RESEARCH: JAPANESE FILM POSTERS

Foreign Film posters can offer a fresh perspective  that sometimes U.S and U.K alternatives lack. 

Secondary to that some of films released in other countries can give the opportunity for some interesting designs due to the different themes sometimes involved. The first several images are photos from a japanese poster book that I stumbled across online.  It contains a number of alternatives to a lot of western classics, as well as some interesting Japanese films like 'Ran' and other Kurosawa pictures.  

Some of the titles include 'Taxi Driver', 'The Sound of Music', 'Ben Hur', 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly', 'Enter The Dragon' and various James Bond Titles. 

It's interesting to see that some of the posters are very recognisable while others are more unique and have obviously had an artist hand in being developed. In some cases I can tell that the designer has just taken the poster and converted the text to the japanese characters but in most cases changes have been made. I have noticed that on a lot of these japanese poster text is very prevalent.  If you look at the poster below for example There is a lot going on in terms of information. You have text of different colour and size both vertically and horizontally placed all over the poster.

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Although there are many awesome poster here this is probably my favourite of all the japanese poster versions of western films. If you are unfamiliar with this movie, It's called 'Army Of Darkness'. It's a B-grade zombie-type film from 1992, and stars Bruce Campbell and directed by Sam Rami of 'Spiderman' fame. What I like about this poster so much Is that the design has taken some of the more icon images from the original American release of the poster and made some other rather bizarre changes of his/her own. My favourite additional elements are a grocery bag from the fictitious department store in which  the main character works. (S-Mart). There are also some amusing speech bubbles with famous catchphrases. most notably 'Gimme some sugar baby'. Finally and possibly most interestingly The designer has made the connection between the the main star's second name and the soup company 'Campbells' and decided to display the actors name and the title of the film on a series of soup cans. It made me laugh because Its and interesting observation that you just wouldn't see on a western film poster.