Monday 7 October 2013

Early 20th Century Sci-Fi Movie Posters


Started looking into sci fi movie posters from the early 20th century (1930's - 1940's) and i found this site immediately which has a variety of posters that were made back in the early 20th century.

http://www.cinemacom.com/50s-sci-fi-BEST.html


http://wrongsideoftheart.com/page/2/?s=day+of+the+triffids&submit_x=0&submit_y=0

I also when on a few more sites to get an idea of most sci fi films back then looked like, in order to get a kind of overview of the ways in which the posters were designed and portrayed. The two examples above both really caught my attention, they are both early sci fi films and are very bold to say the least.

When i first saw these two posters the colour scheme/ design style kind of made me think slightly back to pop art with the limited colour schemes which are very bold and bright, as well as very eye catching. The reasoning people made sci fi posters like these back then could've been to really catch people's attention and interest having used very bright colours like reds, yellows and even contrasting colours with blacks and whites. Back then sci fi was a very popular movie genre so trying to make the posters different from any others help to gain more popularity and interest.

In the left sci fi poster the art style reminded me of a very pop art, comic book strip theme, which is very strong and bold with the use of imagery, typography and obviously the colour scheme. Whereas on the right side the other poster uses a lot of contrasting colours with dark reds, and sharp and bold yellows. Using a range of tints to merge these colours with the imagery, giving it a very strong and vivid outlook and overall appearance, which works really well.




The next two sci fi film posters from the early 20th century were very well known and popular back then and even both of them having remakes and animated versions of the films as well. These are the posters from King Kong and Metropolis. King Kong was especially a world wide success and did really well in the box office and is a great film which was made back in the early 20th century. Metropolis is relating more to science and technology relating with bots. 

The Metropolis poster has a very arty feel and a type of robotic/future feel towards it with the use of imagery and the colours of grey/silvers which blend with the whites. The title is bold with the use of the red, in order to make the title of the film stick in your head. The alignment of the typography is very odd and is placed of each side of the poster which is also odd. This helps to give it a almost brainwashing and robotic feel to it.

In contrast the King Kong poster is more focused on the ape itself along with the title rather whats going on in the background. The font is serif and is 3 dimensional and also reminds me of a very comic like font type. The use of the bold colour from the font as well as the very large and strong imagery of the ape helps to gain the main attraction to the poster and at the time would give somewhat enigma to people who saw this poster and would appeal to the and convince them to watch it.


Overall i've noticed looking at these posters is that the posters use:

San Serif (To make it informal and appeal to all)
Occasionally limited colours (to be bold and not to overwhelming in detail)
Typography aligned most of the time (to make it look neat or stand out)








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