Honestly with Yellow being in indie films, I think he might have meant cheap as in litteraly it costs less money than working with a poster designer in how to catch and lead the eye etc.
Same, the use of heavy black backgrounds and desaturated skin tones to represent death is pretty common trend to me, would be cool to see if an expert thought differently, or where it began.
123rockfan - sorry, but these ARE cherry picked examples that do appear to set or follow a trend, but I can come up with countless examples of posters in all genres that don’t fit neatly into these categories, even if their designs are often deployed to similar effect. If you’ve seen enough movies, or DVDs, or collected enough posters, you’re going to see patterns, but they’re never as far-reaching as you might think.
Look at 50s posters and you'll notice those all follow the same trends. When a style is popular it's used as much as possible, it's not a recent thing.
In my last year of high school studying Visual Communication Design (Australian school) and this was super helpful and straight to the point in describing movie posters and why designers use specific elements and principles to capture an audience. Thank you Vanity Fair!!
Edwin Diaz : Red is the first colour you eye catches. Look at supermarket product. Also, as you state, yellow packaging is for cheap non-brand stuff. [yello-packs as we call them]
Yellow is also used alot in fast food restaurants and convenience stores, because it is really inviting, but it doesn't make you stay for long because it turns into a irritant after a long exposure. So it makes people to make fast decisions.
@@DarkAngelEU when he says cheap, he doesn't mean tacky and lazy... He means genuine monetary value I think. Like he said, these are used by independent movies with a lower budget, if you make the background an eye catching colour then it doesn't matter as much if you don't have a famous face/name on the cover
@@rebeccasmith847 So without any knowledge of printing you assume yellow ink is less expensive than reds or cyans? I really gotta break it to you that these inks have the same price ranges nowadays. Yellow is a cheap colour because our eyes recognize it the easiest. I'm a professional photographer so please, trust me on this one.
I plan on being a book designer, so there's lots of overlap with the shorthands for genres used in colour and text on both covers and posters, which is quite fun. Really interesting too to see the huge differences between the two--book covers (with the exception of children's or middle grade fiction) tend to avoid having the faces of characters on them (so the reader can picture the character however they want to) while movies push the faces of the characters to the centre (especially for big stars to pull in viewers). It's very fun to see someone other than myself explaining the ways designs tell you the genre and feel of a story through codes like colour that you aren't consciously aware of.
It's interesting how, for the most part, movie poster design trends don't really date. When you look at the modern ones next to the older ones they're not that disparate.
The older ones are certainly better. And I don't say that to be a contrarian hipster, but these days the opportunities to market a film are endless, there is less emphasis/budget going toward posters. Back in say, the 60's, posters were a HUGE part of the films marketing so they put a lot of effort and presumably a lot of money into their design. Look at the star wars posters for example, the older ones are painted by a famous poster artist; the newer ones are just photoshopped and edited by some nameless graphic designer.
As a graphic designer and filmmaker, i think this is a brilliant video. Thanks James for sharing these insights - I had guessed the Red and White Comedy one, but you've pointed out some of the more subtle elements of poster design.
You should get a huge loan and do that. I watched this and didn't learn anything, I'm an electrician. This was a waste of data for UA-cam to store this info. We're all dumber fir having watched it. Good luck with your bad decisions.
in "The Force Awakens" what it is really noticeable, more than the use of secondary colors, is the split. Colds and warms are used to show the confrontation of the two factions. Thank you for these videos!
The new or the old one? Because the old one makes sense with the supernatural thriller type genre because Disney was going for a male audience with Aladdin. As for the new one, purple and gold are the colours that represent royalty.
When "Aladdin" first premiered, Disney had a strategy of doing two posters: a busy one and a minimalist one. The latter was intended to communicate the sophistication of the film to prospective audiences that, at the time, believed the only new animated features being made back then were those for children. So, "Aladdin" had a showy poster with a collage of characters and set pieces that were surrounded by a giant Genie, and a simple one with only the magic lamp being rubbed by a pair of disembodied hands that were theatrically lit.
Text legibility: black text against a yellow background is the most legible colour combination, followed closely by blue against white. So indie films' posters can be legible before others, and so hopefully more attractive, earlier.
I’m surprised by the number of people saying that they didn’t realize the color schemes of posters for mainstream genre films. For me personally, I’ve always noticed it since I was really young.
