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.
Worth1000.com posted their latest movie poster theme Photoshop contest, known as One Letter Off. Billed as “Not quite the movies you know”, the contest rules are fairly simple, but set the stage for some really creative results:
It’s not easy being a professional graphic designer. Often they’re asked to create a movie poster with nothing more to go on than the title. And if the email has a typo in it, things get even more confusing. All it takes is one wrong letter to really foul things up. You should have seen the posters they first designed for “Snakes on a Plate”, “A Fight at the Opera”, and “Mobster House”! (We won’t discuss the original poster for “Tucker”… )
The rules of this contest are thus: take a popular movie and swap one and only one letter of its title OR add or subtract one and only one letter of its title. (Change multiple letters, or add or subtract multiple letters, or add/subtract a letter and change another as well and your entry will be disqualified.) Then design the poster for the new movie that results.
The “One Letter Off” movie poster contest is not a new idea (this is the fourth in the Worth1000.com series), or even limited to one web site, as readers of the Something Awful forums will tell you.
In what may turn into an on-going series of celebrities critiquing the movie poster campaigns from their own projects (see director Frank Darabont on The Mist poster), we now have comedian Dane Cook. The comedian recently posted on his MySpace blog about his thoughts about the movie poster for his new film My Best Friend’s Girl. A few thoughts on this movie poster from Dane Cook:
1. Graphics:
Whoever photoshopped our poster must have done so at taser point with 3 minutes to fulfill their hostage takers deranged obligations. They should have called Donnie Hoyle and had him give a tutorial using “You Suck at Photoshop” templates. This is so glossy it makes Entertainment Weekly look wooden.
2. My head:
The left side of my face seems to be melting off of my skull. I guess I am looking directly into the Ark of the Covenant? Are they going for the bells palsy thing here? My left side looks like Brittany Spears’ vagina.
3. The Stare.
My character apparently has fallen in love with a strand of Kate Hudsons hair. Kate’s mannequin is desperately in love with the inside of my right ear while Jason is half stunned, half corsage.
4. Lips:
It looks like I’m wearing Maybelline Water Shine Diamonds Liquid Lipstick. My characters name is now Winter Solstice and I’m a hooker with a heart of gold. Jason is my floral carrying pimp, while Kate is my first trick!
Interesting comments, and no need to re-hash the perils of the “constructed reality” based around unit photography and head strips. But you have to wonder if Dane Cook hates the My Best Friend’s Girl movie poster key art so much, why did he incorporate the Flash animated version of the same movie poster art on his own personal site?
Readers and would-be Adobe Photoshop gurus over at the Something Awful forums recently pointed their weekly “Photoshop Phriday” remix thread at modern movies illustrated in a “Grindhouse cinema” movie poster style. In this case, Grindhouse being the popular label for the low budget film and exploitation movie poster style popular in the 60s and 70s.
It is always interesting to see modern movies re-interpreted through a different style of key art — this film poster remix for Little Miss Sunshine is a particularly good (and disturbing) example.
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.
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?”
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.
If there is one thing that “Photoshop geeks” love to do, it is to rework images — “remixing” them — to create a new (and sometimes humorous) result. These often get submitted to sites soliciting “Photoshop contests” and other image posting mayhem. Popular sites like Fark.com, SomethingAwful.com, and b3ta.com all garner submissions of these type of image “smashups”. One of the most popular Photoshop sites with this type of user-submitted photo remixing: Worth1000.com.
As you might guess, the number one source for Photoshop remixing, both as a subject matter and visual source material, is movie posters. In Worth1000.com’s “Mate a Movie” Photoshop contest, users create movie poster image submissions that are of “two or more movies, combined to make one much funnier movie.” Looking through the most recent contest’s entries, there are some pretty funny posters, ranging from movies like Freaky Friday the 13th to Poohlander. (via JoBlo.com)
The best thing and the worst thing to happen to movie poster design (and probably commercial art in general) is Adobe Photoshop. Then again, whenever a creative enterprise is changed by technology, you’ll have an equal number of people singing the virtues of new “tools” versus those crying about the death of “art”.
Today, all movie posters are designed and finished using Adobe Photoshop software — especially in the area of retouching and photo illustration. As recent as the 1990s, this wasn’t always the case. Before the advent of cheap color printers, affordable high-end scanners, and a Apple Macintosh G5 on every desk (even for the receptionist) at an ad agency, high end photo illustration and retouching was an expensive enterprise. For film ad agencies working on movie poster one-sheets, this meant employing outside finishing houses (media agencies that specialized in digital retouching and output) to handle the large image files and finishing work involved in creating print ready artwork. Photo illustration meant expensive service bureau Iris prints that you weren’t allowed to touch (for fear of smudging), high end $500,000 Quantel Paintbox workstations created expressly to push around large graphics, and professional retouchers costing $500 a hour to use.
But those days are coming to an end. With the growing use of Photoshop, many design agencies have taken retouching/finishing in-house, rather than employing an outside finisher. (Some retouchers work on their own, much like a freelance designer, rather then being part of a larger company.) Adobe Photoshop has made the retouching process easier and less expensive — just about anyone can do it. Unfortunately with this availability, comes the temptation for misuse and overuse.
