Here - ER Ellsworth

EDWARD ELLSWORTH
ARH 110 ● HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
●
ABOMINABLE PLAKATSTIL
THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION
AND HORROR MOVIE POSTERS
●
Introduction: Two Designs Enter, One Design Leaves
If you tossed all known forms of graphic design into the Thunderdome, and sat
down with a tub of popcorn to watch them fight it out, movie poster design would have
a good chance of emerging at the end, covered in the blood of its enemies. Of course, it
would depend largely on what criteria were used to determine the winner.
The movie poster would have a huge advantage, were you to judge such a
contest on public adoration. People love movie posters. They represent the dream of
any marketer: advertising so effective that people yearn not just to look upon it, but to
display it for others to see, and are even willing to pay for the right to do so.
Were you to judge such a contest on importance to an advertising campaign, the
movie poster would be a fierce competitor against the mighty logo. Similar to a logo, the
poster is the lynchpin of a film’s advertising machine.
The Birth of an Art Form
“Even though everybody hates the Americans, they’re still watching American movies.”
Roland Emmerich
My discussion will revolve mostly around American movie posters, specifically
those of the science fiction and horror genres. Cinema may have been born in France,
but by the 1920’s it had grown up and moved to California. (Sklar 4) This is not to say
that Europe ceased making movies, but that Hollywood has long been the nexus of the
film universe.
By examining the trends of science fiction and horror movie posters throughout
the years we can use those genres as a lens to look at movie poster design as a whole. As
a basic foundation, a brief history of movie posters in general, as well as cinema it self, is
in order.
Jules Cheret, famed pioneer of posters, gave birth to the movie poster with an
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1890 lithograph advertising the short film Projections
Artistiques. (Learn About Movie Posters) The films from
this period more closely resemble today’s home movie than
the blockbusters on the big screen. The art form was so new
that people were entertained just by watching a picture
move. The posters for such films reflected this. (See figure 1)
The novelty of watching
moving pictures for the sake
of seeing pictures move faded,
Figure 1: L'Arroseur Arrose
(1885) - This poster focuses
more on the experience of
watching a film, rather than
the film itself.
and before long films began to
tell stories. In the early 1900’s, a magician by the name of
Georges Melies saw the potential for trickery in the new
medium and developed the first special effects. (Encarta)
His innovations gave birth to narrative filmmaking. His
Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) is an icon
of the birth of the modern film, and is regarded as the
Figure 2: Trip to the Moon
(1902) – This might just
first Science Fiction movie. (Filmsite.org) The poster for
be the first “floating head”
this film represents the film rather than the theater going
poster. More on this later.
experience. (See figure 2)
Mister DeMille, I’m Ready for my Poster
D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. de Mille were two of the earliest directors to make
feature length films. In her book, A Century of Movie Posters: From Silent to Art House,
Emily King writes:
Longer films such as those produced by Griffith and de Mille require
higher budgets and must be justified by greater box-office returns. These
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epics were heavily promoted, by early 20th-century standards, and the
development of the feature film went hand in hand with that of the film
poster. (21)
Big money meant big advertising campaigns. Films started
enjoying promotion from more than one poster design. (See figure
3) Throughout the history of film, increasing budgets continually
impact the production of posters
Figure 3: Birth of a
Nation posters (1915)
– Birth of a Nation
was one of the first
films to be promoted
The Floating Head Poster
One of the earliest trends to form in film posters involves
with multiple poster
designs.
the dominant presence of actors and actresses. By the mid 1910’s
film studios began to realize the power of the Movie Star. (Learn About Movie Posters)
Posters began to showcase big name actors and actresses. Not only do the images get
bigger but so do the type sizes of the names. Horror movies are often considered pure
B-list affairs, but even in this genre we will see the rise of “big names” such as Boris
Karloff and Bela Lugosi.
Perhaps the unfortunate result of the rises of the Hollywood star is what some
call the Floating Head film poster. These are posters in which the entire composition is
dominated by giant headshots of the film’s
stars. (See figure 4) This trend was lampooned
on the web site FunnyOrDie.com (Funny or
Die)
Figure 4: From left to right: Alien
The Roaring 20’s
Resurrection (1997), I Know What you Did
Last Summer (1997), Seven (1995) – Even
the horror genre isn’t immune to the floating
head poster phenomena.
