I’ve already covered the glorious use of posters in an earlier post. This time I’m going to be talking about the images that distributors release before a film is released.
They tend to come in different styles. Theses can be described as:
1. The ensemble shot of all the leading cast looking wistfully into the distance. This maybe confused with Brian Cox standing on a volcano looking, wistfully, up at the stars.
2. The main lead doing the same. This one tends to be as a portrait and not a landscape one as most of the other images tend to be. In this case the easiest one was a landscape one of Robert Downey Jr
3. The “action shot”. Normally involving the male, but occasionally the female, lead running around with a gun / rocket launcher / tactical nuclear missile shooting indiscriminately. This can also be true for romantic/comedy films as well. This image easily transcends the genre that the film actually is… The other sort of action shot is where the lead is walking away from an enormous explosion that has destroyed either a petrol station, the enemy’s main base, half a city block or similar.
4. The landscape. Mostly the rolling hills of Middle Earth, the planet Zog or monument valley to name but three.
5. The “geek one” AKA the one I don’t like at all. This can be broken down into two different types. The first is the director sitting in a char behind a bank of monitors that would make the director of some action films burst into tears. The other type is a shot of the cast in front of the cameras acting out a scene. This one also can give extra points for people who notice the tape on the floor to show where the main actors have to stop before spurting out their hacked dialogue.
6. This one only tends to apply to films that are still shooting. This is the “first release image”. This one may, or may not, be in the final cut of the film. This has happened many times in trailers where you see a scene and then wonder why it’s not in the film. That’s the glory of editing kiddo! Some things are cut because they don’t work in the story as the director thought it might, the film was running long or the coup-de-gras : That whole sub-plot was removed and now the film makes even less sense than it would have done if that was there. All but the grace of the “Directors extended cut version” – only available on gold plated, steel bust box-set version [Available only on the film’s soon to be defunct website for £1,000 :)]
The other thing that happens is the gap between 6 and the rest of the list. The first image for Man Of Steel was released months, if not years, ago and with only a poster to come since then the flow of images is dead. This changes with weeks, or days, to go before release when the media’s in-boxes are filled with requests to download the new image set [only 100MB with 5,000 “new” images in them. These “new” images are the same ones that you have seen in the main film magazines for the last couple of months]
