions.
The rest of the NY Times article follows the vein that fine art may be the answer to the Big Heads Floating in the Sky movie poster cliche. Considering that most smaller films don’t follow that star-sell formula (horror movies usually don’t have stars to market with “big heads” in the first place), the idea of using a conceptual image or piece of “fine art” in a movie poster isn’t really a revelation. (Thanks to Jay for the original link.)
Perhaps we spoke too soon when we posted The Scariest Movie Poster Ever for this past Halloween. How does the idea of a movie poster featuring a dog with human eyes grab you?
It seemed to grab the film ad execs over at Walt Disney Pictures, as they have just released The Shaggy Dog movie poster featuring a close-up of the as-titled sheepdog with star Tim Allen’s blue eyes (or some other person’s eyes) superimposed over the dog’s eyes.
Um… Yeah.
Just a bit creepy in our opinion. Granted, this technically represents the film remake’s plot (man turns into a dog, hijinks ensue), but our prediction is that you’ll eventually see a new piece of key art to replace this one, with less “The Island of Dr. Moreau” human/canine Photoshop cross-breeding.
After a few leaked images and an advance poster, one of the first teaser posters for the upcoming King Kong remake has finally been revealed. Universal has timed the release of this one-sheet to coincide with the latest King Kong theatrical trailer.
As for a reaction to the new King Kong teaser poster itself — it really depends on how excited and/or impressed you are by seeing a high resolution digital image of the CGI King Kong himself. It does feel a bit like “look how hard we worked” — every digital hair seems to be just so. Personally, we are hoping that the rest of the key art campaign of the film might try to re-imagine some of the original King Kong posters. (Which isn’t out of the question, since director Peter Jackson has made very clear his affection for the original film, including setting his version back in the same time period.) Of course, the 1976 King Kong poster has it’s share of fans also.
The Russian site Kino-Express has an interesting gallery of Thai Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire foreign teaser posters. (via JoBlo.) These latest character teasers continue the darker tone of the later Potter films and accompanying key art — although the ethereal blur effects and teenage characters almost give it a WB network teen angst feel.
The promotional push for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire includes countless international movie posters from different foreign markets. The artwork for some foreign release posters for U.S. films are also created stateside — not by personnel in the foreign countries they are destined for. Most U.S. film studios have international marketing departments that work independently of the studio’s domestic marketing, creating artwork exclusively for overseas film posters. International marketing’s work can range from creating foreign versions of film title logos to generating completely new artwork geared for overseas audiences. Their work usually results in a single “International” poster design, which is then reformatted and tailored to each foreign market. (Such as being reworked into a Britsh Quad format for the United Kingdom market.)
Two marketing departments (domestic and foreign) working independently of each other within the same film studio, on the same film projects, often at the same time, can result in inter-company rivalries. While domestic marketing is generally a higher priority within the studio itself, it should be noted that the majority of a U.S. film’s grosses will come from overseas markets, and international posters will be seen by a much larger audience. (We haven’t even gotten into the place of home video marketing in this motion picture studio hierarchy yet.)