During the 20’s movies grew into a real
industry. In 1919 The National Screen Service
was founded. This institution would later
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play a major role in the production of movie posters. The
NSS was like the Gestapo of movie promotion for roughly
40 years, starting in the
1940’s. (Learn About Movie
Posters) The 20’s gave birth
to the first major film studios,
most of which are still with
us today, including Warner
Brothers, Paramount, and
MGM (Filmsite.org) Last but
not least, the 20’s gave us The
Jazz Singer, the first “talkie”.
(Jolson.org) With movies
Figure 5: Metropolis (1927)
- Heinz Schulz-Neudamm’s
becoming such big business,
poster for Metropolis is
the studios spent even more
iconic.
money on poster art.
One of the last silent
films of note was released the same year as The Jazz Singer.
Metropolis is considered one of the most influential films in
Figure 6:
Top: Frankenstein (1931)
Bottom Left: Dracula (1931)
Bottom Right: The Mummy
(1932) - All 3 films were
the Science Fiction genre, and its poster is one of the most
released by Universal, which
recognizable ever made. (See figure 5)
might explain the striking
similarities in these posters.
Though they were once
Posters of the Night
Science fiction and horror didn’t really come to
relegated to the B-list, the
actors from these films have
Hollywood until the 1930’s. Classic movie monster films
become almost as iconic as
like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy were among
the villains they portrayed.
the first. (See figure 6) These favored the use of large yellow
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or red type, often arched, for the title. You see a similar effect with
the type on the poster for King Kong. (See figure 7)
The Posters Have Eyes
During the 40’s we start to see early examples of a trend
Carol J. Clover refers to as “The Eye of Horror.” In her book Men
Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.
Clover writes:
Eyes are everywhere in horror cinema. In titles:
The Eyes of Laura Mars, Eyes of a Stranger, The
Hills Have Eyes, The Eye Creature, Terrorvision,
Figure 7: King Kong
(1933) - Merian C.
Scanners, White of the Eye, Don’t Look Now,
Cooper and Ernest
Crawling Eye, Eyes of Hell, Headless Eyes, and so
B. Schoedsack, 1933
forth. Or on posters, videocassette box covers, and
- The yellow lettering
of the title overlaps
other promotional materials, where
the blue building
wide-open eyes staring up in terror
on which Kong is
(for example) at a poised knife or a
perched. Blues and
yellows were quite
naked face or something off-box or
prevalent in 30’s film
off-poster are part of the standard
posters.
iconography. (166)
We see this somewhat with the posters for
Frankenstein and Dracula, but more so in the 40’s with the
posters for films like I Walked with a Zombie. (See figure 8)
Figure 8: I Walked With a
Zombie (1943) - A solitary
eye leers out from behind an
This trend has continued all the way to the present
day, as we can see from the posters for the Shining and 28
outreaching hand.
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Weeks Later.(See figure 9)
The Incredible Shrinking Artist
Hollywood studios seem to have a habit of
disrespecting talent, at least until someone shows them
how much money the talent can make them. Long after
Hollywood realized the potential drawing power of their
stars, they continued to treat their poster artists like beasts
of burden. In his book The Art of Noir, Eddie Muller writes:
As the business boomed, a more factory-like
efficiency was imposed on the product—and
the “paper.” The growth of suburbia, with
its thousands of new theaters, the demand
for more movies, and the strident clamor for
attention in an increasingly
Figure 9: Top: The Shining
(1980) – Jack Nicholson’s
competitive marketplace
eyes show menace, while
conspired to transform poster
Shelly Duvall’s show horror.
art. In the 1940s, studio
Bottom: 28-Weeks Later
(2007) – The eyes are the
publicity departments became
clear focal point of this
sweat-shops. Most postwar
poster.
paper—especially for B-films—
was created by anonymous artists who held no copyright
or claim of authorship once their work was shipped to the
Figure 10: Vertigo (1958) –
Saul Bass employs a dizzying
spiral design to evoke the
printer. (Muller 10)
Poster artists really began to gain respect in the
feeling described by the title.
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50’s. The director Otto Preminger was a pioneer of the scorched earth
style marketing campaign that is common place today. Preminger
helped bring fame to Saul Bass when he hired the
designer to work on the posters and an animated
title sequence for The Man with the Golden Arm in
1955. (King 6-7) Bass ushered in a new era of film
credits, moving away the dull, stationary lettering
of the past. (Rennie)
Bass would go on to become a legend in
Figure 12: Attack of
the world of movie posters, working with horror/
the 50 Foot Woman
suspense master Alfred Hitchcock. Among other’s,
(1958), Reynold
Brown
Bass’s partnership with Hitchcock produced the
famous poster for Vertigo. (See figure 10)
Robots and Aliens and Mutants, oh my!
