Movie Posters

Maybe since Star Wars came out, I always thought it would be neat to have original movie posters, but I never got any. Posters are kind of hard to deal with: You can stick them to a wall like in high school or college, but better if they are framed. At the movie theaters, the posters are backlit which makes them look like they glow or are on a TV or movie screen. Some home theater people get these backlit boxes for movie posters. And Disney Movie Rewards used to let you buy original theatrical posters with DMR points, which a lot of people did, including me. I got Michael a Guardians of the Galaxy poster once and last year on a really good sale, I got a Toy Story 4 poster for only 225 points, worth about $2.25. A few years ago I was about to lose all of my Regal Theater points, so I used them to get a “free” Doctor Strange poster, but then had to pay $8.75 shipping. I saw on the internet that some people would build a backlit frame out of wood, fluorescent bulbs, frosted plexiglass and a picture frame to go on top of it. You could make one for about $100 in parts. Or you could buy one for about $300, which I was not going to do. If I could build my own it wouldn’t be so much like spending $100, but like saving $200. Sometimes you have to spend money to save money.

There are people who collect movie posters. The good theatrical posters are usually 27″ wide by 40″ tall. Because they will most likely be backlit, the posters are usually printed on both sides, with a reverse image on the back that aligns perfectly with the image on the front. There are teaser posters and final posters, the teasers usually being a simpler design, which can be appealing, but the final ones are usually better, though a movie can have multiple final poster designs. Collectors go to great lengths to avoid damaged posters, but posters are often damaged during shipping, or even during packing they can pick up wrinkles or fingerprints (even if you get one from a theater). I don’t feel like I’m that picky, but I don’t want tears or folds. The posters are made in huge quantities for theaters and it doesn’t cost much to print out thousands more for fans. So the posters can be pretty cheap when the movie first comes out. But then they are never reprinted, so the price goes up over time. I remember the Doctor Strange poster selling for about $11 on eBay, but a few days later one sold for $43 and that seems to be about the going rate today. Maybe I felt like it was an investment.

I have had these two posters rolled up and nothing to do with them. Even a pretty simple unlit frame could be about $100, but I found a backlit one on Amazon that shipped from China for about $300 and then another one for about $235. They use LEDs instead of fluorescent bulbs and a pretty nice black aluminum snap frame that makes it easy to swap the artwork out by flipping out the border of the frame outward like flaps on a box. I had won a couple of $25 Amazon gift cards recently and thought maybe one of the frames would be a nice retirement gift to me from me. Shipping from China, it would take nearly 6 weeks to arrive, but I paid $5 extra for faster shipping and it showed up in only 2 weeks. The frame is only 5/8″ thick, which is amazing and weighs less than 20 pounds (if I had built one myself it would be much thicker and heavier). The LED lights are around the sides of the frame and a grid of tiny dimpled etches in the plexiglass catches light from the sides to make the whole panel behind the poster light up pretty evenly. The cheaper model doesn’t have a dimmer or even a switch, but the brightness seems about right. I put the Doctor Strange poster in first and it looks really great, taking advantage of the backlight for a lot of contrast between darker and lighter parts of the design. Not my favorite Marvel movie, it still is a nice looking poster and not crowded with heads of superheroes like so many of the Avengers posters.

The only problem was the cord dangling from the frame to the outlet below. So I drilled a hole in the wall behind the frame for the cord to go into and fished it out of another hole just above the baseboard, then into the outlet. It wasn’t easy fishing the wire through two half-inch holes, but I got it. Then I needed a better way to flip it on or off than plugging in the cord. I have a surge protector that has a remote control on/off switch, but then found some plugs that can be switched via your phone and wifi network. Pretty cool. It was about $9 for one, but I found some similar ones that were 4 for $20. You can set them up as timers too, so I used the extras to to replace some old fashion mechanical timer plugs.

Now the problem is getting posters. Really the best source ever was Disney Movie Rewards, but last year they stopped offering posters (I think partly because it was so hard to ship posters without damage, even with a tube, though they got pretty good at it by putting the poster in a plastic sleeve and then putting that in the cardboard tube). And with the theaters closed, the future of posters looks bleak. Jeb said I should get twelve posters and swap one out each month. So I only have 2 months to get more posters. They can get really expensive, with some of the Marvel and Star Wars posters from even the last few years selling for over $50 up to $100. And not all posters are going to look as good with the backlighting, so I have to be choosy in picking a movie I like, but also a design I like, and that is available and not too expensive. Not necessarily that easy. People used to get posters on DMR and then sell them for real money on eBay, and there are a lot of high prices there. I just missed getting an Incredibles 2 poster for $6.56 plus $2.80 shipping, but was outbid by 50 cents (and potentially much more). Then for some reason eBay gave me a $10 off $20 coupon and I found the remake of Aladdin poster for $21 and free shipping (key, because the coupon didn’t apply to shipping). So now I have three months of posters.