Every morning, third-year computer science student Matt Sperry wakes up to a big picture of Kurt Russell astride a motorcycle, clad in a leather vest and an eye patch.
The poster ““ the only one in Sperry’s sparsely decorated room ““ is from the science fiction movie “Escape from Los Angeles,” a film that Sperry insists is one of his favorites, which also include “No Country for Old Men” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
“Kurt Russell’s movies really crack me up, so I felt like I should have a big picture of that in my room,” Sperry said.
Many students are using movie posters to keep the bleak white walls of their rooms at bay, though perhaps less ironically than Sperry does.
“In many cases, the stuff that we just slap on our walls can say a lot about who we are,” said film and television professor Jonathan Kuntz, whose one-time college apartment was wallpapered with dozens of movie posters.
Thanks to their availability and low prices, movie posters can be used not only to hide the worn walls of students’ rooms, but also as a way for students to express themselves in crowded communal dormitories, where private living quarters can easily become public lounges.
“You know when people walk in and see your posters, they’re going to kind of judge you,” said Kassie Funcell, a second-year chemical engineering student. Her room features posters from the movies “Fight Club” and “Sin City.”
“I feel like I have a more guyish taste in movies, because I’m kind of a tomboy myself,” Funcell said.
Among some college students, movie posters have acquired a status comparable to that of visual art, spawning their own society of collectors with varying tastes and preferences.
“A movie poster that I would like should really be like a painting, in the sense that it conveys a lot of things,” said Loukas Pappis, a first-year economics student. The walls of his room are adorned with posters of “Casablanca” and “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back,” among many others.
Second-year cognitive science student Stephanie Moran sometimes browses Internet film poster retailers, such as AllPosters.com, in search of unique posters.
“I am definitely attracted to stuff that’s not mainstream, something obscure, that not everyone knows about,” Moran said.
Movie posters have come a long way from their traditional promotional purpose, and they’re not just for decorating college dorm rooms. Originally created as a marketing tool, movie posters have become respected as art in their own right.
The annual Key Art Awards honor images and icons that define marketing campaigns and include a film poster category; film poster artists such as Saul Bass (credited for posters for “The Shining”) and John Alvin (credited for “Blade Runner” and “The Lion King”) have acquired significant fame for their work.
Original posters, including some of the posters that papered Kuntz’s college apartment, have become collector’s items worth tens of thousands of dollars, he said. An original poster for the 1927 film “Metropolis” recently sold for $690,000.
From their humble beginnings as simple informational placards outside of buildings where movies were showing, movie posters have evolved into a glossy amalgamation of images and text that function as windows into the world of the movie.
“Poster art is designed to kind of encapsulate the movie’s themes and convey its look and attitude. It’s really what you might call a concentrated version of the film,” Kuntz said.
The posters are also the “face” of the movie, he said. “The images you see on movie posters are seen all over the world, in newspapers, magazines and on the Internet.”
Kuntz said that students relate to today’s movies more strongly, thanks to the striking visuals and engrossing worlds created with better technology. Movies such as “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “The Matrix” create impressive dimensions that draw in younger viewers.
“It’s not surprising that students have taken these promotional advertising images and re-purposed them to create their own unique environments,” Kuntz said.
The increasing sophistication of modern movies and concomitantly, their marketing campaigns, has spawned a more evocative brand of film posters that rely heavily on strong creative designs. The recent horror movie “The Eye” featured a chilling design of a hand reaching out of a bloodshot eye, and the dystopian “Children of Men” was promoted with the image of a fetus in the womb.
The increasingly provocative designs have met favorably with students who cast a discriminating eye on typical marketing fare.
Sperry expressed distaste for the image-heavy “floating head” designs that adorn many movie posters, such as those for the recent “Alvin and the Chipmunks.”
“I like sparse movie posters that aren’t too busy. I feel like you can communicate a lot with a kind of a minimal design,” he said.
Although the design of many popular posters is somewhat stereotypical, other students have found meaning and identity in just the memory of the movie itself.
“These movies just mean so much to me. They’re such a big part of who I am,” Funcell said.