Poster Trends of 2012

If there's one thing I know more about than I know about movies, it would be movie marketing. Working at a DVD store and being totally surrounded by a trailer disc and 6000 DVD covers, there's no escaping it. So as people start rolling out their top movies of 2012 and such (how, I do not know), I'll look at the things that sometimes determine whether we want to watch a movie or not: the movie posters. However, how can they determine our preferences when most of them end up looking the same? I break down some of the poster trends we've seen in 2012:

Alternative/foreign posters that were better than the ones they used for the majority of the advertising.

It seems as if the next big thing is to create totally rote, or sometimes very boring posters to advertise the movie, but then someone will create all of these alternate designs which are ten times better. The Dark Knight Rises and Killing Them Softly both had a lot of alternative designs. Killing Them Softly has a whole lot of American-themed, mostly minimalist or overly artistic designs. The Dark Knight Rises used a whole lot of propaganda posters featuring Bane. I like it when the posters reflect the universes in which the movies have created, instead of just advertising the movie itself. The Bourne Legacy's alternative design was actually quite beautiful, compared to Jeremy Renner holding a gun - how many times have we seen that before? Prometheus had an awesome IMAX poster (which actually didn't spoil the film unlike one of the other designs) and Brave got a very Studio Ghibli looking Japanese poster. It is a pity that they don't use these designs over the more 'safe' choices.

Stevee's Best and Worst Posters of 2011...

Well, it's December (how, I do not know), so it's the time of the year when everyone rolls out their 'best of' lists for the year. While I might make a top ten films list (though it would be better if I did one at the end of next year), I'm going to look at all of the promotional stuff that I can see with the click of the fingers. Now, I'm quite the expert on movie posters, so I'll take a look at the five worst and ten best posters of 2011 films.

Here are the top five worst posters from 2011:

5. Main St - I already talked enough about this poster in this post. I still haven't seen this movie (I kinda plan to, just to see what went wrong), but here's some wishful thinking: it might be better than whoever photoshopped this hideous Coronation Street-esque poster.

4. The Darkest Hour - Sure, this isn't a horribly bad poster compared to some other ones. When it was one of the featured trailers on my IMDB app, the poster was so bad that I stopped using the app for a while until they changed it. Working at a DVD store, I see a whole lot of Z-grade straight-to-DVD disaster films, and this one - which is actually going to cinemas - looks exactly like one of those. I mean, just look at the lame lightning ripping through the city. And the awful colouring of the tagline. And that tagline being bigger than the title. It just makes it look really awful.

3. X-Men: First Class - The large majority of the X-Men: First Class posters were the victims of someone who got a bit too excited about photoshop. This one, showing all of the characters from the movie (and there are quite a few, hence the troubling one-dimensionality of some of them), is quite the eyesore. It all starts with the blueness, and then you wonder why half of these people are walking and the other half are just standing there looking menacing. James McAvoy probably came out worse off...I mean, look at how disproportionate his body is. Michael Fassbender looks like he is in pants that are miles too big to him and his turtleneck has made his neck disappear. And if you look really hard, you can see Lucas Till in the distance, all faded away. It's just such a silly poster.

2. I Don't Know How She Does It - Apart from having one of the most annoying titles of the year, this movie has an annoying poster to match. First of all, there is the colour. It makes me think of puke. Then there is Sarah Jessica Parker, who looks slightly uncomfortable and has a bizarre looking smile on her face. She's holding a teddy with her bag, just to show that no-one knows how she does it. On the right side of her she is a whole lot of things that she needs to do. I'm so glad that she has to make cookies. I don't know how she does that.

1. New Year's Eve - I don't know where to begin with this poster. It is just bloody awful. Just the way everyone looks. Some people look like they've been cut out of a tabloid magazine (ahem, Ashton Kutcher), some have been cut directly out of the official film stills, others just look purely idiotic. I'm talking about you,
Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges. I'm sorry, but you look like you're a prisoner applying to be Santa Claus, your smile is that un-genuine. There's just way too much gold. We get it, New Year's Eve is gold, but that doesn't mean it's the annual lottery holiday.

