What is Digg?134 Comments
- agjimenez, on 10/12/2007, -8/+304DVD's have covers? I thought they all came in those little red envelopes.
- deezp1, on 10/12/2007, -20/+165DVDs have cover art? I thought movies only come rar'ed
- BrienD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+78That's exactly what the post says.
- gruk, on 10/12/2007, -5/+62as a consumer let me tell you. he's absolutely right.
- diulei, on 10/12/2007, -1/+53Yea, I bet it's basically required from the management to have huge shots of the main celebrities' faces on a DVD cover.
I found this article quite funny actually. Some of those DVD covers do look like someone just downloaded a copy of Photoshop though. - ryodoan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+39But remember folks. It aint our crappy marketing, extreme arrogance, or even a general rehashing of old material that is causing a drop in movie sales, no.
Its those damn video pirates!
/Stupid single mothers with 5 kids, ruining our profits... - FXPooky, on 10/12/2007, -2/+35Although I disagree generally about his comments, the Casino Royale box art really is stunningly atrocious, especially considering the gorgeous poster and pre-release art for the movie. Odd.
- DeskFlyer, on 10/12/2007, -5/+28Anyone who goes to the store to buy a movie they want to watch and then changes their mind because they think the cover art on the DVD case sucks probably isn't the brightest of consumers.
- bat-21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Worst DVD cover ever: Planet of the Apes (1968). It gives away the ending!
- sldSquirrel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19@cleanlyness: Are you serious?
poster: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a0/Children_Of_Men_3.jpg/404px-Children_Of_Men_3.jpg
US cover: http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000N6TX1I.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V43649434_.jpg
EU cover: http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000J4P9YO.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V45319778_.jpg - rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Thank god that LOTR Extended Director's Cut Edition does not fall into this category.
- Reziarfg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17One thing popped into my head when reading this article. This person REALLY likes the word 'stark'. Just an observation.
- flashboy131, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Two different designers, Two different art directors.
I imagine studios and distributors have different internal staff, agencies they work with. - knuvue, on 12/05/2007, -1/+16I don't think the OP cares if the cover of the movie accurately depicts the film. I think he is just wondering why the Posters and promo art is always better (artistically) than the final covers for the DVD box. I don't agree with all of his comparisons, but I do have to say, The Fountains original poster was ***** awesome...and the DVD makes it look so retarded. Also Blood Diamond and Children of Men both would have looked WAY better with the poster as the DVD as well. My 2 cents.
- Schug, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14@dignation
Wait, so are you giving a ***** or not? - redrighthand, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Of course the design matters, Design always matters. Seeing the differences in the design between the poster art and Box art makes it very apparent and the consumer who can obviously see a difference between the better thought out movie poster art meant to grab your attention and the ho-hum DVD art that is just there to cover the disc. I for one would prefer the same art be used for both but I'm sure market research has proven that the box art re-design must have an affect on sales?
- DigTheDoug, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13The Fountain is a pretty terrible cover compared to the poster, as is Crank and a bunch of others recently. Asian movies usually fare the worst on American DVD though, I think the first release of "Infernal Affairs" on DVD is the most insulting cover I've seen in a while; with an Asian girl, who doesn't appear in the movie, in some tight dress holding a gun. Exactly what the movie is about...
Bonus points for changing names as well as cover art. Because "Killzone" is way better than "S.P.L." - Konrad9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Only thing worse than The Matrix: Revolutions was its cover art...
- tenken, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15Unfortunately, that's probably most of them...
- tenken, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13@MediaShipper: Can I join your "completely misses the point" club?
- MastaB, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14This is my favourite article of the week so far - I'm a DVD collector, and every single one of his examples would be in my collection if they didn't have such unbelievably lame cover art. Children of Men was IMHO best movie of the year - a guaranteed buy - after seeing the art I might as well keep my torrented copy and pray there's a special edition. The only movie in there that got the treatment it deserved was The Departed - but you had to go to best buy in the first couple days it was out to get the awesome steel-case 2-disc version of the film....
- harperjs, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15And this is another reason why "Snakes on a Plane" is brilliant.
- HunterTV, on 10/12/2007, -8/+18DVD covers redesign the poster artwork simply because most poster art, when resized, makes the title too small or the art too hard to make out. They're all competing against other DVDs either on the shelf or at the video store, so the faces become more prominent (especially if they're A-List actors) and the titles get bigger.
