Raiders Of A Lost Art.

When I was growing up, the movies made me want to make pictures. Not moving pictures. Posters. Just like the ones outside the cinema. All that lurid hyperbole was irresistible - often I just wanted to stand & examine the detail when friends were rushing inside. There was something really exciting about seeing the stylisation & flourish of the artist, knowing a person had drawn this. At that time the hand-illustrated movie poster was still widespread, with artists like Drew Struzan and Richard Amsel in high demand. They were easily able to lure my young self through the doors on the strength of their deluxe craftsmanship, even when the film was absolutely terrible - I remember happily queueing for my ticket to "Jewel of the Nile" (the justifiably unloved sequel to "Romancing The Stone"), in large part thanks to the giant Struzan poster in the lobby. In years that followed I also came to appreciate the previous generation of poster artists, like Saul Bass, Frank McCarthy, Bill Gold, Luigi Martinati and Robert McGinnis, to name a few.

That made it all the more disappointing when, in the years I was doing my Visual Arts degree, the rush of enthusiasm for the new tool of Photoshop led to a massive downturn in demand for traditionally illustrated posters. But it wasn't just the available tools that had changed - a reorganisation of the film business generally was underway, and the accountants were taking over. This was the beginning of the time when studio contracts would prevent any directorial involvement in cutting trailers. Classically these would be 1 to 2 minutes of sizzle - mellifluous narration (snappily written if you were lucky), a few choice moments to hook you in (or maybe something filmed specially), title, rating, done. Check out the original Alien trailer for a terrifically creepy, suspenseful tease. Once the focus-groups, PR guys and bean-counters had taken over it became very hard to see one without being shown the entire film. The plodding artlessness of this approach is hard to overstate. And the same dull mentality was at work on the posters, leeching the fun, personality - and most importantly the risk - out of everything. This period also saw an upswing in "foreign territories" like Australia not having access to the originally provided artwork. So even when something interesting did slip through, it was often replaced here by whatever could be cobbled together at short notice. Comparing the US-release poster for Soderburgh's "Out Of Sight" with it's Australian version makes a good example. The former is a beautiful retro-70's piece, giving you a strong indication of the film's mood & style. The latter is an indifferent still photo of the stars with a stock image of a revolver 'shopped in. Dispiriting.

But here's something of a happy ending. While the trailer situation may still be a giant black hole of suck, in the last 10 years huge leaps forward in digital design have coincided with a levelling-out of the hysterical pursuit of The New Tool To The Exclusion Of All Else. The dovetailing of traditional techniques with increasingly precise, speedy software is leading to a kind of a renaissance in great-looking, well-thought through mass-produced art. Comic books, rock band posters and even the occasional movie are enjoying the benefits. Lots of the resurgent film art is coming from the online world rather than the studios. Companies like Mondo and Phantom City Creative, along with countless individual artists are making movie-related images that are actually nice to look at. Maybe there's hope for illustrators yet.

Here's a few examples of the tiptop stuff floating around out there from the horror(ish) genre alone:

Phantom City Creative

By Martin Ansin, for Mondo.

By Matt Needle

By Brian Churilla

By Adam Rabalais

By Dirty Great Pixels

By Phantom City Creative (Andromeda Strain)

By Kevin Tong, for Mondo.

By Martin Ansin, for Mondo.

By Daniel Danger, for Mondo.

And one last - from a past master, drawn out of retirement by the good folk of Mondo on the promise of an open brief to make a poster for any film he chose...

By Drew Struzan, for Mondo.