Movies' new poster boy
By Patrick Goldstein
Los Angeles Times, April 12 2002
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/04/12/1018333410463.html

Nick Des Barres is a 23-year-old aspiring actor and former videogame magazine designer who can normally be found at any hour playing Rez, Final Fantasy 10 and Metal Gear Solid 2.

Now he has something to add to his resume - he's designed the poster for Resident Evil, an action-horror film that opens this month.

Under normal circumstances, an untutored fan like Des Barres wouldn't have a prayer of even getting in the door. Known in the business as one-sheets, posters are the product of a sophisticated, tightly controlled marketing process by which advertising firms submit dozens of poster concepts to studios, which decide on a final image only after running contenders past a horde of market research focus groups.

But when Screen Gems marketing chief Valerie Van Galder saw Resident Evil, she thought it was the type of movie that needed a fan-friendly approach. Based on a popular videogame of the same name, Resident Evil's core audience would clearly be young videogame fans and Internet geeks. Made by Paul W. S. Anderson, who directed the video-game-derived Mortal Kombat, the film features Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez as commandos who have three hours to neutralise a deadly virus that's overwhelmed a genetic research facility and threatens to overrun the entire planet. It's full of yucky creatures like the Licker and the Zombie Dogs, which are well known to fans of the Evil videogames.

A Web devotee who still believes the fabled Blair Witch Project online blitzkrieg was a portent, Van Galder had a brainstorm - if we really want a poster that appeals to young, Internet-savvy videogamers, why not let one of them design the poster?

Van Galder launched the poster design contest on Resident Evil's website. Publicising the contest solely through Internet word of mouth, Screen Gems received 3000 entries. Des Barres' poster won by a landslide when 10,000 people voted for five finalists on the Web. In addition to having the studio use his artwork, he received $2500, a framed poster and a free screening for friend on the Sony lot.

What makes the Evil poster contest so unusual is that it defies one of the original commandments of Hollywood - never give up control of any aspect of your publicity campaign. But times are changing.

One of the past year's biggest hits, New Line Cinema's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, owes at least some of its success to a savvy Internet marketing campaign that allowed fan-based websites unprecedented access to the filmmaking process.

Van Galder has a similar philosophy at Screen Gems, a veteran film label reborn three years ago that bears a close resemblance to the brash mid1990s New Line; its mandate is to release genre films made on modest budgets geared to young moviegoers.

``If you do research to see what a movie's core audience likes, then this was the ultimate focus group,'' Van Galder says. ``The Internet is the key market that wants to see this film, and they overwhelmingly picked the poster they liked, so in a way it was better than having a focus group do it.

"We let the real fans do it.''

Even though movie posters from Hollywood's golden age are valuable collectables, today's film posters are a neglected art. Since the rise of TV advertising in the late 1970s, posters have been relegated to a lesser role in movie marketing campaigns. It's no coincidence that the last great era of poster design, which produced a string of evocative images for films such as The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby and A Clockwork Orange, came just before the ascendancy of TV ad campaigns.

Research has shown that the vast majority of moviegoers make their film-going decisions based on TV ads and movie trailers. Poster design has also been hamstrung by star contracts that give actors control over the size and placement of their names and images.

Nonetheless, posters remain a pivotal ingredient in movie publicity campaigns, establishing a film's identity by providing fans with the first images from movies. For movie marketers, it's a nobrainer. If you're paying a star $US20 million, your poster might as well display his or her head as if it was a parade float.

The best movie posters are half art, half advertising and all visual stimulation. They tickle our subconscious through the art of suggestion. Des Barres' Resident Evil design won't make a movie poster hall of fame, but its image delivers a clear message - this movie is going to give you a real scare.

``I'm no poster expert,'' Des Barres says. ``But I wanted to suggest a lot of gore without hitting you over the head with it. You only have five seconds to catch someone's eye, so I wanted to do something that people might think was striking and new.''

- LA Times

Resident Evil opens on April 25.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/04/12/1018333410463.html