Best posters after the jump...

How to Sell Your Movie with a Poster: For Dummies.

As you probably know, for the past four years of my life, I've worked at a DVD store. Over these years, there have been a few things that I've learnt: a) No-one liked to keep classic movies in that shop, so I had to fuel my love for classic movies by actually buying them myself, b) No-one likes to order in foreign films because "no-one likes them" and c) When people come in to get a DVD, 95% of the time they make their choice based on the cover alone. While I was cleaning shelves, I noticed how achingly bad some DVD covers are, trying to sell themselves in one average sized rectangle. The worst offenders are generally the blockbusters and the straight-to-DVD B-movies, coz most indie flicks know that whoever is going to watch them probably knows a thing or two about movies.

Here's my guide, for dummies, to how you can market a movie with a poster:

Main Street (2010)
Despite the star power, this movie struggled to get a release (I think it went limited in America, but very few people saw it), and wound up on DVD, with a horrendous poster to match. But whoever designed the poster obviously had a field day with their assignment.

A) "From Horton Foote, screenwriter of To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies, and director John Doyle." That's cool, but come on, To Kill a Mockingbird was made just about 40 years ago. I get that this person won two Oscars for his work (but did it say that on the poster?), and unfortunately died before this movie was released, but the whole screen-writing thing is hopelessly dire on a poster. And John Doyle...this is his only film. But, oh well, putting stuff like that on a poster can only mean one thing: the production team really cared about their writer and director.
B) "Colin Firth, Ellen Burstyn, Patricia Clarkson with Amber Tamblyn and Orlando Bloom" Wow, what a cast. You always gotta capitalize on a cast. That's first and foremost the thing you should remember when designing a poster. Even if your cast sucks, just make sure you have someone quite famous who maybe has two-minutes of screen time and stick them on the poster. Names will get you everywhere.
C) The next best thing to names are faces. When you have quite a good ensemble cast, you just line them all up and have them walking somewhere (or, in the case of X-Men: First Class, just have some mutants walking, others just standing, all over the place, just so you can get every character on the page). Make sure they have mildly different faces. Like, old Colin looks quite jovial, Ellen Burstyn looks like that happy old lady, and Patricia Clarkson looks like...someone just farted.
D) Ha! Witty! You see, since the title is Main Street, of course the title had to be put on a street sign. Even if the street sign is sitting quite low in the middle of the footpath, and if Colin Firth walks any further and does not see it, he will be hit in a place which...yeah.
E) Good old Orlando Bloom. While everyone is looking like they just stepped out of Coronation Street, he is donning the action hero attire. Just trying to jazz it up a little, eh?

Monte Carlo (2011)
Teens are all about the clichés. More so if they're the target audience for the latest Disney-style flick starring Selena Gomez.

A) "She's having the time of someone else's life." The tagline. It can always draw the audience in with it's dry wit. Especially when you take a well-known cliché like 'She's having the time of her life' and make it even more clichéd by saying 'She's having the time of someone else's life'. Clever, or what?
B) Oh, don't they just look jovial?! Okay, so Leighton Meester, Selena Gomez and Katie Cassidy are three beautiful young girls...except, well, judging by some of the other stuff that Meester and Cassidy have been doing with their careers, they're kinda past this kind of teen fluff that Gomez is well into. So, they're just hanging in the background looking happy, trying to shrug off their spoiled brat Gossip Girl's and their Taken prostitutes, while squeaky-clean Selena Gomez is up the front, y'know, looking squeaky clean. The girls at the back can look happy, but not as happy as Gomez, because she's the only actress anyone under the age of 12 would know.
C) Ah, the clichés! As part of a poster, you always have to show off a little of the character and their story. In this case, our heroine is wearing an elegant ball gown, but underneath, she's wearing cowboy boots! Oh, this tells us SO much about her! Like, she's into the whole parading-around-as-a-princess thing, but she's staying true to her roots! Cool story bro.