Beginning in the 50’s the combination of
from the Black
Lagoon (1954)
Top: The
post WWII trauma and new competition from
Day the
television produced a parade of mutants and
Earth Stood
monsters and threats from other worlds. (Wilson)
Figure 13: Creature
Figure 11:
Still (1951)
Middle:
Too goofy to be thought of as real horror, the 50’s
The Day of
and 60’s monster movie is almost a genre in itself.
the Triffids
Robots and aliens of every sort dominated
(1963)
Bottom:
Reynold Brown -
many posters from the 50’s and 60’s. Reds and
Forbidden
once again the title
yellows abounded, with the occasional dark blue
Planet (1956)
creature is depicted
background thrown in when the treat comes from
with a hapless female
outer space, while the various threats to earth each hold a female
in its clutches.
victim in their arms. (See figure 11) The ladies get their revenge,
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however, in Reynold Brown’s poster for
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. (See figure 12)
Brown also designed the poster for another
famous film from this era, The Creature from
the Black Lagoon. (See figure 13)
Requiem for Illustration
The 60’s saw the rise of photography
Figure 14:
in movie posters. The science fiction and
Left: Rosemary's Baby (1968) Steve Franfurt
horror genres weren’t as quick to abandon
Right: Psycho (1960)
illustration. The nuclear nightmare creatures
looked a lot cooler on the movie poster than they ever did on screen. However, not all
horror movies from this period involved space aliens or giant mutated insects. More
human driven horror such as Psycho and Rosemary’s Baby
allowed more use of photography in the posters. (See figure
14)
Invasion of the Swiss
Figure 15:
Up until this point the majority of movie posters
Left: Halloween (1978) Bob
have used very little white space. Designers often
Gleason -This fairly simple
sacrificed the white space, if for no other reason than to
illustration is similar to many
Plakatstil posters.
please the bevy of giant egos who demanded their piece
Right: The Rocky Horror
of the promotional pie. As Eddie Muller puts it, “Studio
Picture Show (1975) The ultra
contracts also began to dictate the inclusion and relative
red lips could be considered
a photographic equivalent to
Plakatstil illustration.
size of performers’ names, and ‘mandatory copy’—credits
for producers, directors, and writers—became a factor in
compositions. Everyone claimed a piece of space on the
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poster, except the artists.” (Muller 12)
By the late 60’s we start to see the
influence of the International Typographic
Style, or Swiss Style design movement.
The Swiss Movement, which began in the
Figure 16:
50’s, was characterized by heavy use of grid
From Left to Right: The Exorcist (1972), Jaws
layouts, san serif type, and overall cleanliness.
(1975), Alien (1979) - Steve Frankfurt and
(International Poster Gallery) Bemis Balkind’s
Philip Gips
famous poster for Rosemary’s Baby is a great
example. The enlarged face of the mother positioned in contrast to the silhouette of the
baby carriage is a typical use of scaling in the Swiss Movement. The credits are reduced
in size and confined to the bottom of the poster to produce a very clean composition.
The Swiss Style has ties with another design movement known as Plakatstil, or
“poster style.” Plakatstil was all about simplification. (International Poster Gallery)
The movement began in the early 1900’s, and yet somehow the majority of American
movie posters manage to avoid significant influence from
Plakatstil. That isn’t to say that all Hollywood posters were
free from its influence. The posters for Halloween and The
Rocky Horror Picture Show have elements of Plakatstil, and
they are among the most memorably in American cinema.
(See figure 15)
An Excellent Poster for an Exorcism
1968 marked the dawn of the Motion Picture
Association of America’s rating system. (mpaa.org)
Figure 17: 2001 (1968) –
Ironically, the system borne of outrage over offensive
Here we see more evidence of
content in films freed up filmmakers to create more
the Swiss Style.
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shocking content than ever before. (Seventies Horror Films) If the
50’s and 60’s were the golden age of science fiction, then the 70’s
were certainly the same for Horror.