Because the actors names are listen in order of status. High status stars will insist on having their names in the most prominent area of the poster. Whereas the photography line-up will be decided purely by marketing/narrative, so it wouldn't always make sense to arrange the characters photos in the same order as the names on the top of the poster. tl;dr: names are listed in order of star power, photos are arranged in whatever order makes the most narrative sense. Usually these two don't overlap.
What the guy above me said. Also mentioned in this video, sometimes the movie poster is used to pitch the movie or even are just simply taken ahead of time and some managers/agents will even pay and try to outbid eachother with who gets their names on first. But I do think most of the time it is related to status as well.
Negative/white space, using framing or a strong alignment to a strong line to lead the eyes to the desired spots, popping color formulas, and making sure your poster really capitalizes the basic tropes that our culture got used to for that 5 second glance and sell. Like running, thinky profile silhouettes, strong diagonals for speed and action, and character montages. Super condensed, but he did cover a lot. I just couldn't help but to lol because it's all so true on what gets rehashed.
He was like here is a poster, you can see an actor, you can see a title. I'm drawing around the man. Like dude, I guess there is no rhyme or reason for the posters 😂 just copy every other one
Haha, I remember one Polish reviewer roasting Robert De Niro a few years ago by saying that "recently he's only to be seen in the kind movies that have a white poster" and I laughed so hard because it was such a perfect way to put it. Now we have a theory to back it :D
He explains exactly what's wrong with movie posters today, except he celebrates it! There is no originality in movie posters anymore; it's all formula... red and white for comedy, yellow for independent, blue color scheme and film noir guy in running for an action thriller, etc. Look at Drew Struzan's movie posters if you want to see originality, or just about any movie poster artist pre-2000 for that matter. No creativity is involved if you're just following an established formula.
There's no originality because posters don't sell anyone on movies anymore. Posters had to be great back in the day because that was the only marketing they had. Now, everyone knows whether they're going to see a movie way before a poster is even made.
“Yellow is a cheap way to catch the eye”
Vanity: *uses yellow posters for thumbnail*
Jean Cheap, not dumb
Thats why I clicked on this video 😂
they're not saying it's a bad way to catch the eye lol
Honestly with Yellow being in indie films, I think he might have meant cheap as in litteraly it costs less money than working with a poster designer in how to catch and lead the eye etc.
😂
Very interesting video! I like the guys straightforward and pleasant discussion style.
Straightforward for sure but pleasant? It's monotuous throughout the entire vid.
@@flybeep1661 monotone to keep it professional and unbiased. That would be my guess. This guy is experienced and well seasoned.
3:10 wtf he outlined that photo in one stroke perfectly
nearly, except the hair part 👍🏼
Graphic artist/designers be like:
hard for plebs
Not really
I was looking for this comment 👀😱
I wish he would have done a comparison on horror movie posters as well.
Agree! I think it will be really interesting
Same, the use of heavy black backgrounds and desaturated skin tones to represent death is pretty common trend to me, would be cool to see if an expert thought differently, or where it began.
He does. In this other video: ua-cam.com/video/jwWBQMbMpT4/v-deo.html
I’ve never noticed that colours are used to represent the genre
eh its not as cut and dry as it appears here, These are cherry picked examples
Dan Keeling they’re not really cherry picked, it’s a legitimate trend with Hollywood posters
It's not very prominent if you don't pay attention to but if you see them together you know exactly what genre these movies are
you are not really supposed to notice good design
123rockfan - sorry, but these ARE cherry picked examples that do appear to set or follow a trend, but I can come up with countless examples of posters in all genres that don’t fit neatly into these categories, even if their designs are often deployed to similar effect. If you’ve seen enough movies, or DVDs, or collected enough posters, you’re going to see patterns, but they’re never as far-reaching as you might think.
The most impressive thing about this video is how quickly and precisely he outlined Russell Crowe’s profile.
I'd like to know what he thinks about the headless woman phenomenon in movie posters
can you give an example?
It's cheaper, as you don't have to pay the model for the use of their likeness.
what?
there isn't such a trend
it's not a trend its a sjw bs
More James Verdesoto videos please.
Would love to see a series with each video examining posters of a decade.
This is the most comprehensive one I watched about movie posters
ah thats why the last 30 years the posters all looked the same
Yup, stereotype marketing bc the markets are oversaturated.
