The Original Movie Posters Blog - Art of the Movies

It was fantastic to settle down a few Sundays ago and watch the Comic-Con@Home panel "Masters of the Illustrated Film Poster - The Sequel'.

Building on last year's ground-breaking panel this year's virtual discussion brought some movie poster legends and some 'new kids on the block' to our screens in a fascinating discussion that showed the mutual respect and admiration between a group that have shaped so much of our popular culture.

And now, you can watch it on-line, at any time. Enjoy!

For most of us, our school years weren’t as eventful as High School Musical. There were no spontaneous songs with back-flips in the canteen, nor mass synchronised dancing in the playground as a camera panned slowly over us.

However cool your school was, I have a feeling it wasn’t as cool as the DAVE school (and no, it has nothing to do with the U.K. comedy repeat TV channel).

Read on to learn more...

A lot has changed in a year. At the time, San Diego Comic-Con was gearing up for its fiftieth year, including a ground-breaking panel “Masters of the Illustrated Film Poster” that brought eight amazing movie poster artists from behind their easels, to centre-stage of a packed auditorium.

Wind forward a year and the thought of a packed auditorium now seems alien.

How could Comic-Con possibly go ahead with the shadow of corona virus hanging over us?

Where there is a will, there is a way...

Selling a film to a movie studio can't be easy. Millions of pounds are at stake and Hollywood is littered with glorious failures.

How do you make the pitch even harder? Propose something that has never been achieved before. Require technology and techniques that don't yet exist. Fill your film with imaginary worlds, astonishing space battles and strange creatures and droids. 

But then, to give yourself a chance, make sure you have an amazing concept artist. One like Ralph McQuarrie...

In these unsettled times it is hard to know when many will feel safe enough to amble around a museum or art gallery, yet alone travel Internationally to sample another culture.

World over, cultural institutions are working hard to adapt and to present their story in new ‘no contact’ ways.

A fantastic example that pre-dates our Covid-19 world is the amazing Hollywood Art Museum, packed full of Star Wars and movie poster goodies!

This year, prolific graphic designer Bill Gold would have been 99 years old. 

We will cover his work in more detail in a later blog post, but, as today marks the third anniversary of his passing, here are a few of our favourite Bill Gold designed posters and a wonderful short film from CBS...

You are mesmerised by a dynamic movie poster from the 1960's. A rugged and earnest hero is in peril as an army of toy soldier figures swarm against an exploding background.

The chances are, you are looking at a movie poster by the legendary Frank McCarthy.

In a posting to our 'The Artist' series, we take a look at this artist's amazing body of movie poster work...

Starting in 2001 with “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (released in the U.S. as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”) Warner Brothers transported us to fantastical places, faithfully recreating the Wizarding World of J.K. Rowling – and what about that movie poster!!!

As the second film came to fruition and posters for “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” began to appear, something had changed…

Caught up with Breaking Bad? Giggled your way through every Adam Sandler film on Netflix and watched every episode of Friends (twice)?

If so, it’s time for some ‘lock-down’ culture, movie poster style!

Asked for our favourite movie posters, one of the first on the list has to be the UK ‘Style C’ Quad for the original Star Wars film. It captures the action and adventure of the movie like no other poster.

We were delighted to come across a fantastic documentary by Convex Films focused on the legendary artist responsible for the poster, Mr. Tom Chantrell...

When an artist / illustrator / designer has had such a major influence on twentieth century culture, it is hard to know where to start...

Just a few highlights of the extraordinary work of movie poster legend Mr. John Alvin...

In December, continuing their long-standing collaboration, Bonhams Auctioneers and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) held their “TCM Presents … 1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year” auction.

In this unusually named auction there were a few stand out pieces for the movie poster enthusiast and they all came from the personal collection of movie poster legend Tom Jung...