Alien, The Exorcist, and Jaws are all legendary horror films
from the 70's, and all have wonderful movie posters. (See figure
16) In these posters we continue to see the influence of the Swiss
Style, with the composition itself taking center stage. Along with
Figure 18: Star Wars:
the expressive growth in the films, the posters from this period
A New Hope (1977),
began to develop a more individualistic style. Gone are the days
Tom Jung - Not
of the anonymous artist toiling away under a constant stream of
only did this film
generate several
different posters, but
it practically became
its own industry.
requirements from studio executives.
In Space, No One will see your poster
Stanley Kubrick kicked off a
new generation of science fiction films
with the 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. (See figure 17)
Special effects had evolved, making serious science fiction
films much more attainable. The 70’s came to a close with
Ridley Scott’s Alien, perhaps the ultimate fusion of science
fiction and horror.
Before Alien, however, came another genre bender:
Star Wars. (See figure 18) Part western, part sci-fi, and part
fantasy, George Lucas’s wildly successful film changed the
way films were marketed forever. George Lucas exposed the
promotion techniques of Otto Preminger to radiation and
grew them to the size of a small moon.
Figure 19: The Thing (1982)
– One of the early works of
Drew Struzan, one of the last
remaining illustrators still
Star Wars became what is now the ultimate goal
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working on movie posters
today.
of every movie studio: a franchise. Today people don’t
just pay money to hang the posters on their walls. They
buy anything else that carries the brand of a popular
film. All of this promotion falls under one word; to quote
Mel Brooks’ ultimate science fiction parody, Spaceballs,
Figure 20:
Left: Back to the Future
(1985) - Drew Struzan
Right: Masters of the
Universe (1987) - Drew
“Merchandising, where the real money from the movie is
made.”
A Poster on Elm Street
If there is one word that sums up horror films of
Struzan
the 80’s it would be gore. Slasher flicks dominated the
horror genre throughout the decade, and science fiction
horror films such as John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing
became gorier than ever. (See figure 19)
The poster for The Thing was designed by Drew
Figure 21:
Left: Harry Potter and the
Struzan. Struzan illustrated a bevy of memorable movie
Sorcerer's Stone (2001) -
posters throughout the 80’s and beyond. Along with The
Drew Stuzan
Right: Indiana Jones and the
Thing, Struzan’s most recognizable posters include those
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
for Back to the Future, and Masters of the Universe. (See
(2008) - Drew Struzan
figure 20) Unfortunately, brilliant artist though he may
be, much of
Struzan’s later work leans toward “floating
head” composition. (See figure 21)
One fascinating trend that is evident
in many posters for 80’s slasher films is what
Figure
design critic Steven Heller calls “A-frame”
22: From Left to Right: Final Exam (1981),
composition. Heller writes that, “The earliest
Slumber Party Massacre (1982), Friday the
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13th (1980) - Alex Ebel
known uses were 19th-century engravings that showed spread-legged, Simon Legree–
type slave masters lording over cowering victims.” (Heller) We see similar compositions
repeated throughout many a slasher film poster. (See figure 22)
The Dawn of Digital
The 90’s brought the digital revolution. The first digital effects in film were seen
in the late 70’s, and by the mid-90’s computer generated effects began to completely
replace effects that were formerly accomplished with stop motion animation.
Computerized images soon found their way into film posters as well. The advent of
Photoshop did nothing to reduce the number of floating head posters; if anything
it made the problem worse. However, the digital revolution also brought a lot of
innovations to film posters, and design in general.
Modern movie posters often employ heavy use of digital manipulation. With
today’s digital graphics software artists are limited only by their imagination. (See figure
23) The conceptual image knows know bounds in the digital age. Ideas that would have
once been impossible to render can know be achieved with in a matter of hours, or even
minutes.
Conclusion
There’s no telling what style might emerge to dominate movie posters next. The
digital revolution is democratizing design itself. The large studios seem to be getting
most of their posters from design firms, but even the smallest independent film has a
chance to yield any kind of poster imaginable. Movie posters will always have a special
place in pop culture, and the future of movie posters is bright.
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Figure 23:
Left: Hard Candy (2006) - Designed by Art Machine: A Trailer Park Company
Middle: The Dark Knight (2008) - Designed by BLT and Associates
Right: I am legend (2007) - Designed by BLT and Associates
Note: The vast majority of the images used in this paper were acquired from The Internet Movie
Poster Awards at <http://www.impawards.com>
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China: Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, 2003
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