Look at 50s posters and you'll notice those all follow the same trends. When a style is popular it's used as much as possible, it's not a recent thing.
And look better than the older ones
Design is only interesting when someone who understands it explains it.
You're just not interested or talented in design.
I could watch him do this for hours
Yeah ikr. If he had a UA-cam channel, I would watch it all day
In my last year of high school studying Visual Communication Design (Australian school) and this was super helpful and straight to the point in describing movie posters and why designers use specific elements and principles to capture an audience. Thank you Vanity Fair!!
it just occurred to me that the australian film industry actually exist but nothing can ever be exported.
I was assigned to watch this for homework at my school
"yellow is used as a cheap way to catch the eyes" XD
matt groening gave this as his reason for making the simpsons yellow
Edwin Diaz : Red is the first colour you eye catches. Look at supermarket product. Also, as you state, yellow packaging is for cheap non-brand stuff. [yello-packs as we call them]
That’s why school buses are yellow. Our eyes see yellow better than any other colour (including red) when it comes to our peripheral vision.
Yellow is also used alot in fast food restaurants and convenience stores, because it is really inviting, but it doesn't make you stay for long because it turns into a irritant after a long exposure. So it makes people to make fast decisions.
@@kotkaconforza : Yellow = optimism/wisdom; the flip side is madness - get too close to the sun . . .
Fascinating. I was sad when it was over. More, more, more!
Wish there was more of this type of content out there. I absolutely love when an expert discusses his or hers field of expertise.
I wish he would critique them too, but I guess that would be another video. That would be awesome.
This is critique.
it's really not. He didn't make any value judgements.
@@DarkAngelEU
He did say yellow was a cheap color. Critique can be subtle and more professional than just saying "oh I like this", "this one sucks", etc.
@@DarkAngelEU when he says cheap, he doesn't mean tacky and lazy... He means genuine monetary value I think. Like he said, these are used by independent movies with a lower budget, if you make the background an eye catching colour then it doesn't matter as much if you don't have a famous face/name on the cover
@@rebeccasmith847 So without any knowledge of printing you assume yellow ink is less expensive than reds or cyans? I really gotta break it to you that these inks have the same price ranges nowadays. Yellow is a cheap colour because our eyes recognize it the easiest. I'm a professional photographer so please, trust me on this one.
I plan on being a book designer, so there's lots of overlap with the shorthands for genres used in colour and text on both covers and posters, which is quite fun. Really interesting too to see the huge differences between the two--book covers (with the exception of children's or middle grade fiction) tend to avoid having the faces of characters on them (so the reader can picture the character however they want to) while movies push the faces of the characters to the centre (especially for big stars to pull in viewers). It's very fun to see someone other than myself explaining the ways designs tell you the genre and feel of a story through codes like colour that you aren't consciously aware of.
that beat kept cutting on an up beat and it threw me off the whole video. i needed it to cut out on a kick or a drum break or something
Would love to see a vid on book jacket design 😀
J Randall check out Chip Kidd’s Ted talks if you haven’t !!
I was literally gonna say that @@InMetropolis :)
Me too!
Same here!!!
Metropolis was literally about to recommend
i'd take his class any day
These are some of my favorite videos on this channel. Definitely very informative
It's interesting how, for the most part, movie poster design trends don't really date. When you look at the modern ones next to the older ones they're not that disparate.
The older ones are certainly better. And I don't say that to be a contrarian hipster, but these days the opportunities to market a film are endless, there is less emphasis/budget going toward posters. Back in say, the 60's, posters were a HUGE part of the films marketing so they put a lot of effort and presumably a lot of money into their design. Look at the star wars posters for example, the older ones are painted by a famous poster artist; the newer ones are just photoshopped and edited by some nameless graphic designer.
@@jordanoneill7052 same with credit sequences
As a graphic designer and filmmaker, i think this is a brilliant video. Thanks James for sharing these insights - I had guessed the Red and White Comedy one, but you've pointed out some of the more subtle elements of poster design.
I love these videos, please post more!
I could listen to James for hours ^^
This is fascinating. This makes me want to take a college class on this lol
as a graphic design student no you don't lol
@@theen8564 why not? Does it get tedious and annoying? I'm genuinely curious
You should get a huge loan and do that.
I watched this and didn't learn anything, I'm an electrician.
