October 12th, 2011 
DaveWill 
My name is Dave Williams and personally, I see a great movie poster as important to a film as the film itself! That may sound crazy, but here’s why…
Firstly, a great poster builds excitement to a new movie that sometimes even a trailer fails to capture. When you see that radiant one sheet hanging up in the lobby of a theatre, it whets your appetite for the upcoming treat, it paints a picture of what to expect and hints at a story that you are yet to witness. Every time you ride past that bus stop ad hanging in the sunshine, the anticipation builds as you count down the days til the movie is released. A movie poster is the film equivalent of a great album cover, it tells you enough you need to know to get you excited, but just enough to leave you wanting more!
A Saul Bass classic: Vertigo
Secondly, a great movie poster is a brilliant keepsake to remind you of a really enjoyable movie experience. It can help your mind capture those iconic movie moments in an instant as you are taken back to the bicycle scene in ET, the hover-board chase in Back to the Future Part 2 or the moment you realized Bruce Willis was in fact, a ghost! Posters have becoming increasingly popular in recent years as many collectors strive to get their hands on classic works of art that can define a generation and remind you of better times. Designers such as Drew Struzan and Saul Bass have become household names thanks to their brilliant work on posters like Back to the Future and Vertigo respectively. The work these guys put into their posters is astonishing. The clever ideas, the use of type, the ridiculous amount if detail and their ability to capture the look and feel of a whole story on a single page. They become much more than just a movie poster, they are a work of art, something you want to show off, a proud piece of interior design that sits in your study. Basically, great movie posters rock!!!
Twilight's New Moon poster
The problem for me in recent years is that this magical piece of movie art has become increasingly cheapened by movie studios who churn out badly Photoshopped posters with poor typography and predictable layouts in an effort to raise maximum exposure for their movie with minimum effort! Take the Twilight movies as an example (I’m proud to say I’ve never seen one yet!!). These films have brought in millions of dollars to their studio, thrust unknown actors into the limelight and made them mega stars, and somehow made the vampire genre sexy! Yet, the posters that accompany this astonishing money-making machine are bland, unimaginative and symbolize everything that is bad about so many of the modern movie posters. (At this point, can I just say not all modern movie posters are bad. The guys over at Disney/Pixar produce some brilliant stuff and there are some real gems around so I don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush!! Sadly though, the majority of current posters are very poor.)
Many modern movie posters miss out one really important element for me, and that is, THE IDEA! Great posters are based around a great idea! This is something that no amount of Photoshop wizardry can replace. Real fans don’t want to see three badly cut-out heads stuck onto a moody background surrounded by some Hollywood names typed out in Trajan Pro (the average movie poster designers’ standard font). They want to see a piece of art that will inspire them to see a great movie … something that is so cool that you want to go back to the theatre the next day to try and take the poster off the wall!
In my next few posts here on ‘Beyond the Marquee’, I’ll be looking at some classic movie posters and discussing what made them so great, why they have stood the test of time and what current movie studios can learn from some of the greats. In the meantime, feel free to get involved! What are your favorite movie posters? Why are current posters so bad? What is it that makes a great movie poster actually great, and do you even care?!?
Thanks for reading and feel free to leave your comments below!
P.S You can see some of my alternative movie posters here on my blog at http://davewilliamsdesigns.blogspot.com/
Posted in 
I think I’m going to love that website!
I’m a quiet recent ‘follower’ and I liked what I saw of your work. I feel the same about movie poster. So many of them seems to be following a recipe: blue/cold filter on the villain face, red/orange one the good guy and so on. It takes a little thinking to catch what make the essence of a movie, or what is going to stay at the end of it and so much more to illustrate it.
I think a good movie poster is one who haunts you, leaving you questioning about its sense, and wanting to discover it during the movie. Some teaser poster achieve that such as the one Pete mentioned.
Concerning the current posters problem,how can they be good when most of the movies they’re supposed to ‘advertise’ are bad, not well crafted.
