The Movie Poster

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.
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.
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. 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 theatre 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 decentralised in that country.

Teaser poster
A teaser poster or advance poster is an early promotional film poster, containing a basic image or design without revealing too much information such as the plot, theme, and characters. The purpose is to incite awareness and generate hype for the film. A tagline may be included. There are some instances when teaser posters are issued long in advance before the film goes into production, although they are issued during the film development.

Most film posters are made for the target market, to catch a certain age groups eye etc. If they are films made for older audiences, 15, 18's etc, the poster is does not usualy contain anything that will not be suitable to be seen in the street or a magazine.
Posters contain:
- Film title
- Sometimes the tag line
- Some movie posters have more film listings than others (depending on whether it is a teaser poster or full poster)
- They include image, photo or grapch which represents or symbolises the film, sometimes using the characters.