Movies

The record breaking poster for Metropolis which sold for $690,000 in November 2005.

Movie Posters are posters used to advertise films. Their use goes back to the earliest public exhibitions of film, where they began as outside placards listing the programme of (short) films to be shown inside the hall or theater. By the early 1900s, they began to feature illustrations of a scene from each individual film.

Currently, due to a film's short theatrical life, posters are issued in small print runs and are discarded when the films run finished. However, historically, large runs for most titles, stored in production company or advertising agency warehouses, or individual items kept as souvenirs by theater owners, allowed posters from the classical and modern film periods, and early postmodern period, to survive in at least a few numbers. As a result of the interest in pop art in the late 1960s, collecting movie posters became a significant hobby. As the available supplies dwindled into private collections, prices consequently rose to support the dealers who generally made them available when they were in greater supply. Auction houses started selling movie posters in the 1980's and on November 15, 2005 a record price of US$690,000 was paid for a poster of Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis from the Reel Poster Gallery in London.

Here's a "List of Top Selling Movie Posters."

Movie posters come in different sizes and styles depending on the country. The most common are listed below.

United States:

One sheet, 27 inches by 41 inches, portrait format
Half sheet, 22 inches by 28 inches, landscape format
Insert, size 14 inches by 36 inches, portrait format
Window card, 14 inches by 22 inches, portrait format
Three sheet, 41 inches by 81 inches, portrait format
Six sheet, 81 inches by 81 inches, portrait format
Twenty four sheet, 246 inches by 108 inches, landscape format often called a billboard

Most sizes (other than the one sheet) have fallen out of favor with film distributors, and are rarely used nowadays.

United Kingdom:

Quad, size 30 inches by 40 inches, landscape format
Double crown, size 20 inches by 30 inches, portrait format
Three sheet, size 40 inches by 81 inches

Australia:

Daybill, size 30 inches by 13 inches, portrait format
One sheet, size 27 inches by 40 inches, landscape format

Notable film poster designers include Saul Bass, Drew Struzan, Peter Strausfield and Bob Peak.

Lobby Cards are like posters but smaller, usually 11" X 14" or 8" X 10". Lobby Cards are collected and their value depends on their age, quality and popularity. Typically issued in sets of 8, each featuring a different scene from the film.

External links

• The Guardian, October 3, 2005, "How to flog a turkey" - on Revolver's UK poster quotes
• BBC news story, November 15, 2005 "on world record price paid for a film poster"
• Movie Poster
• PosterDB - German Database for Movie Posters (ger/eng)
• Learn About Movie Posters - largest free reference site regarding collecting movie posters
• LAMP Movie Poster Data Base - largest Movie Poster Data Base on the internet