FilmChik

Festival Entry Stickers

If you've won the Cannes Film Festival's Palme D'Or, then it makes sense, clearly, to put that on the poster. However, what doesn't tend to fool people is putting together a collection of seemingly-important award motifs that simply beg closer inspection.

In the case of this example, Cape Of Good Hope, it actually has some winners to go with its collection of festival goodness. But really: what does official selection at a festival mean? Is it just us that takes this to mean that the film was, well, shown? That's hardly a selling point is it, nor is it an indicator as to whether anyone liked it or not?

In the case of this example, they've even cited the fact that it had a world premiere, parading it in the style of some posh award that it clearly isn't.

The rule of festival stickers should be this: if people haven't heard of the festival, and/or you haven't won a prize, then it's not a good idea to include it.

What next? A ‘We're Stocked At Blockbuster' logo?

 

People With The Top Of Their Heads Cut Off Who Have Smoke Billowing From Their Brain

A common sense rule that the poster for The Age Of Stupid cruelly overlooked.

 

Too Many Critics' Quotes

It's always nice to get good reviews, and should your feature be acclaimed, then why not put a few quotes on the poster to add an extra selling message?

However, all good things come in moderation, and sometimes, the temptation to splatter the poster with movie quotes to the point of forgetting to even offer a hint as to what the film is about is too high.

Be particularly wary of very short critic quotes that look like they could have been taken out of context. A pity, in this example, as Boiler Room is a fine movie.

For future reference too, saying 'Ben Affleck Has Never Been Better' is not what most of us would describe as a particularly strong selling point.

 

Badly Photoshopped Pictures Of Colin Firth

Photoshop: a computer program that's become a life saver for many graphic designers and photographers. Faking stars on photos is no new game, either. It was well reported that it wasn't Julia Roberts' body on that Pretty Woman poster, for instance.

That said, the trick to this conceit is to make it invisible to the naked eye. What you absolutely don't want to do is add in a picture of a star who wasn't available for the photo shoot, who clearly looks as if they were in a different place at a different time and in different light. Because people will just ignore your film and laugh about the poster on the Internet instead.

The poster for The Accidental Husband is a particularly fine example, given that it looks like the three actors here were all blatantly at three different photoshoots.

 

Irrelevant ‘From The' lines

It's worth promoting the fact that a director with a past success is behind a new film, and, likewise, if a writer as a major success in their past, then why not cite that too? But few things scream ‘crappy movies' louder than resorting to ‘From The Executive Producer Of' or, even worse than that, ‘From The Studio That Brought You...'. That's especially bad if it's citing a decent but generic rom-com as its previous work. Seriously: who walked out of The Proposal and thought I must seek out more films from the company that released it?

From the studio that brought you? It's a bit like saying it's from the accountants who greenlit the last hit film isn't it? It's hardly a sign that two hours of creative genius awaits...