Ancillary Text Research (Film Poster) - Poster analysis

Ancillary Text Research (Movie Poster)

Film Posters and how they began

A film poster is, as the name says, a poster that advertises a film. These posters have been around as long as films themselves as they needed to be advertised to get people to watch them - the first narrative film was made in 1899. Movie posters normally contain an image with text - today's posters often feature photographs of the main actors. However, prior to 1990, film posters often used illustrations instead of photographs. Here are examples from the 60, 70s, and 80s, repectively:

The text on the posters usually contains the film title in large lettering and often the names of the main actors. It may also include a tag line, the name of the director, names of characters, release date, etc.

These posters are put up in places like town centres and outside cinemas. They are also placed on public transport such as buses and the underground. For example:

Furthermore, posters are of course put up in and outside cinemas to advertise the current billing:

Studios often produce several different posters to cater for different markets. One example of this is Shutter Island's posters. The poster on the left is the one most commonly seen, whereas the one on the right is not commonly seen and I am unsure of where this poster was used:

From my research, I have found out that Film posters used to be produced solely to be used by studios at exhibitions etc, and had to be returned to the distributor later on. Now, posters are mass produced for advertisement anywhere, and they also can be bought by anyone such as fans and used as decorations/collectors items.

The National Screening Service in the USA, which printed and distributed most film posters would recycle returned posters to be used for future posters. Any posters that were returned may have been thrown out or sold on to collectors due to them being fairly rare at the time.

Versions of film posters and sizes

Lobby cards

Lobby cards are similar to posters but they are smaller, usually 11in x 14in, also 8in x 10in, before 1930. Lobby cards are collected and their value depends on their age, quality, and popularity.

In the UK, sets of lobby cards are known as "Front of House" cards. These, however, also refer to black and white press photographs, in addition to the more typical 8x10 inch promotional devices resembling lobby cards.

Teaser poster

This is an early promotional film poster, containing a basic image or design without revealing too much information as to the plot, theme, and characters. The purpose is to incite awareness and generate hype for the film. Taglines are often included. Sometimes, these posters are issued a long time before the film goes into production. One example of this scenario is Quentin Tarantino's upcoming western, The Hateful Eight, as a teaser poster was released a bit before filming began - over a year before release:

Here, we can see that the only information given is the director's name, the year of release, and the title. This is because this film is a homage to old spaghetti westerns from the 60s when this kind of poster was prevalent.

Character posters

For a film with an ensemble cast there mat be a set of character posters, each featuring an individual character from the film. Usually it contains the name of the actor or the name of the character played. It may also include a tagline that reflects the quality of the character.

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