My name is James Berta Soto.

I'm a movie poster artist.

I've been designing posters for over 30 years.

Today we're gonna talk about color trends in movie poster design.

This trend is traditionally used to market comedies to a mainstream audience.

The white background allows the focus of the attention on the action that's occurring within the photograph.

These air very clean studio that photo shoots each one has a definitive idea that could be pitched or could be sold as a marketing strategy.

The white space allows the viewer to engage with the poster with very little backstory occurring in the environment theme.

In this case, you have the lead actors in a situation with the spilling of the coffee, the luggage here, the clothing that's being used for trade, that personality types the expressions.

All of these devices are used to pitch an idea about what to expect from this situational comedy.

This border creates a frame to allow the action to occur Off of The Frame is presented as an upscale kind of high end comedy with big stars.

Let's take a look at Meet the Parents.

The scale of the characters have gone a lot smaller.

The logo has gotten a lot bigger.

The use of negative space here is very powerful, allows the viewer to focus and engage on this action.

This action is correlated to the copy line, but also seems like it's a direct lift from the movie itself.

And in this case, two seem to be a specific set up that staged to communicate a message.

Now we're going to take a look at the Color Blue used in thriller posters and also the introduction of the character running down the street.

Kind of like a surefire formula for action thrillers here with the sense of more action you're bringing in the yellow, the more technological introducing more of the yellow and green here, the more kind of character cell with his glory environment.

This trend has its roots in film noir.

If we take a look at the poster for the third man, Weaken, see this running figure with a gun as the main element for this poster in an environment which is a little bit more prominent because it's it's the whole poster itself.

This has become an iconic element that's used in the majority of thriller posters this trend really took off in the John Grisham novels from the nineties.

As you can see the running character in the street in the blue toning kind of the language for thriller advertising, this color scheme game prominence with the adaptation of the firm as you can see, the blue color scheme, The Running Man, this dramatic shadow here there's introduced the secondary character, but you have this kind of large moving profile of the main after, which creates his graphic draw.

In this case, the auction is inside the character's head, which plays off the psychological thriller.

Russell Crowe has evolved into a very powerful character after so in this case you're not really showing his phrase front and center here.

They're really selling character, including the action in his head.

Also kind of takes away your attention from his face.

If he was Tom Cruise, showing his face and profile would be enough.

But I think since he wasn't these other elements kind of create a stronger story.

Theo Yellow Background provides this kind of independent voice.

Another reason why Yellow is used to sell smaller films is that the marketing budget is you smaller for independent films, and yellow is a cheap way to catch the eye.

Look at the use of this low quality photography here, where the actors are barely recognizable the characters below title We're usually in a big in a larger film.

They usually have to be above titles.

Also, I think the use of yellow comes directly from independent films from the fifties and the sixties in Europe.

This is a poster for blow up.

We can see the connection with the flat color.

You have this lore as black and white photography on both instances, crudely silhouetted.

In this case, it's a little bit better silhouetted than the Brown Bunny, which I think is evocative Maur of like flyer graphics and punk rock.

This is an example of the punk rock aesthetic of flyer graphics, where everything is like, roughly cut out.

There's a Xerox quality that it is evoked in this poster.

Here we have Indy and comedy coming together in a very strong way.

The sense of negative space is very evocative, like a highbrow advertising where you're not kind of pandering to the viewer.

Let's compare a little Miss Sunshine to this 1973 poster for the optimists.

As you can see, the yellow is lifted directly, but also this running family in the use of scale.

Since the optimist is an intellectual comity in rule, Miss Sun, China's is veering into the grommet e world.

I think melding these two aesthetics together really helped Little Miss Sunshine, and you could just get a sense of the way that history is repeating itself.

This'd is a trend that we've been saying for the last decade in action films.

The black and white imagery used for the main protagonist is a way of portraying the masculinity, portraying the action and having that offset by the explosive device of fire breaking through and clashing with that.

That character gets a way of breaking away from the clutter of traditional action movies and kind of speaking to a younger audience.

And a more progressive view of advertising in the high contrast of the photographic quality creates an intensity for the viewer.

This is die hard, and it's a prime example of the fire creating the conflict of the high contrast Photography is used in a new way to introduce the more modern approach to action movie advertising the way that the actor's face is like split kind of creates this very obvious conflict and then also his eyes kind of leading you up into the flyer, and that's creating the main conflict.

Bruce Willis was not a huge star at the time.

Here he's featured more human character that the viewer can relate to.

This'll Poster is kind of an evolution of the die hard black and white world, but in this case, the black and white photography has gone more graphic.

This particular style allows this kind of like glamour approach to the portrait's of the actors.

And then the action that's promised through the racing car following the direction of the typography holds the whole thing together and creates the conflict from a color perspective.

The orange here is used as a way to draw the eye into the poster and also to offset against the black and white world.

Blue and orange are complementary colors and just become like a surefire approach in movie poster design.

You have this dark blue that holds all the elements together, and the yellow color is used to guide the eye through the poster or lead the eye to the key focus of the narrative of the poster.

This color scheme has been pervasive for a very long time.

And, as you can see in the case of Star Wars, the blue is used to create this universe and the yellow and the orange light, creating the narrative, and it's used to guide the eye and lied the viewer into the universe of the poster.

Here you get the same color scheme, but in a much darker tone.

It's Maur referential to the comic book universe.

Here you kind of have a more neutral version of the blue and orange palate, and here you have a very high key, saturated version.

The minimal use of the yellow here creates a darker tone and hear the bright blue and the orange over saturated color provides more action and mork commercial appeal.

This seems to have been done for the original fan base.

Frank presenters, I would say, the originator of that language of science fiction, he originated.

The poses of thes two characters are very reminiscent of the Star Wars pose.

You have the kind of rock in the foreground that's very much kind of the language of science fiction.

I think this is a prime example of two very different approaches that kind of used the same color toning but have a completely different audience in mind.

You can see it's a much more contemporary approach with the variety of yellows and oranges.

The focus on this dramatic light effect coming from the weapon.

This is the guardians of the Galaxy poster.

This is a perfect example of color going beyond the traditional yellow and orange palate and kind of introducing these secondary colors.

Purple and green brings in a whole new language of movie posts are communication to the marketplace in the force awakens.

You're seeing an example here of the secondary color, the purple green being introduced into the Blue World, which creates this kind of a new portrayal of the science fiction auction universe that talks to a younger audience.