Think back to your favorite movie and I’m sure there is one image that pops into your head. One image that defined the movie for you, that is trapped in your memory, that sums up what the story was about. Now is that the same image as the poster for the film?

There’s a weird blurred line between what we think the movie was about and the way the film was marketed towards us. The point of the film poster is to capture your attention, intrigue you, and make you say “I will call in sick to be there opening day.” The poster is an advertisement, it’s nothing more. It is there like a trailer to put your butt in the seat, but hopefully the poster also gives you a feel for the movie and maybe even an idea what it is all about.

In some cases the poster itself can be news. Thanks to websites leaking news about upcoming movies most of us (and by “most of us” I mean film geeks who really need to learn to play outside once in a while) have heard about the big blockbusters in production before the trailer arrives. Usually the film’s poster is released before any snippet of the film and that can become big news. Everyone knew that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson were working on the Tintin series. When word went out that these two titans were putting their brains together the online community began salivating more than Hooch in Turner and Hooch. No one was quite sure what Tintin would look like or just how much of the book series would be captured on film. So when the poster was released it became big news. It was the first look at what these two giants had concocted and it also (somewhat) pointed us in the direction of where the film was headed.

There are a million different ways studios create posters to capture your attention. They can be simple and direct like Ghostbusters in 1984. A line through a ghost with the title told you everything you needed to know. The icon was everywhere that summer and 27 years later you still recognize what it means. It was a big gamble to put a cartoon ghost on a poster when you could have been selling the film’s star, Bill Murray. The chance paid off though as Ghostbusters raked in over $238 million in 1984 dollars.
The poster can be cool but not really telling, like The Truman Show. The pixilated face of Jim Carrey shows you something else is really going on without telling you what it is. But the images within the image are also cool enough to warrant you spending your money to see it. It also doesn’t hurt that Jim Carrey was the biggest star at the time after Ace Ventura and The Mask.
Often times the poster can be misleading as in the case with Jaws. The picture of the girl swimming with the shark rising from below tells you everything you need to know about this movie, but the one misleading thing is it seems like a scarier film than it might be. The advertisement strikes me as a rated R movie when in fact it was only rated PG.
Sometimes posters (for good movies) are so baffling I’m surprised anyone showed up to see it. American Beauty was a great film with great performances, but the poster of the bare torso with a rose told you nothing about the movie. It also doesn’t grab you to want to see the movie. It was a good thing they rolled it out slowly and built on reviews and word of mouth.
And then the surest way to sell your movie on your poster is through the star. For Unforgiven all we needed to see was Clint Eastwood’s back and we were reminded of all his classic westerns. But sometimes the mixed message of the star and the film’s content can turn off an audience. The poster for Seven Pounds was just Will Smith’s face, and while Will is arguably the biggest star on the planet, we usually like to see him in action or fighting aliens. Where Unforgiven showed us Clint’s return to westerns, Seven Pounds turned us off because it told us nothing and that’s not the Will we know.

The film poster can and should be an art form. I have a Raiders of the Lost Ark poster hanging in my house for two reasons, I love the movie and Richard Amsel’s art work is just that, art. Sometimes you luck out and the poster can do more than just sell tickets.

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