Never Let Me Go (2010)
Yes, this is a very good movie. And yes, we know that there is a better poster out there. This one, however, is pretty bad, but it is the perfect example of following the poster making skills for dummies. Trust me, the DVD cover that we have in NZ is worse...this whole poster is kinda blurred together. I could probably recreate it in Microsoft Word.

A) Names! And what's even better than names? When they have Oscar nominations! But never mind that Andrew Garfield fulla, because, as he doesn't have the old "Academy Award Nominee" above his name, he must not be a worthy actor. But he's helped along by Academy Award Nominees Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley, so he's worthy enough of your attention. Seriously...that's the kind of feeling I get from name dropping like this one. Not that I have anything against Oscar nominations though, they're all the rage on posters!
B) Keira Knightley is probably the most well-known cast member. So it's only natural that she gets to stare into the camera putting her hand up on the window in that fashion (and that doesn't really say that much about her character at all...Mulligan's character is someone more suited to that). Obviously, people will see her face and be like, "that's the chick off Pirates of the Caribbean!" and immediately put this in their mental watchlist. See, to be a good poster designer, you really have to get into the mentality of the person looking at this poster.
C) It's a love story baby just say yes. That's what I think when I look at that romantic shot of Garfield and Mulligan. People love their romances. It doesn't matter if this romance is a little different to that of The Notebook.
D) Ah, because that beautiful shot was featured on the completely normal poster, it just has to be included here. But really small and just as a place-filler. Because on this poster we have the characters, and now we have to have the setting. Not together, though, as that would be the easy thing to do.

Takers (2010)
This movie is pretty bad. And yet, people picked it up like it was the next The Godfather. Just with, y'know, rap stars.

A) Oh look at all those names! Matt Dillon, Paul Walker, Idris Elba, Jay Hernandez, Michael Ealy, Tip "T.I." Harris, Chris Brown, Hayden Christensen. There are so many great things about this:
-Firstly, they're all male. Hey, Zoe Saldana, the star of the highest grossing movie ever to grace this Earth, was in this movie! But no, with all that testosterone this is the coolest thing to happen to the world after The Expendables.
-Secondly, I haven't even heard of half of these people, but that doesn't matter. Because, if all these names managed to make it to the poster, then this movie must have a great cast!
-Thirdly, famed rapper 'T.I' used his full name Tip Harris on the poster. That shows some swag, man.
-Finally, Matt Dillon is first billed but he don't even get to be on the poster. Because, obviously, he ain't got enough swag like these bros here.
B) Ooooh, Chris Brown. Looking serious. Coz this is a serious acting job. His face is so serious that he looks just like what the public think of him, thanks to him beating up Rihanna. Yeah, no matter how serious this acting job is, we ain't never gonna let you live that one down, buddy.
C) Look how serious everyone else. And look how much swag everyone has. Except for maybe Hayden Christensen, who is proudly brought to you by PhotoShop. He's just sitting there, lightening the mood with his out-of-place top hat and nerdy bow-tie, just living up his status as the whitest guy in the room who doesn't have any swag. That shows character range, folks.
D) Again, the tagline! "Everyone's after something." Ain't that a great burst of philosophy? Especially when you apply it to a whole lot of gangsters.
E) Just look at everything on the table in front of them. A gun, an alcoholic beverage, a bottle of champagne, a martini, a suitcase which is presumably filled with money. Welcome to the 'Swag Parlour', where the men are as clichéd as their possessions.
F) The website! "WhoAretheTakers.com"...Yes, even the website URL has to ask a question which many don't really care to find out the answer for. Oh, how amazing is the internet?

 The Social Network (2010)
Last, but certainly not least, the DVD cover for one of my most favourite films, the amazing The Social Network. Which was given the most bland portrayal of poster making for dummies.

