Marketing & Poster Art

Part of making movies is also knowing how you want to be marketed. That means posters. When I made my first movie, I knew it was going to be shown in a theater. The Lillian And Dorothy Gish Theater in Bowling Green,  Ohio to be specific. I had to come up with a poster. It was for a movie called “A Nail In The Board.” Shot on B&W 16mm film. And projected on film as well. Man, did I have brass nuts then. Today, I’d cringe at that college kid who made a backyard movie. It was a really cool screening ‘cause all my friends from high school showed up. And also the town of Bowling Green, as any mention of a local movie being shot there brought out everyone. Man, so far that moment trumps everything I’ve since done. Truthfully.

Anyhow, I had to make a poster and put it around campus. I used an early version of Photoshop. Strange how this is around 1998 and it seems so long ago. I’ve lived four lives since. And recall putting a little thumbnail image of a bicycle I’d taken in photo class on the front of the poster. Left a LOT of white space and added the text. Basically used the only fonts they had back then. Impact…I guess, is…impact-ful. And I cut and pasted everything else, until it looked like the posters we had at the video store I worked at. It was serviceable. And I made a ton of copies at school and posted them everywhere. You wanna know about moxie. I posted this EVERYWHERE. I was also co-sponsored by the fraternities and the panhellenic council. I remember giving an impassioned speech as to why they should give me money to make a movie. I think I got about $2,000 collectively from both. This was way before Kickstarter or Indiegogo. I had to stand in front of hot sorority girls with my acne busted out face and beg for money and pitch them my movie idea. I guess they felt sorry for me. But whatever, I got the money. And a few of them even attended the screening.

I have a few friends who’ve made movies now. To be honest, their posters are pretty bad. I’m not sure why they just don’t steal a poster idea from one they’ve already seen. I had a really close friend in school who came out to L.A. with me who worked for a marketing company that made trailers and posters for movies. They had to put together (at least) 100 ideas. Half of those would actually be made into card samples. Meaning printed out and place on cardboard and placed around the office. EVERY combination of the title, a few images, the credits and so forth as a layout. So that it could be whittled down to three. Then they would have to settle on ONE poster. Now, as independent filmmakers, this is a total fucking grind. Coming up with one concept is hard, having to dig up ten is hard, a hundred is insurmountable. And why would you want to waste your time on that shit either? The answer…because our posters look like shit. Yes, it takes some serious thought to put together a poster campaign that looks professional. You want to know how shitty it is? When a company has a breakthrough with a trend, EVERY movie marketing firm leaps at it. Writing of text on people’s faces became big. As it just a tease of a word. Or not having the title of your movie but just a symbol. “Jurassic World” was like that. Like you could mistake that movie. It’s insane the lengths people go for poster art. Back in my day, this shit was stolen art. Bus stops and shit would be taken. It was that coveted. Now, we’re way too cool for school. I feel like we collected a lot of shit back in the day.

I had my “Terminator 2” poster framed. It was, for the longest time, my prized possession and still hangs on my bedroom wall in the house I grew up in. I looked at that thing. Studied it, in between crying about how girls didn’t like me. It is beautiful art. I memorized every name on it. I think people forget it’s art. And it’s really hard to do well. As I really suck at it now. I often scratch my head, how I lost that moxie I had back then.