On another subject, do you think that there could a little place on your website for a topic about the location of the movies? (that’s my inner architect talking)
Anyway, now I’ll be waiting for your first poster commentary.
Thanks camille. That’s a great point (which opens up a whole new can of worms) when you mention that most current movies are pretty rubbish at the moment. I know I’m getting fed up of endless sequels, reboots, prequels and re-releases. It certainly does make it harder to design something great when the movie itself is pretty average!
As for the film location idea, I’m not sure I’m the best person to speak about that as it’s not something I have much experience in, but check out the rest of the team here on beyond the marquee, there is such a brilliant and diverse collection of genuises, I’m pretty sure that will be covered by someone, somewhere along the way!
I agree with you 100%.
It’s a sad fact but the art of using posters as a way to promote a film has become cheapened so much that it’s basically a side thought now. Most of the posters people point to to use as reference for what a poster should be were designed in a time when the poster was one of , if not the, best way to get people excited about your film.
Now, with the seemingly endless avenues and mediums in which to promote, posters have just become a thing for theaters to hang in the window so people don’t have to get out of their car to see what’s playing.
Sure, there are a few gems that come out ever now and then but they are far and few between, unfortunately.
Thanks for the reply Jeremy, I think you are spot on with your assessment of how the endless avenue of mediums has saturated the need for a movie poster in this day in age. I can’t help but think that only strengthens the argument to then make the poster that bit more creative. We have social media, the web, apps, tv, trailers, print ads etc to promote the important details of a movie so why can’t posters show off the very best of a movie as an art form in itself. I think limited edition official prints would go down a treat with many a movie goer!
Sadly you are right though, there aren’t many gems around, which just makes it all the more special I guess when you find one!
Firstly, let me just say that I’m a big fan of your work, especially your BTTF and Marvel prints.
Secondly, I think we have entered a period of movie advertising that in some senses benefits those who seek out great movie one sheets. Advertising campaigns for some of the biggest blockbusters are so truncated, bloated and drawn out that often, if you trawl through the dross you find something great.
More often than not this is in the form of the ‘teaser’ poster, released well before the ( often much more shoddy ) actual poster campaign.
Some examples:
Indiana Jones / Crystal skull – teaser poster showing just the iconic whip and hat and a wooden box emblazoned with ‘PROPERTY OF DR JONES’
Phantom Menace teaser with young Anakin casting a Darth Vader shaped shadow.
X Men 3 teaser simply with wolverines 3 blades slashing through a piece of steel.
And of course the amazing ‘why so serious?’ campaign of The Dark Knight
So, in way, we can see designers being allowed to play with ideas and introduce great advertising concepts, which is a great thing! It is just sad that, more often than not these ideas are not given the place they deserve in overall campaign as, I presume, the big wigs feel that ultimately their advertising must mostly conform to what has gone before ie. photo shopped faces or re hashes of old posters from a series’ preceding films.
Thanks Pete for your kind words!
You make a great point, there are a number of excellent teaser posters out there, with the ‘Why So Serious’ Dark Knight poster being a prime example. Maybe there is something in the fact that a teaser can be creative and has no boundaries so we see better work, compared to a proper movie poster that has so many additional requirements. (cast list, opening date, slogans, actors faces etc) I know from my own experience it is much more fun to design a poster for a personal project as it lets me be as wacky and creative as I like! When Ive been commissioned to work on posters in the past for real movies Ive had to restrain myself a little so the client ends up with something they meets their requirements they are paying for it after all!
However, I do think that the likes of Drew Struzan and others have shown that it is possible to creative a proper movie poster including all the relevant details and yet still make something beautiful that people would want to keep. The challenge for current day designers (or maybe for their bosses) is to devote that little bit more time or money into posters and not just settle for a combination of photoshop filters and quick photographic techniques.
Maybe Im living in a dream world, but I don’t think its asking too much for some time and effort to be put into a poster when the film budget ends up being millions of dollars, but Id be interested to know what people think.
Are the posters just a means to an end?
Do they really matter?
And do that have a place in a modern world that is saturated by the internet and all the forms of e-marking that can offer?