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A film poster is a poster used to advertise a film. There may be several versions for one film, with variations in regards to size, content and country of production of the poster. It usually contains an image with text, though this has evolved over time from image-free bill posters through to the highly visual digital productions of today. The text usually contains the film title in large lettering and often the names of the main actors. It may also include a tag line, the name of the director, names of characters, the release date, etc.
Film posters are displayed inside and on the outside of movie theaters, and elsewhere on the street or in shops. The same images would appear in a film exhibitor's pressbook and may also be used on websites, DVD-packaging, flyers, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, etc.
Use of such posters 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 movie theater. By the early 1900s, they began to feature illustrations of a scene from each individual film or an array of overlaid images from several scenes. Other movie posters have used artistic interpretations of a scene or even the theme of the film, represented in a wide variety of artistic styles. Movie posters are produced in a large number of sizes to meet various advertising needs.
History
Originally, film posters were produced for the exclusive use by the theatres exhibiting the film the poster was created for, and the copies of the posters were required to be returned to the distributor after the film left the theatre. In the United States, posters were usually returned to a nation-wide operation called the National Screen Service (NSS) which printed and distributed most of the film posters for the studios between 1940 and 1984. As an economy measure, the NSS regularly recycled posters that were returned, sending them back out to be used again at another theatre.
