Printed Onesheets - are they about to go the way of the dinosaurs?

[Terry Monohan]

When I was in school in the mid 1960's in Oakland CA I made friends with all the theatre managers and most saved me their one sheets and a few large 3 sheets and even some press books.

I have saved many of these over the years but some have bought in big money on E Bay. The art work on posters from the 1950's/ 60's was so colorful but the only bad thing was the paper that National Screen Service used was very bad. When these posters got shared and sent around to many theatres they got creased many times and pin hole torn.

Most I have were folded in the 50's and 60's. I think It was in the late 90's they started to send in a roll tube type.

I remember as a small kid going to the many neighborhood Golden State Theatres/Fox West Coast Theatres in Oakland CA I'd get there early for a kid matinee and be in the boxoffice line when the lady came into the ticket booth and they turned on the little white fluorescent t tube lights in the side of the one sheet framed glass poster cases outside. For some reason this I always remembered and brought joy to me before I got a ticket and went for the candy counter.

Now one sheets may be gone as most new cinemas in the USA don't even bother having display posters outside. What will be next to go the large lobby cardboard cut out displays?

[David Ferguson]

To be honest I'm surprised the cardboard cut out displays are still used. It must be quite expensive to ship them around, and some that I've seen are quite complex to assemble (although I presume the more you do, the easier and faster it gets). It'll be a shame when they and physical posters are entirely phased out, as I do quite enjoy collecting them for films I like - as impractical as the cardboard displays are!

[Stefan Scholz]

When I started, one shets and lobby cards were property of the film studio, sent out to be used in conjunction with the booking. They had to be returned, and we had to pay for shipping, plus a handling charge.
Then, the free posters came into fashion. Distributers had those sent from the printer to all clients, that would probably screen the film. Of course, you always need to print a full length of paper roll, so you end up with thousands of one sheets in the modern printing process. It was cheaper to do these mass mailings on the day they were finished, than thinking about, who might need or want them. That also led to no second chance, so if you were not sent the stuff early...
I also met an old lady owning a small town theatre at a theatre owners convention. She complained, distributors were no longer sending letter sized posters anymore. Asking her, what for, we got the answer. Hung with glued on playtimes inside a barber shop, market, gas station, council house, etc.
We have then asked her, download, print yourself? She didn't own a computer or printer.

The one answer I got, requesting one sheets for a movie in week 4. Got an answer before the lady hung up: Something like www.myposterprint.com can be your friend.
I think it will disappear in total.

[Martin Brooks]

Put classic movie posters in the old cases if you don't or can't convert to very large vertical screens. Of course, there will be some confused customers who think those are the films that are playing. Before the pandemic, the AMC Lincoln Square. for one, had those giant cardboard displays all over the lobby areas. Some were huge!

[Bobby Henderson]

Back in the day some of the big cardboard standees got pretty elaborate. I was a little more partial to the banners as collectors items (they take up less space when rolled up). I have an old "Titanic" coming soon banner with the wrong date on it. The banner was made before the movie's release got pushed out of the Summer into December due to visual effects issues.

[Mike Blakesley]

My favorite banners were ones that were released for (I think) "Space Jam." As I remember, there were six in all, and I have five of them. They are all red and black with the the various looney tunes characters silhouetted on them.

My favorite standee was nothing special to look at, but I love the story behind it. It was for the Steve Martin comedy, "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." The movie is in black and white, and is styled to look like a 1940s gangster movie, and it uses a lot of clips from old movies that are seamlessly integrated with the new action.

The standee was a life size cutout of Steve Martin brandishing a tommy gun. He had a button on his lapel which you could press to play a recording of Steve promoting the movie.

