Understanding the Work of a Movie Poster Creator at Jacob Burns
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The allure of a movie poster is how it grabs your attention in a multitude of ways.
The dramatic expression on a movie star’s face or a stop action in an adventure film feeds a yearning to be in a darkened theater where you can temporarily suspend belief.
An exhibition of 16 sensational movie posters for movies produced in the last 60 years is “The Anatomy of a Movie Poster: The Work of Dawn Baillie,” currently at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville.
Baillie was the first woman to co-found an American print agency, BLT, in 1992. Her award-winning career spanned nearly four decades. Since 2022, her firm has been completely employee-owned.
There are iconic posters for movies such as “Dirty Dancing” (1987), “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) and “Barbie” (2023). Each poster is accompanied by in-depth explanations about the poster’s history, including how Baillie created the image and how posters were constructed using early or complex computer programs as well as tools such as tablet pens.
“A lot rides on a poster and how the image connects to the film,” said Susan Kineke, creative director at the Jacob Burns.
Kineke said posters in the exhibit are on loan from the original collection of the Poster House in New York City. This is the first time the posters have been shown outside the city.
Some posters include variations that were never marketed while others revealed subtle details that were overlooked. Next to the poster for “Silence of the Lambs” were two lesser-known posters and a picture of Salvador Dali’s famous photo of naked women forming a skull. Director Jonathan Demme wanted the latter image to be incorporated into the poster. If you look closely at the final poster, you can see the skull at the center of the butterfly covering the woman’s mouth.
Next to the poster for “Dirty Dancing” is an explanation of how early on Baillie produced about 20 rough poster ideas using black and white Xeroxes and how she created purple shadows behind the images of stars Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey using a new technique at the time known as chromatics.
As the tools of the industry evolved, the visual messages of movie posters changed. The poster for the cult film “Natural Born Killers” (1994) emphasized the character over the theme of the film. Baillie used a mezzotint photograph to accentuate Woody Harrelson’s sunglasses that dramatically reflect images of co-star Juliette Lewis.
The composition for the most recent poster for “Barbie” says everything about the film. Pink overwhelms the senses and Margot Robbie as Barbie is in the center looking directly at the viewer. However, Ryan Gosling as Ken barely makes it onto the right side of the poster, stressing how Barbie is the focal point of the story.
A quote by director Greta Gerwig next to the poster praises Ballie as “a storyteller of the highest order, and she creates the very first interaction that your audience will have with the film you’ve made.”
“The Anatomy of a Movie Poster: The Work of Dawn Baillie” runs until May. The exhibit is on the theater’s third floof Jane Peck Gallery and is open seven days a week during the theater’s operating hours. Visitors do not need to purchase a movie ticket to see the exhibit.
The Jacob Burns Film Center is located at 364 Manville Rd. in Pleasantville. For more information, call 914-747-5555 or visit
https://burnsfilmcenter.org/about/visit/dawn-baillie-movie-posters.
Abby is a local journalist who has reported on breaking news for more than 20 years. She currently covers community issues in The Examiner as a full-time reporter and has written for the paper since its inception in 2007. Read more from Abby’s editor-author bio here. Read Abbys’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/ab-lub2019/