Cinema hoardings: Man versus machine

The design factor and creativity has diminished in poster-making and film hoardings as computers and machines cannot diligently paint details like that of a painter.

The art of portraying larger than life film hoardings lost its touch in Pakistan with the demise of Pakistani cinema and the advent of technology. However, a generation of these artists saw legendry billboard painters missing the creativity and innovation that their seniors used to instill on to billboards and iconic images.

M Sarwar, a former film billboard artist, who quit his job a decade ago said, “Royal Park is not what it used to be. You name anything related to the film business and the first word that would come to your mind was Royal Park. In the 1990s there used to be dozens of Ustads who would make large film hoardings at their workshops. The creativity that you have in a hand-made hoarding can never be achieved in a poster made on a computer. I remember one of my Ustads made a large billboard with hills in the background with such immaculate detail that it presented a breath taking picture. Even the producer couldn’t stop himself praising Ustad Gee (named J Arfi). On the other hand, current age film posters do not show any art — they are just the photographs of actors pulled against a backdrop,” said Sarwar.

Munir Ahmad Mani, a former film billboard artist, said, “ A film billboard artist usually worked on canvas that is mostly 200 feet in width and 40 feet in length. The graphic designer work only on canvas that is hardly 1 foot long and 1.5 feet wide. How can you compare the two? A painter relies on his imagination, uses actual colour, brings his feelings out and adds sensitivity when he paints on billboards whereas a machine is incapable of that,” added the artist.

Speaking about the process of making a billboard he said that a large billboard is first divided into pieces and then those pieces are joined together to make a full picture. “We used to work on graphs to make larger pictures. We would first make rough sketches through pencil or chalk on the billboard stand then colour them up. If we made a tree in the background, we would make its branches skillfully and imbibe detail to even something as insignificant as a tree. Today you just have to cut a picture and paste it in the background which is more like a trick than art,” he maintained.

Omar Khan, filmmaker and a die-hard poster collector, said, “I used to go and take pictures of the large sized billboards in Lahore but now you don’t come across those hand-made hoardings anymore. If I knew this art would diminish, I would have taken many more pictures. In my opinion the design factor has diminished in poster making after the 1990s. There is no art work left in film posters and that in itself is quite unfortunate,” said Khan.

“You cannot compare creativity of a hand-made film hoarding with that of a computer-made poster. Hand-made posters were just matchless,” he said.

When asked about his favorite poster or film billboard Khan replied, “I don’t really collect film posters now. In 100 posters you hardly fine a single poster that is worth looking at. Handmade billboards have been my favorite and I remember one such billboard that was of a Punjabi film named Jatti Da Wair (Enmity of a Jatti). In the poster, there was a huge picture of Anjuman who carried a machine gun in one hand and there was blood all over her dress. Later on, we made tee shirts on this poster,” said the filmmaker.

Zahid Akasi, film critic, said, “There used to be a competition of film billboards. I remember that Ishq-e-Laila (starring Sabiha, Santoosh Kumar and directed by Munchi Dil) and Laila Majnoo (starring Bahaar Begum, Aslam Pervaiz and directed by Kamal Pasha) were set to be released on the same date. The directors of both these movies tried to attract the audience through film billboards and Ishq-e-Lailawon the race as the billboard showed more creativity and it was released a week before Laila Majnoo,” said the critic.

Akasi commented on another movie that had a scene of an Arab desert and the director took out a caravan of camels carrying men dressed in Arabic attires to Lahore. “The photographs were taken and then the painters were trusted to draw these scenes on large billboards to attract the audience. The mind of a painter, I believe, is far more fertile than that of a computer. You will agree with this if you put an old film poster along with a contemporary poster and see the stark difference in creativity,” he maintained.

“You can say that the creativity of handmade film hoardings remains unmatched but then you have to keep the time factor in mind. We make one poster in a day, while a handmade hoarding takes at least a few weeks to get ready.  Computer-made posters are far more economical which is another reason of their increasing popularity,”said a computer designer at the Royal Park, Mumtaz.

Via: Express Tribune

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