What is KEY ART?

According to Wikipedia, key art is "A film 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 evoved over time from image-free bill posters to 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."

Based on personal experience, it is one of the most fun types of projects that a graphic artist/illustrator can have. From the brainstorming to the sketches, to final sketches and finished comps, the entire process is thrilling, as well as rewarding, for an artist . However, in the last decade, budgets for key art have dropped by ninety percent, in some cases.

History

Originally, film posters were produced for the exclusive use by the theaters 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 theater. In the United States, posters were usually returned to a nation-wide operation called the National Screening 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 theater. During this time, a film could stay in circulation for several years, and so many old film posters were badly worn before being retired into storage at an NSS warehouse (most often, they were thrown away when they were no longer needed or had become too worn to be used again.) Those posters which were not returned were often thrown away by the theater owner, but some film posters found their way into the hands of collectors.

Beginning in the 1980s, the American film studios began taking over direct production and distribution of their posters from the National Screen Service and the process of making and distributing film posters became decentralized in this country.

Today

According to International Movie Awards.com, there are more than 100 agencies in Southern California that specialize in key art for entertainment and there are varying degrees in which key art can be created. From the "creme of the crop" agencies that will start by thinking with their brains, a pad, a pencil and an hour behind closed doors, to the "bottom of the barrel," take-what-you-can-get projects where you have to make something from a few, out-of-focus images, yesterday. But either way, the work better shine.

For more about KEY ART, please click here.

For a listing of agencies in Southern California that specialize in key art, please click here.