Movie posters can stand by itself as a work of art. They decorate
otherwise drab walls of theaters and put life into them. They tell a
story, they speak something about the films they are promoting. As the
song goes a picture can paint a thousand words.
The
movie posters are employed to advertise a movie. They came into
existence since the earliest public exhibitions of film. The movie
posters started as placards listing the line up movies to be shown at
the theater. With the onset of the 1900s, the movie posters took on a
different turn. They have now illustrations of a scene from individual
movies.
In the beginning the movie posters were created
and produced solely for use of the theaters. The film ads were very
necessary for a film to succeed. They were returned to the distributors
after the film was done in theaters. This is true in the United States
of America. The movie posters were returned to the National Screen
Service (NSS). But somehow some of the movie posters found their way
into the hands of collectors and film poster dealers. This is especially
true when the NSS stopped its operation in 1985.
By
this time the film studios took over direct production and distribution
of movie posters for the films they produced. This started the spreading
out of the process of making and distributing movie posters. Nowadays
film posters are produced in great quantities to promote a movie because
they are now being sold directly to the public by retailers who bought
them from studio distributors. Movie posters also have now invaded the
internet. The studios that created these film ads placed them on their
websites for the promotion of their movie films. The easy access and
readily available movie posters do not now make collectors' items. Rare
movie posters can cost up to thousands of dollars.
Movie
studios then have to make several movie ads for one theater since
theaters then only show one movie at a time. Thus different sizes of
movie posters were created to promote the movie film all over the
theater. But with the advent of multiple screen cinemas sizes of movie
posters were standardized. This is because the theater spaces have to be
apportioned among more films. But there are still different sized
posters for distribution to other countries.