That, and the fact that posters are big ads, so the more eye-catching they are the better. You see the art and *then* look at the title, whereas when shopping or renting you're usually looking for something specific either because you've seen it or want to see it, so they make them easier to pick out. Simple as that.
The Children of Men redesign isn't bad so much as dull.
Blood Diamond and The Departed aren't bad redesigns.
The Prestige do-over is pretty by-the-numbers, emphasizes the competition nature and puts the hottie in the middle.
Casino Royale IMO could've probably stayed mostly the same although the redesign is decent.
Last King redesign... meh. Boring. Makes it look like a TV Movie Of The Week flick.
The Fountain... the poster is too abstract for the average renter, but the redesign is fugly. - caddyalan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8There's a quote in one of Roger Ebert's books about amusing/dumb things in movies which I don't remember, but I believe it was about how caricatured images of actors on movie boxes are a bad sign.
- SanTe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Another tragedy:
"A History of Violence"
Poster: http://www.impawards.com/2005/history_of_violence.html
DVD cover: http://www.movieweb.com/dvd/release/53/68653/cover.php
This film's poster art is among my favorites. I thought it did a brilliant job of grabbing your attention and making you wonder what the film was about. The DVD cover looks like a marketing drone did it in Photoshop on their lunchbreak. - ThreeDee912, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I notice a lot of DVDs don't actually have an actual summary. They just have things like "This award winning movie is starring this award winning actor with another award winning actor, who won 2 awards for Best Supporting Actor" and blah blah blah with no detail as to what the movie is actually about.
- Supernova36, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7None of those come close the MS Paint job on The Matrix Revolutions dvd cover.
- Spazzo54, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I disagree, a good, and I repeat, "GOOD", teaser poster should be something that you see and then look back at after seeing the movie and go, Ohhhhhh..... very clever.....
- knuvue, on 12/05/2007, -2/+9So how is this any surprise?
The promotional artwork and movie posters for these hollywood films are designed specifically to fit with the marketing campaign of the film and to attract the attention of people that see them. Once the movie has been out and people want to buy the DVD because they know it's a good movie, they will buy it regardless of what's on the covor. Therefor the stars of the movie are usually put as big as possible to whore their image to get as many extra sales based on their image as possible. - gaiden2k5, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@flashboy131
It's a bit long, sry...
That and the fact that 'one-trick-pony' method just doesn't work with most of the movies out there nowadays. Posters are different, new posters are mostly used to capture people's eyes and curiosity - with so many movies wanting to be 'original' the story lines have become inevitably more complicated over the years, so by going with the 'shockingly simple' design is usually a sensible introduction to the new audience and presents a nice contrast between the advertisement and the movie (people love irony), but for the better part it still depends on the conditions of the movie being advertised (simple vs complicated story line, popular work vs new and original, genre of the story, etc. etc.). For the post-theatric release of the DVD's, from my point of view, it is most likely a compromised effort of both marketing and design department (or, more likely - like someone mentioned "from two different agencies") but naturally it makes sense to me even though i hated most of the DVD covers out there. The reason is that people who seen the movie simply can not record the details of the movies they seen after roughly 6-7 months and a DVD cover with illustrations/pictures of the movie/signature characteristics displayed on its cover can certainly help the potential consumers to revive the 'good parts of the movie' and therefore, helped produced more sales.
The writer of the article only presented a few of what people would have remembered about after months, but i doubt everyone could record how good it was or the storyline at all if they solely look at a 'cool' layout on a DVD release. But there are also exceptions: Spider-Man, LOTR, Matrix, Shrek, and Pirates... these are the Nikes and Adidas on movies, meaning they either got REAL STRONG storylines or VERY WELL KNOWN, or both. And it doesn't really matter how their DVD release looked like - it's gonna sale. But for those others, it's more info on DVD cover or low sales.
well thats my two cents
typing's over *cheers* - jialuolu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Ugh, I know. Final Fantasy III DS particularly pissed me off
Japanese cover: http://www.videogamesblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/Final%20Fantasy%20III-2.jpg
North American cover: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/Final_Fantasy_III.jpg - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I like this poster...
http://www.itsonlyamovie.co.uk/magazines%20and%20posters/the%20thing%20poster.jpg
The greatest horror movie ever! - drewdvorak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5My copy of The Departed is sweet. Metal case from Best Buy, kind of a blueish hue, the departed gun with Boston skyline on it. Its great.
