Eloquation

Last year, at the Toronto International Film Festival, I had the opportunity to meet a young man that works as a designer for an advertising firm that creates movie posters for large Hollywood Studios. Since then, we have exchanged a few emails and he has taught me a lot about the process of conceptualizing, creating, printing, and distributing these posters. He’s asked me not to share his personal or work details here, but I thought I’d talk a little bit about movie posters for a bit since I’ve been thinking about them for a little while.

While the trailer may be the ultimate movie marketing tool these days, the movie poster is still crucial to the advertising strategy for most major studios. People may get intrigued by the scenes in a trailer, but they connect with the one-sheet; when I think of The Silence of the Lambs, I may think of Hannibal Lecter, but it is the haunting image of the woman with the moth covering her lips that resonates and lingers. Cinemas are lined with posters advertising upcoming films and the movies that are now playing, and each theater you enter undoubtedly has the one-sheet of the movie showing just outside the door. Essentially, the movie poster then becomes the “calling card” for the film, accompanying movie reviews and promotional material, and even being collected by film enthusiasts everywhere.

The creation of a movie one-sheet is much more than simply advertising, it is art. While immense importance is placed in the fact that each poster tells the right story to the right audience, designers take pride in their craft as being an intricate art form; each poster is a meticulously designed amalgamation of film stills, digital art, and typography.

My designer friend tipped me off to a great weblog that focuses solely on movie one-sheets and film marketing called Posterwire. If you’re at all interested in the great art that is coming out of the film advertising agencies, this is the blog to follow. And since Premiere could make a list of their twenty-five favorite movie posters, I’ve compiled a list of my ten favorite one-sheets (as far as I can remember, my list changes pretty often) after the jump - not in any particular order, of course. Enjoy.