This was a waste of data for UA-cam to store this info.
We're all dumber fir having watched it. Good luck with your bad decisions.
Kim R I’m a full time graphic designer and I love working in the field! If you are truly fascinated/interested in design, go for it.
Everything here is basic art 101 stuff
this is one of the best videos i’ve ever seen
Tim Owens was thinking the samething
this video is 10 minutes long yet it feels like I've been watching him for hours
I can get over how amazing that marker is; it looks so... juicy?
in "The Force Awakens" what it is really noticeable, more than the use of secondary colors, is the split. Colds and warms are used to show the confrontation of the two factions. Thank you for these videos!
Now I understand why I hate the Aladdin poster! the design just doesn’t fit right with the genre.
The new or the old one? Because the old one makes sense with the supernatural thriller type genre because Disney was going for a male audience with Aladdin. As for the new one, purple and gold are the colours that represent royalty.
When "Aladdin" first premiered, Disney had a strategy of doing two posters: a busy one and a minimalist one. The latter was intended to communicate the sophistication of the film to prospective audiences that, at the time, believed the only new animated features being made back then were those for children. So, "Aladdin" had a showy poster with a collage of characters and set pieces that were surrounded by a giant Genie, and a simple one with only the magic lamp being rubbed by a pair of disembodied hands that were theatrically lit.
Oh yea
I LOVE THIS!! Thanks James Verdesoto, and Vanity Fair! 😭💕
i'd like to see him explain some of his own movie posters
This time people won't be too anxious when he's sketching on the posters.
Text legibility: black text against a yellow background is the most legible colour combination, followed closely by blue against white. So indie films' posters can be legible before others, and so hopefully more attractive, earlier.
“Yellow is a cheap way to catch the eye.”
(Destruction Level: 100)
This was so cool, I never noticed similarities between movie posters of similar genres.
Him drawing on all these nice posters is giving me anxiety 😂😂
Ollie Rad my professor used to do that on my assignments soo
yes!, wasn't the only one. 😅
Same
Yes we're all sure him drawing on copies of posters gave you a neurological disorder
My high anxiety OCD kicked in! 😂
this feels like classic outcome analysis
I'd listen this guy analysing posters for hours.
Wow that's a huge info for graphic designers like me, thank a lot for sharing✨👌😎
It's actually pretty basic knowledge for a graphic designer lol something you should hear about in a high school graphic design class
color theory and using negative space is explained in high school art class
@@ceuti I'm a self taught so that helps me in improving how I look to things, thank you😊
@@archivehans yeah I know but I'm a self taught so that helps me in improving how I look to things, thank you😊
Yes!!! I love these!! Always insightful, and shows how much thought goes into these works of art.
This series is great - I'm looking forward to more poster analysis videos
Infinite thanks. This is pure gold.
Love this on going series!More poster discussions please!
So not only does Hollywood like cranking out similar movies, they also like cranking out similar movie posters.
When you click on a video because you thought for sure that Marc Maron was going to talk about movie posters.
Edward Fraley When you think you can write comedy and it turns out, you can't.
Gg
TGS wdym?
When I realized it wasn’t Maron, I was like, WTF?
I mean, he even sounds like Marc!
Good video but my god the music sting in between each shot, please stop.
I know it's terrible!
It would be better if it was different music but yeah
I quite like the music - the placement is terrible, but I'd like to know the song.
@@casperdewith Same!! Haha it got repetitive after awhile, but the song is actually pretty catchy.
I really love these videos! keep them coming!
Everyone is talking about the commentary, but I just really love the music here. It's so catchy.
I would like to see what he has to say about the poster of Call Me By Your Name!!
Even just with these outlines I cannot believe how good at sketching this guy is
When I see yellow, I think of Kill Bill.
Same. Such a bold series of posters!
Great video. That was veeeery helpful. Thank you.
Thanks for the recommendation UA-cam! Love this artist, he kept me intrigued through the whole video. 👏👏👏
Swedish cover at @6:09 Gisslan aka Hostage (2005). Yay! 🇸🇪👌👌
Very nice video. I'd like to see more of James! Maybe talking about style and such!
Marc Maron sure knows a lot about posters.
