Movie Posters Take Us Back
Most movie fans can recognize the movie poster of their favorite film immediately. A well-done movie poster can tell the story of the movie all by itself. In the days before television, a poster was one of the few marketing methods the studios had to get people interested in the movie. That is why the movie posters for such classic films as Gone With The Wind or It?s A Wonderful Life are so descriptive and seemingly alive. They need to tell the person just enough about the movie to get them to want to go see it.
Today movie posters are used in a much different way than they were in the days before television. In many cases the images used on posters try to help establish a sort of personality for the movie by giving the movie an image that people can associate with it. A good example of this is the movie posters for The Godfather movie series. These posters were very simple, but now people associate the image of the hand holding the puppet controls with those movies. In that way, those posters were very effective. However, as a vehicle for getting people interested in the movie they seem to fall a bit short.
Movie posters serve a much different purpose today than they used to. They used to have to be a one page commercial for the movies, and their sole purpose was to get people to want to see the movie. Today they are used to give the movie a symbol that people can associate with it. The purposes may be different, but there will always be a need for good movie posters.