Fussy film historians will tell you that the heyday of the movie poster is long gone. In the 1930s, they were often hand-drawn works of art — precious cargo that traveled from theater to theater on Greyhound buses. Today, your typical blitzed-out ad campaign includes teasers, trailers, behind-the-scenes HBO specials, and teeny-weeny banners streaming across iPods. Posters can get lost in a big corporate shuffle.
They travel between studios, design firms that specialize in “key art” — that’s industry-speak for movie marketing materials — and the Motion Picture Association of America, which has the final say in taste matters. (It famously nixed the first draft of last year’s “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” poster for being too risque.)
But people still seek art in the bureaucracy. June will see Hollywood’s 38th annual Key Art Awards, which honor everything from best film poster to best DVD menu design to best Jumbotron display. And the challenges in creating a quality poster remain the same: “You have one second” to capture a viewer, says Jeffrey Bacon, an advisory board member for the Key Art Awards. “One second with no sound, no movement, no dialogue — it’s one of the most challenging ways of advertising.”
We polled a panel of film experts to analyze some upcoming posters and teasers (the artwork that comes before the “official” posters) and share what their one-second glances reveal.
The Experts
Jeffrey Bacon, advisory board member of the Key Art Awards
Ray Barry, director of the AFI Silver Theatre
Jason Lindeman, creative director of Ignition Print, which designed the posters for “The Ugly Truth”
Ellen Lupton, director of the Maryland Institute College of Art’s graphic design MFA program
David Nicholson, founder of the Internet Movie Poster Awards and IMPawards.com
Andrew Percival, senior VP of Mojo, which designed the posters for “Away We Go” and “(500) Days of Summer”
Peter Rollberg, director of film studies at George Washington University
Damon Wolf, CEO of Crew Creative Advertising, which helped design the posters for “Half-Blood Prince.”
‘The Ugly Truth’
Clues: Cute girl. Cute guy. Seem to dislike each other? Probably don’t. Folks, we must be in Romcom land. July 24
Lindeman (designer): This is pretty heavy. It’s saying, guys work with their [expletives], women work with their heads. I can’t believe this one got through. The MPAA kills everything.
Bacon: The limited color palette is great. … It’s like jazz — what you take out is as important as what stays in.
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Rollberg: Ugh, I’ve had my share of unshaved guys in their 30s.
‘Departures’
Any time marketers want to convince you that a movie is smart, they package it in a format we call “Attack of the Laurels.” Count the six references to this film’s award-nabbing pedigree. June 19
Nicholson: It’s got something to do with death? I’m picturing him playing cello as they’re burying a person?
Barry: What do we have here, the Japanese “Sound of Music”?
Lupton: I’m afraid I’m going to hear the God voice of Morgan Freeman.
‘Bruno’
The tag line’s “Borat” shout-out is a nice wink to Sacha Baron Cohen fans. But the best thing about this poster is the details — see the faux-German MySpace address at the bottom. July 10
Wolf (designer): It’s a character in lederhosen standing in flowers. You instantly smile!
Rollberg: This isn’t outrageous enough. Sacha Baron Cohen doesn’t work as inoffensive.
‘(500) Days of Summer’
Summery and soothing colors — along with the combo of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s intense journaling plus vaguely creepy photo collage send us straight back to high school. Cue mix tape. July 17
Percival (designer): [Fox Searchlight] suggested we have lots of images of summer. I insisted it be 500 images exactly. You can count them.
Bacon: This is kind of the anti-poster. It accomplishes scale with intimacy rather than huge size.
Rollberg: You kind of wonder, is this some stalker who has made a psychopath shrine?
Nicholson: Well, if you’re a fan of Zooey Deschanel …
‘Away We Go’
Just looking at the art for this movie about expectant hipsters makes us approximately 7 percent cooler. And gives us a strange desire to move to Brooklyn. Preferably Williamsburg. Release date: June 12
Percival (designer): We were interested in showing the talent in a big way, but also creating this environment for them to live in.
Bacon: This one gets a purple heart in advertising land, at a time when other people are just doing big heads.
Barry: I feel I’ve landed somewhere between a Comcast commercial and “Juno.”
‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’
The official “Transformers” poster more prominently features the franchise’s major characters: Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megan Fox’s breasts. This teaser’s evil-red-eyes approach is subtler — which can either translate as spooky or Whaa? June 24
Rollberg: Gloomy, foreboding, incomprehensible. It’s meant to be scary, but I’m not scared.
Bacon: This is a beautiful [example of controlling] the discovery process, as opposed to “Oh, there’s a gigantic Transformer logo.”
Nicholson: For me, it’s a little too insider-y. But real fans would look at that and say, “It’s Decepticon.” Or whoever that is.
‘Julie & Julia’
Something’s missing here. Oh, wait, could it be the film’s two huge stars, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams? While the primarily text poster will appeal to the movie’s natural audience — literary types who read the food memoir on which it’s based — we’d prefer Adams cutely dusted in pastry flour. Aug. 7
Lupton: This is very high-minded, with classic typography. This isn’t a date movie — it’s for women in their late 50s to go to with their girlfriends.
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Rollberg: This is so inventive. It makes you think, it makes you smile, it’s surprising.
Nicholson: I assumed this was a movie about two battling chefs.
Lupton: The umlauts are what makes this poster. It just looks like something you would buy at IKEA.
Nicholson: Ever since “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” there have been probably a dozen movies where it’s just, “Here we are, we’re standing here and you have taken a photo of us. We are actors, laugh at us.”