Saturday, May 25, 2024

Movie review: Sign Painters documentary

I've been aware of this documentary for awhile but only got around to watching it today. There is also a companion book which I'd read prior to watching the documentary. The documentary is from 2013 so it's not extremely recent, although there probably haven't been a whole ton of changes in the sign painting industry since then. 

It's not a documentary about the history of sign painting, but rather about working sign painters and their careers and a bit about the industry overall. Numerous sign painters are featured in the documentary and they talk about their work, basically. It also doesn't go into too much detail about the how-tos of sign painting, although there are some bits here and there that mention various technical aspects like using a pounce pattern. The sign painters take great pride in the tradition of their craft despite the prevalence of computer-created vinyl signs today (one of the people featured in the documentary says "Victory Over Vinyl" would be a good name for a sign painting shop).

Overall I found it interesting, even though it isn't instructional in nature. It is a good 80-minute introduction to the topic of sign painting in general. The book features written profiles/interviews of various sign painters and probably goes into more detail about each individual person. I also think there are a few people in the book who aren't interviewed in the documentary. 

I did find the sound editing in the documentary somewhat lacking; in various parts the background soundtrack is a bit too loud while people are speaking, and in other parts that are filmed on location, background environmental noise is kind of loud and makes it harder to understand what's being said.   

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