- SoyLocoMoco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5My friend works for a design company making DVD covers. The art directors on the DVD boxes are the product managers at the major studios (ie, marketers with probably no design experience whatsoever). They consistently demand big type, big *****, and fireballs. There you have it. My friend typically makes 3 or more mock-ups for the studio to choose from. For a while he tried to slip in one truly over-the-top hideous cover to try to get them to pick one that was more to his liking. He stopped doing this because they consistently chose the hideous one.
- drewc1138, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You have to mention the Star Wars DVD's. You've got these beautiful Drew Struzan posters for the films, and then Photoshop hack jobs that look like they were done by my grandmother for the DVD's.
http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000003G8Z.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/B0006VIXGQ.01-A3INEY9W97IL96._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg - Spartandog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Thank goodness someone's noticing. The only company that puts out DVDs with nice covers is Criterion - that's because they actually care about movies. As an illustrator, I'm sad that there are less posters and DVDs with fine illustration or clever graphic design. Now it's mostly lame photos of the stars, generally split down the middle or collaged into a jumbled mess. The worst DVD cover in my collection is Solaris. The film was filled with stunning images but the DVD? It's just a terrible shot of George Clooney with a space helmet bathed in a mess of red reflections, and it's even out of focus. Talk about lazy-assed marketing. Check out the poster for The Rocketeer, then look at the DVD. Gorgeous 1930's style art deco illustration (poster), dumbed down to a cut-and-paste 5-minute photo montage(DVD). Yuk.
- xenoploid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Wow, that's a good example.
- Sanitarium, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The Borat DVD wasn't mentioned.
- tdogg241, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5harperjs: Snakes On A Plans is no different, since they still managed to get the two main stars on the cover.
- STKD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The Serenity cover art on the USA version (also on the HD-DVD) was awful beyond words. Some odd battle scene that didn't even have anything to do with the film at all. Very silly.
- SanTe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4In Hollywood studio marketing departments? Yes.
- Crosshare, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Not to mention with that maroon stripe across the top I keep wanting to pick it up thinking it's HD-DVD then I remember "no..no..., it's that damn Blu-Ray release only crap"
- wolfboyZ, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@ImTheDarkcyde
Gee, I don't know...maybe because the whole movie revolves around ILLUSION? - SanTe, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9It does matter. If it didn't, why do 75% of mp3 player buyers get an iPod rather than a cheaper, more flexible player? I don't think it's because of the software. iTunes ain't all that, and what's with a player that is one way only? I can't move my music back to my computer? What the hell?...
Personally, I am saddened by the increasingly poor attitude towards DVD cover art. I've built a pretty substantial DVD collection over the years because I love movies, I like to support those who produce quality films, and yes, the cover art is a big part of that for me. If you buy movies, it matters, because it's a collection. If it didn't matter, you wouldn't buy, you'd rent from Netflix in a paper sleeve. It's the same reason people lamented the death of the 12" vinyl LP. Did you ever spend hours staring at an amazing album cover? No? Do you even know what an album cover is? If you're under 25, probably not, and that is sad because cover art used to really enhance music and movies. Music became a commodity when the artwork went away. The same is happening with movies.
I've had this discussion with my gf a few times over the past six months or so, and even pointed out many of these same releases as examples of how the movie industry is starting down the same slippery slope the music industry forged: they care less and less about their customers and it's showing. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Your little comment (in a words-to-whine ratio) is way more whiney than the story!
- CodyBrown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That Children of Men DVD is appalling.
In everyway Universal has done a horrendous job getting that movie out there.
It could have won best picture if they got it into the right hands.
Tis a shame. Alfonso is one of our greatest working directors.
- jhnewt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I agree with you. While I also thought the Casino Royale poster was way better than the box art, other movie posters were awful. The Prestige movie poster is atrocious and I'm glad that didn't make it on the DVD box.
- ladyarcher85, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Because they are scrimping on the cover and not really paying an attention and dedication to their products and work.
- ZachRetox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3LOL... I saw the DVD cover for Children of Men advertised last nite and thought to myself, "what a ***** dvd cover."
Even with the bloggish histrionics, I enjoyed this read. -
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