What Details Are Included in Film on Paper's Movie Poster Entries?

Updated

Film on Paper's poster entries follow a consistent two-part structure: a Poster details table covering the film and the physical poster, followed by a written description of the poster's artwork, printing and context. The archive holds over 2,000 posters from the UK, USA, Japan, Thailand and beyond, alongside articles by Sim Branaghan, author of British Film Posters: An Illustrated History. Each entry is dated and filed under the Poster Archive category.

The film details block

Every entry opens with the film's identity:

  • Title and AKA — alternate titles, often with a translation. The Jaws program entry lists Les dents de la mer [The teeth of the sea] (France).
  • Year of Film
  • Director
  • Starring — full cast list, not just the leads
  • Origin of Film — the country that produced the film
  • Genre(s) of Film — multiple genres where relevant, e.g. Horror | Thriller for Jaws, Comedy | Horror for Blades

The poster details block

This is where the physical object is documented:

Field What it records
Type of Poster e.g. One sheet, Program
Style of Poster Style variant, where one exists
Origin of Poster Country the poster was printed for
Year of Poster Often matches the film year, but recorded separately
Designer Named where known
Artist The illustrator, e.g. Roger Kastel (cover) for Jaws
Size (inches) Given to fractions of an inch, e.g. 27 2/16" x 40 15/16"
SS or DS Single-sided or double-sided
NSS # National Screen Service number, where applicable
Tagline The poster's marketing line

Fields with no known value are marked with a dash rather than omitted, so you can tell the difference between "unknown" and "not applicable."

The written description

Below the tables, each entry carries a short essay. These typically cover the artwork's history, the film's production or reception, and the poster's specific context. The Jaws program entry, for example, explains that Roger Kastel's image was originally commissioned for the paperback cover of Peter Benchley's novel, that Universal bought the rights for the poster, and that the program was sold at Japanese screenings. It also notes that Kastel painted the Empire Strikes Back one sheet, and flags a detail worth knowing: the program includes a hand-written message for Japanese "movie buffs."

The Blades entry shows the same pattern from the opposite direction — a Troma production described as "one of the only golfing-related horror films ever made," with the tagline quoted in full.

What this means in practice

If you are identifying a poster, the table gives you the fields to match against: size, SS/DS, NSS number, artist and country of origin. If you are researching a film's marketing, the description supplies the provenance — who painted the image, where it first appeared, and how it was reused. Entries also carry a post date, a category and a permalink, and some allow comments.