The Key Art Awards have honored movie marketing art for 35 years, starting in 1975. Over the decades, the awards have evolved to include new categories that reflect changes in the industry, such as adding a trailer category in 1986. While marketing has expanded to include trailers and digital platforms, classic movie posters remain an important form of branding and a mainstay of the competition. The awards began humbly with small local judging but have grown into an international event that recognizes excellence in film marketing artwork.

1. 35 YEARS OF KEY ART AWARDS
movie-marketing business during the early 1970s. During the late 1960s,
movie-marketing operations were based at studio offices in New York, with
trailers distributed to theaters by a company called National Screen Service.
Following a few pioneers, independent marketing agencies began to spring up
to service the studios; those firms then made their way to Los Angeles, where
an industry of dozens of companies became established.
Throughout their history, the Key Art Awards have evolved to reflect changes
in the business, adding and removing categories to reflect work being done.
The program honored only North American posters in its first year then slowly
added print categories for subsequent editions. Not until 1986 did the Key Art
Awards formally honor trailer work.
But even during an age of trailers and the Internet, good poster art is crucial — and
it remains a mainstay of the competition.
“That print key art image is still a critical part of the face of a movie, particularly
in a globalized and multitiered world,” veteran film marketer Mike Kaiser says.
“It’s as close to branding as you get in the film business if you have a great image that
stays with a movie.”
Kaiser is a second-generation movie marketer whose father, Sam, was the copywriter
on the 1975 Key Art best-of-show poster honoree, “The Abdication,” and was
honored in 2000 as one of the industry’s pioneers. (See page 18 for a gallery of Key Art
best of show print winners.)
In its second year, the program added an international poster category, with “La
Bataille d’Angleterre” as its first winner, and 1976 saw the section split into European
and Oriental poster groups. The name of the latter would morph to Asian in 1987 and
Far Eastern in ’88, and a Latin American category was added in 1980. The geographic
divisions were dropped in 1992.
In contrast to today’s international category, which is dominated by overseas releases
of Hollywood films, many of the entries during those early years were for films produced
overseas, and they were distinct in their preference for illustrated and painted designs.
Posters created by Film Polski were an early mover, sweeping foreign-section honors in
1975 and ’77 and still winning awards in 1990.
1975 saw the first submission of a poster advertising a television program — CBS’
“M*A*S*H” — and the contest would continue to include such program marketing until
1989. In 1978, a Special Programming category was added to honor film-festival and
retrospective campaigns; two years later, an Electronic Exhibition category was added to
honor movie ads on radio and television. According to a note in the 1980 catalog, “The
television people said it was about time.”
Judging during the first decade of the Key Art Awards was done by
a small panel of participants, mostly art academicians and museum
representatives such as Otis Art Institute dean James Soudon and UCLA
art department faculty member Jan Stussy. Staff members and designers
from The Hollywood Reporter also participated in the judging, which one
catalog described as taking place in a “garden party” setting. A key player in
the judging process from 1977-90 was Pacific Theatres executive Robert Selig,
who frequently chaired the proceedings. Other judging names of note included
designer Saul Bass, who served from 1986-89 and became the first Key Art
lifetime achievement honoree in 1991.
If the Key Art competition’s scale and judging process were somewhat modest
in those days, then so was the annual show. While the first ceremony was held
at the home of then-publisher Tichi Wilkerson Miles, by 1977 the program had
settled into a decadelong home at the California Museum of Science and Industry in
downtown Los Angeles, where winning posters were displayed for patrons for
several months each year and later displayed at the ShoWest convention.
By 1986, the awards were ready to include trailers, which, especially on television,
were becoming a dominant component of movie marketing as the major studios moved
to increasingly larger national releases. Their style also was changing, influenced by evolv-
ing production technology and MTV.
“We did (the 1984 theatrical release) ‘Footloose,’ (1983’s) ‘Flashdance’ and (1980’s)
‘Fame’ all right around the beginning of MTV,” trailer veteran Gary Kanew says.
“Suddenly, rock ’n’ roll music became a key ingredient, cutting to music became a promi-
nent style, and where trailers used to be dialogue-oriented and talky, music became the star.”
Among nine nominated trailers in 1986, Michael Shapiro’s entry for “The Jewel of the
This page, top, entries in the 1979 Nile” — the product of a special shoot that features Danny DeVito on a sand dune, arguing
competition catalog showcase the era’s with Michael Douglas over a telephone — was named the first Key Art Awards trailer winner.
style in North American and overseas Shapiro recalls that he attended the ceremony that year, “more out of curiosity than
posters; above, judges for the 1987 edition. anything else. ‘Hmmm, they’re going to give an award for a trailer? I never heard of such a
Opposite page, a sampling of Key Art thing; let’s go see what that’s about.’ To my enormous surprise, I won the thing.” During
catalog covers through the years
16 w w w. h o l l y wo o d r e p o r t e r. c o m