I wish next time they can list unconventional movie posters and his personal favorites as an expert
I love that cowbell in between transitions
Very interesting! More of this please
Plains, Trains, and Automobiles is the perfect poster seating an American and Canadian together
Great video on a fascinating but not often spoken about subject. I'm going to watch all this guy's videos. Thanks.
I’ve always been amused by that sci-fi style Star Wars poster in which Luke is super-ripped and Leia looks nothing at all like Carrie Fisher.
I’m surprised by the number of people saying that they didn’t realize the color schemes of posters for mainstream genre films. For me personally, I’ve always noticed it since I was really young.
I kept wondering how did he print all those posters?
This is fascinating. Graphic design in general is fascinating.
I hoped for an answer to why the names of the actors aren't on top of the respective picture on the posters most of the time but in fact are mixed up.
Because the actors names are listen in order of status. High status stars will insist on having their names in the most prominent area of the poster. Whereas the photography line-up will be decided purely by marketing/narrative, so it wouldn't always make sense to arrange the characters photos in the same order as the names on the top of the poster. tl;dr: names are listed in order of star power, photos are arranged in whatever order makes the most narrative sense. Usually these two don't overlap.
What the guy above me said. Also mentioned in this video, sometimes the movie poster is used to pitch the movie or even are just simply taken ahead of time and some managers/agents will even pay and try to outbid eachother with who gets their names on first. But I do think most of the time it is related to status as well.
Great video, thank you for this!
More of theses please
Such an interesting topic! Thank you so much for sharing this.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
This gives me an idea for journal spreads :> thank you ♡
Thanks for Blowing my ears out
I just learnt more during this video than I did during 2 years of Media Studies classes at school.
Niiice love how he had dissected the common themes and poses for the posters.
Do a review on newer movie posters!! And other genre Like animation, horror, sci-fi, and how in modern era there are a lot more color schemes used
I find the explanations a little bit generic to be honest... I was hoping for something more specific.
same
Me too. Didnt buy in to his expertise.
i thought he was very specific
Negative/white space, using framing or a strong alignment to a strong line to lead the eyes to the desired spots, popping color formulas, and making sure your poster really capitalizes the basic tropes that our culture got used to for that 5 second glance and sell. Like running, thinky profile silhouettes, strong diagonals for speed and action, and character montages. Super condensed, but he did cover a lot. I just couldn't help but to lol because it's all so true on what gets rehashed.
Wish this was longer.
I want to see his opinion on the recent Marvel posters, Ragnorok, Guardians vol 2, Infinity war and Endgame. I love the use of color in those.
Enjoyed it, thank you.
Love this! I feel like I learned a lot. This is great 😁
Funny enough, the Die Hard poster almost looks like a horror movie thing. It sure promises a lot of tension :O
this was so interesting, more please!!! 😊👍
more of these, please
He was like here is a poster, you can see an actor, you can see a title. I'm drawing around the man. Like dude, I guess there is no rhyme or reason for the posters 😂 just copy every other one
I want all these poster collage boards to put up on my wall!!! STAT!!
I will never look at movie posters the same ever again.
Very interesting, thanks
This is so fascinating!
I want something like this but for game covers too. Very informative!
It really isn't that different.
Almost every game cover is exactly the same nowadays, just a dude stood in the centre, holding whatever item/weapon symbolises the genre of the game
This was my favorite so far.
Haha, I remember one Polish reviewer roasting Robert De Niro a few years ago by saying that "recently he's only to be seen in the kind movies that have a white poster" and I laughed so hard because it was such a perfect way to put it. Now we have a theory to back it :D
Wow. This is interesting. I could listen to him analyzing movie posters for hours.
Wow loved that. Thanks for sharing
when you learn more one youtube than actual film school! great video!
This was way more interesting than I was expecting.
He explains exactly what's wrong with movie posters today, except he celebrates it! There is no originality in movie posters anymore; it's all formula... red and white for comedy, yellow for independent, blue color scheme and film noir guy in running for an action thriller, etc. Look at Drew Struzan's movie posters if you want to see originality, or just about any movie poster artist pre-2000 for that matter. No creativity is involved if you're just following an established formula.
There's no originality because posters don't sell anyone on movies anymore.
Posters had to be great back in the day because that was the only marketing they had.
Now, everyone knows whether they're going to see a movie way before a poster is even made.
Expert: So how much do you want me to scribble all over the posters?
Vanity Fair: Yes
That is a semester's worth of classes right there