Well, this certainly brought back memories.

The site linked above, which I first came across thanks to indie film guru Bill Cunningham's excellent Pulp 2.0 blog, is a huge repository of VHS box art from the golden age of the now-extinct home video format. Having spent an inordinate amount of time trolling the shelves of video rental joints when I was a kid, I’ve seen – in real life – quite a few of the 2,600+ boxes that the site has on display. Of course, in most cases I can’t claim to have seen the actual movies these boxes once housed, but as was usually the case back then, the films could rarely live up to their awesome (or awesomely cheesy) cover art anyway.

I guess that’s what I miss most about the VHS era (because, hey, even I can’t make myself get all nostalgic about rewinding). Nowadays, anyone with even the most rudimentary Photoshop skills can slap together a pretty professional-looking piece of DVD box art; back when videotapes ruled the world, however, indie distributors had to work a whole lot harder to make their flicks stand out on store shelves amidst all the recognizable Hollywood fare. The box art was what sold the movie – and even if the movie was a 75-minute crapfest shot for 40 bucks in somebody’s backyard, an eye-catching hand-painted cover (or, at very least, one displaying some strategically placed cleavage) could make it seem just as appealing to potential viewers as the latest Schwarzenegger flick.*

Of course, if you peruse the site, you’ll see some truly atrocious attempts at artwork along with all the good stuff. But nevertheless I think today’s independent filmmakers and distributors can learn a lot from these relics of the “Be Kind, Rewind” days. Now that we can market our films online through a variety of channels, we need to take full advantage of the media at our disposal – a great-looking MySpace page, for example, packed with slick-looking graphic design and visual elements that grab the viewer from the get-go (even if that entails little more than strategically placed cleavage) will really help your self-produced bargain-basement epic reach viewers that might normally only go for the professionally marketed major-studio stuff. I’m not exactly suggesting that the internet is like one huge, globe-spanning video store – it’ll never be quite that much fun – but as a filmmaker trying to get your work seen by the masses, it still couldn’t hurt to think of it that way.


*Yes, kids, the governor of California was once an actor in the movies. How his incredible work in the searing crime drama Kindergarten Cop was not recognized by the Academy I’ll never know.