After the movie played, I kept the Steve cut-out and I took it to the projection booth and leaned it against the projector. Then one night some time later, I happened to leave the theatre door unlocked. One of our local cops found the unlocked door, so the sherriff's office called me to come down and lock up. When I got there, the cop said "You're pretty lucky I didn't put a bullet in your movie projector up there" and proceeded to tell me he had gone looking through the building, and ran into Steve Martin pointing a tommy gun at him when he got to the booth. We had a good laugh over it but he said "You probably better put that thing somewhere else."

[Marcel Birgelen]

I think, technically, that cop was actually trespassing.

[Randy Stankey]

Yes but, in a tight knit community where people know each other, customs might be different.

[James Wyrembelski]

Speaking of these changes. Does anyone know where WB is releasing theirs now? Seems to be no updates or anything new on Deluxe. I tried contacting Imoxie with no response. Anything out there for them?

[Martin McCaffery]

I don't know where they are releasing them from, but we've gotten every one sheet in the last 6 months and we're an arthouse, so don't show any of their current release stuff. Although we did show Casablanca in January.

[James Wyrembelski]

Funny,

I just received a boatload of them today. One fed ex box was quite larger than the rest that had gotten ripped open on one end with only a single WW84 poster in it (that I didn't even request). Seems like some of these had been floating in purgatory.

Interestingly the same thing happened to a hard drive from deluxe. I had gotten a message from one of our tenants next to the theater that we had a package arrive. This was about 2 weeks ago. It was a deluxe trail mix hard drive that was sent out last October.....

[Frank Cox]

Back before the bus services were cancelled, I got most of my stuff on the bus from Winnipeg. It wasn't uncommon for those round tubes to roll to the back of the bus's luggage compartment and get found when the bus got to Vancouver and was completely emptied out for the turn-around. So instead of travelling from Winnipeg to Regina to Melville (500km/300 miles) some of the posters went from Winnipeg to Regina to Calgary to Vancouver, then back to Regina and then to Melville (4150km/2600 miles). The movies never seemed to disappear like that but at least once every couple of months one of the poster tubes took the scenic route to get here.

Now I get everything shipped on Purolator and that's never happened. They track everything with barcodes as it goes along so I guess stuff can't get lost that way.

[Martin McCaffery]

Things got clogged up in Memphis during the storms a few weeks ago, but apparently the overnight carriers have been having problems since March 2020.

This now gives me a chance to rant about something that happened to me recently. I sent a package next day via UPS and it got there three days later. When I inquired about a refund (over $100) I was told that since March of last year they no longer guarantee their delivery times.

Then why the hell are the selling something called Next Day? From my point of view, they are selling a product they don't have.

I managed to get persistent and angry enough to get a refund, but it was hell and only for people who have a lot of time on their hands. But very little gets me pissed off as much as "Customer Service" phone trees and then people, when you can get one, lying to me (or giving me different stories), then transferring me all over the place.

Moral of the story, only ship ground unless they are willing to take odds on your packages arrival date.

[Mike Blakesley]

I have similar feelings about the bait-and-switch known as the "fuel surcharge."

When fuel in the US was around $4.10 a gallon, UPS (and most other companies that use delivery trucks) instituted a "fuel surcharge" to cover the added costs of fuel. Which was fine, fuel WAS about 150% of where it had been a year or so previous, but when fuel dropped way back down in price to below where it had been when the surcharge started, did they get rid of the surcharge? Of course not! Fuel costs less now than it did back then, and we STILL get surcharged for fuel over and above their sky-high rates.

Of course the dirty secret of UPS and Fed Ex is, they have to charge little shippers exorbitant rates to make up for the $$$ they lose giving "deals" to big shippers like Amazon, WalMart, and their ilk.

Yeah, it's not really free shipping, folks.

[William Kucharski]

I
Of course the dirty secret of UPS and Fed Ex is, they have to charge little shippers exorbitant rates to make up for the $$$ they lose giving "deals" to big shippers like Amazon, WalMart, and their ilk.

Yeah, it's not really free shipping, folks.

Don't forget to add USPS.

They've stated before that they lose money on every Amazon package they handle.