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.
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.
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.
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.)
20th Century Fox has released three character teaser posters for the film Walk the Line. The bio-pic features Joaquin Phoenix as legendary musician Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter. The three Walk the Line teaser posters make for an interesting (and somewhat different in tone) follow-up to the “woodcut” style illustration by Shepard Fairey for the first Walk the Line teaser poster. While these three new posters may invoke a “captured moment” effect via the grainy black and white treatment, they are definitely more conventional than the previous illustrated teaser.
On a somewhat unrelated note, these three Walk the Line teaser posters remind us of one of our favorite film studio executive client quotes about movie poster design:
“You can’t design a [movie] poster that’s black and white — people will think the movie is also in black and white.” – Film Advertising Executive
Yes, that makes perfect sense. [cough] (For the record, there are several black and white and otherwise monochromatic one-sheets released from time to time, despite that particular executive’s color blindness.)
Originally a stylized cartoon on MTV’s 1991 ground-breaking animated show Liquid Television, Aeon Flux was a series of animated shorts following a sexy female assassin. It’s surreal plots and gritty futuristic style made it a fan favorite.
After many years and false starts, the property is finally coming to the big screen. The live-action adaptation of Aeon Flux stars Charlize Theron as the futuristic secret agent sent to assassinate a government leader on behalf of an underground movement. The filmmakers and star Theron spoke about the project at this year’s Comic-Con convention. To advertise the film at their appearance, Paramount Pictures previewed two special Aeon Flux one-sheets created just for the convention. (Whether these two posters will be used in later versions of the film’s key art remains to be seen.) Using the blue wall from the Aeon Flux teaser poster, the two Aeon Flux Comic-Con one-sheets suggest a graphic novel/comic look with a high contrast image treatment. Better still, the posters manage to make the star’s controversial outfit look interesting.
The actress forced filmmakers to change her Aeon Flux costume from it’s skimpy animated origins to be less revealing. (What happened to the: “In the future, there will be no pants.” theory?) Theron: “No matter how sexual this character is and how comfortable she is with her sexuality, obviously we knew we couldn’t go as far with the outfits that Peter [Chung] had designed for her. Certain things must be hidden.” As to be expected, fans have been skeptical of the results of the film’s costume changes. Filmmakers have always had to strike a difficult balance between practical on-screen costuming versus comic book couture when adapting to live-action. What works in animation or comics may not work on screen. Aeon Flux creator Peter Chung on animated Aeon’s sexy costume:
I’m interested in exploiting the entire human body for expressive purposes, instead of what you usually see in cartoons: just the hands and facial expressions. When I first designed Aeon Flux, I wondered whether I should make her less sexy looking – give here a costume that was less revealing. But it seems silly to be working in the animation medium and not be a little unrealistic. The fact that she’s scantily clad helps to emphasize the expressive qualities of the human body. I would have drawn her nude if I could get away with it.
Speaking of comic conventions and costumes, some fans feel they are up to the challenge of recreating the look of their favorite characters. The popularity of amateur versions of character costumes has skyrocketed in the past few years, especially in connection to the growth of anime and video games. The practice even has it’s own term — cosplay (“costume” and “play”). Aeon Flux is no stranger to the world of cosplay, with several fan costumes trying to replicate the animated character’s distinctive look.
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.)
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.
Speaking of newspaper ads, the Newspaper Association of America continues their series of “Newspaper Literacy” ads with a series of posters from Robots: The Movie.
The long running newspaper literacy ad series is designed to help newspapers around the country promote newspaper readership using ad artwork from popular Hollywood films. Past literacy ad posters include: The Incredibles, Shrek 2, and Ella Enchanted.
IGN’s FilmForce has an interview with the so-called Ladies of Sin City, or more specifically Rosario Dawson, Brittany Murphy and Jessica Alba. The article describes the roster of femme fatales in the Sin City film this way: The ladies of Sin City, in contrast, are sexy seductresses. They’ll keep the men happy, but if you cross them, you probably won’t live to tell about it.
Continuing the series of character posters (we last left off with Jessica Alba), we have Brittany Murphy posing as Sin City waitress Shellie (while her loose-fitting shirt does battle with a wind machine). This advance poster echoes the tinting Robert Rodriguez did with the palette for the film — previous versions of some Sin City posters were black and white, only to be re-released with slight tinting. Only blood red lips get the tinting treatment in the poster for the dangerous trio of the girls (Devon Aoki, Rosario Dawson, and Alexis Bledel) from Sin City’s Old Town.
