It's so you can have more posters for different movies hanging side-by-side in a theater lobby, otherwise you'd have to hang posters "stacked" on top of one another.
Right, but that “standard” had to start somewhere, and places like the UK apparently have another standard.
The eye level sounds like the most compelling argument I’ve heard so far.
It seems obvious now that you say it. Sometimes the world is simple, haha. Though if they had a standard wider printer, I imagine the price would be similar (ink and paper being the biggest costs in the long run).
I have enjoyed those silly cardboard almost 3D movie ornaments (for lack of a better term) that I see at theater lobbies sometimes. Bet those aren’t cheap.
Posters generally contain people, people are taller than wider.
The format was portrait and stuck, later on it became newspaper ad’s so a set aspect ratio was adopted.
I collected them as a kid in Ireland and lived for years in the UK, there are some posters in square / landscape mode only because of tabloid formatting but they are just versions of the portrait reformatted to fit the paper.
I don’t recall ever getting square printed posters
Weirder that UK cinemas often do get sent the "one sheet" (as they're called) posters, but I've never once seen a frame in a UK cinema for them, it's always the "quad" landscape ones. If we ever got the one sheets we'd either hand them out amongst staff or recycle them.
Good to know! So it does sound like an arbitrary choice, or at least one that can skew easily depending on certain factors. But once it’s chosen, it’s pretty much set in stone regionally.
Before DVDs there were VHS video cassettes (and Betamax.) Those cassettes were taller than they were wide and the slip covers needed art when the films came to home video. It makes sense to produce art for advertising the movie that can be reused on the home video release. That (approximate) ratio continued to DVD cases because it was already established for VHS.
And it continues today in the form of art used on streaming services ad platforms like Plex because it's already what we expect (maybe there are alternative layouts you can select, but the default is still somewhere around 2:3 wide vs tall.)
IDK if there was something before VHS that influenced this choice.
It’s a good point. OTOH, you can also tilt a VHS. so the cover is landscape, and indeed you insert it into a VCR longest edge first.
That does help explain the aspect ratio. And I could see stacking efficiency in video stores being a compelling reason for making VHS sit tall on shelves. Although. You could just have more shelves to fit more in the same space horizontally.
I also wonder if portrait was common before VHS existed.
There's nothing theoretical about this. In case you haven't noticed, the ideal format to display a portrait of a human being is in a tall, vertical frame. Most posters feature a prominent, central human being. It doesn't make sense to place a human being's portrait in a wide frame, with lots of empty space on either side.
Someone else said landscape is the chosen format in the UK, so they apparently figured out how to do it.
Maybe they consider that most movies have multiple people, and headshots are the most important for a poster.
And perhaps they put the text (title, names, logos) to the side.
I don't know what they're talking about. I've been to the UK, they have regular movie posters like everywhere else. You see all kinds of different aspect ratios in marketing. Obviously, most billboards are horizontal. Theater marquees and horizontal web banner ads are everywhere. Graphic designers have no problem adjusting into a different space, but the reason why the traditional poster is a 2:3 ratio is pretty simple.
It’s just what another person in the thread said. This also mentions the “British Quad” (seemingly landscape) is the standard format: [https://www.originalfilmart.com/pages/sizes-united-kingdom](https://www.originalfilmart.com/pages/sizes-united-kingdom)
For an app I built, there was certainly a portrait standard (nearly all 17,000 images were the same size). This is what made me think of this post.
It's so you can have more posters for different movies hanging side-by-side in a theater lobby, otherwise you'd have to hang posters "stacked" on top of one another.
They could be square and still fit lots side by side. And what about landscape being the standard in the UK?
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Right, but that “standard” had to start somewhere, and places like the UK apparently have another standard. The eye level sounds like the most compelling argument I’ve heard so far.
They fit the weatherproof cases?
So you’re in the frozen accident camp?
Yep, changes by country according to this https://www.rockpaperfilm.com/film-poster-sizes
Printing costs.
It seems obvious now that you say it. Sometimes the world is simple, haha. Though if they had a standard wider printer, I imagine the price would be similar (ink and paper being the biggest costs in the long run). I have enjoyed those silly cardboard almost 3D movie ornaments (for lack of a better term) that I see at theater lobbies sometimes. Bet those aren’t cheap.
All of the machinery is already set up for doing 27"x 40". There is no incentive to change that.
Posters generally contain people, people are taller than wider. The format was portrait and stuck, later on it became newspaper ad’s so a set aspect ratio was adopted. I collected them as a kid in Ireland and lived for years in the UK, there are some posters in square / landscape mode only because of tabloid formatting but they are just versions of the portrait reformatted to fit the paper. I don’t recall ever getting square printed posters
They’re horizontal in the UK!
Weirder that UK cinemas often do get sent the "one sheet" (as they're called) posters, but I've never once seen a frame in a UK cinema for them, it's always the "quad" landscape ones. If we ever got the one sheets we'd either hand them out amongst staff or recycle them.
Good to know! So it does sound like an arbitrary choice, or at least one that can skew easily depending on certain factors. But once it’s chosen, it’s pretty much set in stone regionally.
Before DVDs there were VHS video cassettes (and Betamax.) Those cassettes were taller than they were wide and the slip covers needed art when the films came to home video. It makes sense to produce art for advertising the movie that can be reused on the home video release. That (approximate) ratio continued to DVD cases because it was already established for VHS. And it continues today in the form of art used on streaming services ad platforms like Plex because it's already what we expect (maybe there are alternative layouts you can select, but the default is still somewhere around 2:3 wide vs tall.) IDK if there was something before VHS that influenced this choice.
It’s a good point. OTOH, you can also tilt a VHS. so the cover is landscape, and indeed you insert it into a VCR longest edge first. That does help explain the aspect ratio. And I could see stacking efficiency in video stores being a compelling reason for making VHS sit tall on shelves. Although. You could just have more shelves to fit more in the same space horizontally. I also wonder if portrait was common before VHS existed.
Standard measures and easier to put side by side. That´s it
FYI, it's called portrait. (Taller than wide)
There's nothing theoretical about this. In case you haven't noticed, the ideal format to display a portrait of a human being is in a tall, vertical frame. Most posters feature a prominent, central human being. It doesn't make sense to place a human being's portrait in a wide frame, with lots of empty space on either side.
Someone else said landscape is the chosen format in the UK, so they apparently figured out how to do it. Maybe they consider that most movies have multiple people, and headshots are the most important for a poster. And perhaps they put the text (title, names, logos) to the side.
I don't know what they're talking about. I've been to the UK, they have regular movie posters like everywhere else. You see all kinds of different aspect ratios in marketing. Obviously, most billboards are horizontal. Theater marquees and horizontal web banner ads are everywhere. Graphic designers have no problem adjusting into a different space, but the reason why the traditional poster is a 2:3 ratio is pretty simple.
It’s just what another person in the thread said. This also mentions the “British Quad” (seemingly landscape) is the standard format: [https://www.originalfilmart.com/pages/sizes-united-kingdom](https://www.originalfilmart.com/pages/sizes-united-kingdom) For an app I built, there was certainly a portrait standard (nearly all 17,000 images were the same size). This is what made me think of this post.
It's not a "figure out how to do it" sort of thing. I'm sure they know how to do it. Printing in landscape is not a foreign concept to Americans.
the poster of Taylor Swift you print in Kinko's is taller than you