Before They Were Films, They Were Sketches

Tom Walsh, President of the Art Directors Guild and I had the pleasure of being interviewed by
Susan Stamberg of NPR's Morning Edition this past week. The show focused on Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction and the NPR website did a wonderful accompanying piece on their website "Long Before Computers, How Movies Made Us Believe."

I love film art and thought you would enjoy a few renderings from the book. Above is production designer John De Cuir Sr.'s barge design for Cleopatra and below is the centerpiece set for Dr. Zhivago, the ice palace. Shot on set in Spain (and in the summer no doubt), production designer John Box literally placed wax on everything inside the dacha while a prop man dutifully followed him with a bucket of cold water and splashed the wax. Hence the look of ice cycles and one of the most memorable sets in Hollywood history.

Production designer Stephen Gooson's designs for the lamasery in Lost Horizons -- built and shot on the Columbia studio ranch. The film's version of Shangri La was built to scale in two months and the designers were strongly influenced by Buddhist buildings and the works of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Production designer William Cameron Menzies designed over 2000 sketches for the storyboards for Gone With the Wind. The watercolor of Tara below is by artist Dorothea Holt Redmond. Tara cost $12,000 to build on the Selznick backlot and telephone poles were wrapped to resemble trees. Sorry to spoil the grandeur of Tara.

Chinatown restaurant scene with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway above and continuity sketch below. The period film was designed by Richard Sylbert.

If you are in the Los Angeles area this week, I will be signing books on Thursday, February 3rd at Barnes and Noble, 1800 Crans Avenue in Manhattan Beach from 11-3 PM and Book Soup on Friday, February 4th at 7:00 PM in West Hollywood. I will also be speaking at the Beverly Hills Women's Club with a book signing to follow on Thursday evening at 6:30. For more information see their website here.
Whew!

Photo Credits: Columbia Pictures, Paramount, MGM, Twentieth Century Fox, Art Directors Guild

Movie Art: Collecting Vintage Posters

While commercialism is often front and center in the design of a movie poster, the designs can also be works of art. Since the beginning of film, posters (also known as "one sheets") have been a primary marketing tool used to publicize a film and fill the seats. Vintage posters (along with stills and lobby cards) have become hot collector's items over the years and have been known to fetch anywhere from $500 to $20,000 or more at auction.

At a Christie's auction in London last November, a rare one of three Casablanca posters created for the American ad campaign drew $109,000 while Attack of the 50 ft. Woman sold for $23,900 and the Bond films such as From Russia with Love went for around $22,600. As with any collection, buy what you love and the older and more vintage, the better.

Whether classic or contemporary, the following have made many top lists for both design and popularity as a collectible:

With its iconic image of the little black dress and cigarette holder, the poster for Breakfast at Tiffany's is just as stylish today as it was in l961.

All About Eve (1950) depicts the film's wit and sardonic humor with this design...

Faye Dunaway's iconic image for the Chinatown (1974) poster became a classic...


as did the haunting face of Mia Farrow in Roman Polanski's 1968 horror Rosemary's Baby.

The design for The Graduate (1967) is one of the most instantly recognizable images in film....

while the simplicity and color of the design for Sullivan's Travels (1941) makes this a sought after poster.

Through film posters we can see traces of the styles of the times...

Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai was classic forties...


as was A Hard Day's Night in the sixties, Mahogany in the seventies and Moonstruck in the late eighties...

Experts recommend learning everything there is to know about the market and selecting a niche (for example, a genre such as film noir, etc.) and concentrating on that. Foreign posters tend to demand more (a German poster of Breakfast at Tiffany's went for $17,500). While vintage is certainly a hot area, consider how popular a recent release will be in the years to come. Posters can be found at auctions, ebay, and websites such as filmposters.com and emovieposter.com auctions.

Two of the best books on the subject is the Art of the Modern Movie Poster (Judith Salavetz, Chronicle, 2008) and A Century of Movie Posters: From Silent to Art House (Emily King, Barron's, 2003) Both are available on Amazon.