I don't know the answers, but I have done tons of color printing, and once you got the separations prepared, it made little difference (other than paper cost, which is pretty negligible) whether you print a few hundred or a few thousand.
I think much more important that how many were printed is how many likely survive? Most old posters were found EITHER from a theater that used them, OR from a poster exchange that never distributed them, OR from the movie's producer. In the first case, theaters were way more likely to have posters from mainstream movies than from low budget or sex movies, so the odds of posters from mainstream movies turning up in "theater finds" is quite large (unless the theater specifically mostly only showed low budget movies). In the second case, the studios who made posters from mainstream movies had the resources to make lots of them, and poster exchanges often ended up with lots of them, while makes of low budget movies likely had less distribution for their posters, so they turn up in poster exchanges less often. But in the third case, the major studios let the poster exchanges handle their posters, so you almost never find batches of the same poster of a major release outside an exchange. Whereas those who made low budget movies often handled the posters themselves, so it is quite common for those posters to turn up in quantity in someone's garage. There are two classes of posters that are often quite rare. First is the "pre-Awards" posters, and second are posters from movies that received a major re-release just a few years after the first release. It seems that poster exchanges would often literally throw out the pre-Awards posters when they got the ones with the Awards info, because they viewed the ones without the Awards information as "outdated" and worthless. It also seems likely that exchanges would "use up" all the posters from the first release of a movie when it received a quick second release, so the first release posters from movies like this can be much harder to find. In the case of movies that involved special equipment (like 3D) there would be two sets of posters made, and since only theaters with the special equipment would get those release posters, it stands to reason that those posters would be far more rare, and my experience is that they are. The most important thing to remember is that it is very difficult to CREATE a "collectible". If you make 300 copies of something, and they are signed and numbered and cost a lot, then 30 years later there will likely still be all 300 copies in collectors' hands. But if you make a throwaway item and print a million of them, but everyone thinks it is worthless, then 30 years later it may be extremely hard to find and command a good price! That is why I say to focus on how many survive rather than how many were printed, and also why I think video posters might someday be extremely collectible (because everyone seems to agree they are pretty worthless!). Bruce On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 9:00 AM, Roland Lataille < [email protected]> wrote: > I'm just wondering if any of you know this. If there were say 2,000 > movie theatres in the world at the time of the printing a movie poster, how > many copies would they make? I know each theatre would display multiple > copies of each title. Also, since there were only a few hundred Cinerama > movie theatres in the world at one time operating, would they produce a > smaller amount of posters for the roadshow Cinerama theatres or was there a > minimum that had to be printed? > > Thanks > > Roland > Cinerama web site: > http://cineramahistory.com/ > > Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com > ___________________________________________________________________ How to > UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: > [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF > MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. > > Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
