Media Timeline-Film Posters

Film posters were only produced for the exclusive use by the theatres showing the film they were promoting, and the copies of the posters were required to be returned to the distributor after the film left the theatre. In the US, film posters were usually returned to a nationwide operation called the National Screen Service which printed and distributed most of the film posters for the studios between 1940 and 1984. The NSS regularly recycled posters that were returned, sending them back out to be used again at another theatre. During this time, a film could stay in circulation for several years, and so many old film posters were badly worn before being retired into storage at an NSS warehouse (most often, they were thrown away when they were no longer needed or had become too worn to be used again).

It is often assumed that the first film poster was created in 1890 for the short film 'Projections Artistiques'. The poster was created by French painter and lithographer Jules Cheret.

Posters can be broken into three categories which include:

Lobby cards

Lobby cards are collectible and values depend on their age, quality, and popularity. They usually feature in sets eight and each features a different scene from the film. Films released by major production companies experiencing financial difficulties often lacked lobby sets, such as Manhunter (1986). Lobby Cards were popular with older films and featured in films such as From Russia with Love (1963).

Teaser poster

A teaser poster is an early promotional film poster. The poster contains a basic image or design which avoids revealing too much information about things such as the plot, theme, and characters. The purpose is to raise awareness and generate hype for the film. A tagline may be included. There are some instances when teaser posters are issued long in advance before the film goes into production, although they are issued during the film development. Examples of this include 2012's The Dark Knight Rises.

Character posters

For a film with an ensemble cast there may be a set of character posters, each featuring an individual character from the film. Usually it contains the name of the actor or the name of the character played. It may also include a tagline that reflects the quality of the character. Character posters are common within big franchise films with pre-existing characters. 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens has released character posters for it's upcoming debut.

We can see a number of ways in which the film poster has developed over time. From films such as Gone With the Wind and The Jazz singer in the 1920-30's period, we can see that posters relied heavily on artist renditions instead of images from the film. These posters would give barely any of the plot away, focusing mainly on the genre instead of the story.

From around the 1960's period onwards, films began to blend art with real photographs within the film posters. The posters featured bold art instead of the cookie cutter format that had been used before. The james bond franchise and the star wars franchise would give the audience more of an insight of the story and surrounding characters of the film.

Now that tools such as Photoshop have found mainstream success, they have begun being implemented into the creation of the modern day movie poster. Some franchise such as Star Wars implement a classic artistic look to their posters but others go for a more minimalistic approach, using real images blended with reality while avoiding clutter within the frame and teasing what is to come. The fundamentals of the poster remain the same, the protagonist is often put front and centre of the poster with surrounding characters and elements being pushed to the side. Some of these films include Inception and Avatar.