It’s next to impossible to think of Raiders of the Lost Ark without recalling Richard Amsel’s whip-wielding portrait of Harrison Ford, but illustrations for movie posters are becoming a lost art. © Paramount Pictures.

Years ago at the dawn of the video editing age, a trade magazine quoted an old-time film editor bemoaning the new, onrushing technology. “You can’t see it, you can’t touch it,” he complained of the magnetic tape. There were no images for him to eyeball, no work print upon which symbols for fades and lap dissolves could be scrawled in grease pencil. The tools of his lifelong career — and it seemed, himself — were growing obsolete.

One wonders if that editor gave up and retired, full of resentment. Or perhaps he rolled up his sleeves, grit his teeth and learned how to edit on a keyboard and computer screen. Either way, today just about all film and TV editing is computer-based; the grease pencil has gone the way of carbon paper and manual typewriters.

It’s happening all over again; this time to the illustrators whose artwork graced a generation’s worth of movie posters. It’s next to impossible to think of Raiders of the Lost Ark without recalling Richard Amsel’s whip-wielding portrait of Harrison Ford, and Bob Peak’s nightmarish image of a blood-tinted Marlon Brando for Apocalypse Now is equally unforgettable. Rick Meyerowitz’s in-a-nutshell rendering of Animal House’s plot and characters is as iconic as the film itself — but don’t expect to see their likes again anytime soon.

Once again, technology is the culprit. This time however, the change is being driven by a new generation of executives and art directors, not to mention audiences who (as some see it) have come to expect the same degree of realism in movie advertising as in the special effects they see onscreen.

Bob Peak’s nightmarish image of a blood-tinted Marlon Brando for Apocalypse Now is unforgettable. © Paramount Pictures.

“I wouldn’t call it a trend away from illustration. I’d call it running away as fast as it can.” The speaker is Drew Struzan, the man who painted a dramatically posed and lit Michael J. Fox next to a blazing DeLorean for Back to the Future. “It started about 15 years ago, but now there’s no room for anything else. I used to have two or three projects in the studio at any one time, I’d be painting a couple a month. Now I’m down to a couple a year and it’s because of the change to computers. Computer guys are in there generating ideas for posters. I can’t compete because I sit down and draw them. Not only that, if the director or producer says ‘change that color,’ it’s very easy for them to change it on the computer. It happens very fast.”

Warren Nung, an art director with the design firm BLT Assoc. is a “wake up and smell the coffee” type of guy. “Illustration has evolved into a different form — it’s a digital world now. Music is digital, art is digital and advertising is digital too. If those guys 20 or 30 years ago had the means to use the tools that we have, they’d be using them and bringing their artistry into the process instead of drawing a concept and filling it with watercolor.”

The means are one part of the changing equation; the ends — crafting the most compelling images to sell movies have shifted as well. “From a marketing standpoint,” Nung states, “a photographic scene is a much more convincing way to sell an idea or a concept, rather than illustrating it. There’s no leap of faith necessary. If you illustrate Spider-Man, it’s clear he’s an illustration, as opposed to a guy who’s actually on the precipice of a building 1,000 feet up in air. If it’s photographic, you’re gonna get a ‘wow’ factor you won’t get from an illustration. The general trend is people are more visually sophisticated today, they’re aware of special effects. When they see an amazing scene instead of going ‘wow, that’s unbelievable,’ they think, ‘wow, great special effects.’”

Drew Struzan, responsible for this memorable image of Michael J. Fox and his DeLorean for Back to the Future, sees the studios running away from movie poster illustrations as fast as they can. © MCA Universal.

New York illustrator Steve Brodner agrees, and disagrees. “While things are more sophisticated technically today, there’s much less sophistication in terms of subtlety and how you express things. I think that’s happened to commercial art in general as well as movies. I don’t know why it changes. Like a lot of things, the corporate world wasn’t smart enough in the old days. They hadn’t figured out that they would make more money if they market researched every tiny little thing. But if you do, then what you come up with must be easily understood by people with college degrees and people who have never been within yards of a school.”

Brodner’s poster illustration for Warren’s Beatty’s 1998 political satire, Bullworth, instantly communicates the film’s premise of a sedate politician refashioning himself as a white rapper by depicting a hip-hop dressed Beatty climbing out of the mouth of a larger, business suited version of himself. In the eight years since Bullworth’s release an equally memorable poster illustration has yet to come along.

“Bullworth was a fluke and not a trend as people were saying at the time,” Brodner admits. “A film’s poster is usually a corporate decision, but Beatty had creative control over the film and its promotion — it was his decision to use illustration. Warren was the writer/director/producer/star/casting director — and he fancied himself a graphic designer too. He was very much leaning over my shoulder the whole time.”