A) "Screenplay by AARON SORKIN, Directed by DAVID FINCHER." Two amazing people, yes, but usually the stars should get a little love, too. But they're so important they get to go right under the title, because everyone knows who they are. Which is unfortunately not true.
B) "A BRILLIANT FILM." "AN AMERICAN LANDMARK." "REVOLUTIONARY. ABSOLUTELY EMBLEMATIC OF ITS TIME AND PLACE." "SENSATIONAL. A ONCE-IN-A-GENERATION MOVIE." "MAMMOTH AND EXHILARATING." If you were around during 2010/2011 awards season, then there is no doubt you would have seen how critically acclaimed this movie is, which is why the poster designers decided to make the critical acclaim their big draw. Critical acclaim is everything, and when you have as much as this one had, then you just gotta shout it out from the rooftops. Or from a DVD cover...whatever floats your boat.
C) A single picture of Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg standing there smiling away while a couple have a little hug session. Wait...this isn't a romantic comedy? No, we're led to believe that Marky Mark is smiling because of all the critical acclaim this movie got. As I said, critical acclaim is everything.
D) We all love Facebook, don't we? So, incorporate the Facebook font into the title for this movie and BAM! People think they're seeing a movie about Facebook but really they're seeing a movie about a douchebag who shits on his best friend but his best friend tells him to lawyer up asshole because he's not coming back for 30% he's coming back for everything. And there's something about forced cannibalism in there.

So, do you have any tips for poster making for dummies?

Top 10 worst Nicolas Cage movie posters.

Here I am again, taking a stab at Nicolas Cage. Yeah yeah, I don't like him as an actor. But he's damn entertaining!
On a random search, I looked up 'Nicolas Cage movies', and found some truly awful posters for his movies. Well, they're awful and funny. Here we go...

10.

Well...this one makes a statement. Not only does it cleverly make Nic out of bullets, it makes his face look more drowsy and long than is humanly possible. Unfortunately, it's like someone hit the snooze button in my brain and told me it was okay to sleep through the duration of this movie.

9.

Okay, so this January, I won't be ready to 'raise some hell'. This just looks like a darker and grittier version of The Sorcerer's Apprentice poster. With the added surprise of a woman in Nic's reflection! Hey...I always knew he was a girl deep down inside.

8.

Gosh...Nic's face must be magnetic or something. I mean, look at it. He's managed to drag along a burning city, Jessica Biel and Julianne Moore. He is a man on a mission.

7.

Cheer up Nic...everyone ends up as the victim of a giant bird overhead. The problem is when that giant bird drops a spoon with his lunch. Then you know someone up there hates you.

6.

HE GLOWS! Wow, you learn something new every day. Is it just me, or do these poster makers really like having Nic's head coming out of nowhere like he's some seedy paedophile? Just saying.

5.

Things wrong with this poster:
-The fire burning him.
-The bullets in the 'window'.
-The leather jacket.
-The hair.
-The inexplicable placement of his arm.
-His expression.
-The inexplicable placement of his other arm inside of his jacket.
-Nicolas Cage in an action movie.

4.

God. I can't even. What is he wearing? I know it was the 80's and all. But you used this to advertise the movie?! You 80's children were seriously demented.

3.

Hmmm...how do I explain this one? There's the demonic child as the centrepiece of the poster...serving as Nic's...nose? I can't tell which part is even his face. Wow, this poster is more confusing than the fact that they would even think of remaking this film.

2.

Geez Louise...put that puppy away Nic! And what's with the dodgy opening of the jacket? One more thing...I know it's at the front and all, but why is his hand so goddamn big?!

1.

I know there was already a poster from Bangkok Dangerous, and there could have easily been more. Seriously. There are enough posters of his head. This one, is, by far, the worst. His face is completely expressionless, as per usual, but it doesn't give us any hint as to what this movie might contain. If that's an attempt to make him look like a badass, I'd definitely give this a miss.

Do you know any other actors who seem to get some really bad posters? Let me know and I can do more posts like this one!