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A lot of painted film posters are like this, e.g. Back to the Future posters are all actual posed photographs used for the painting. (probably all the Star Wars ones too as the artist is the same) p.s. BTTFIII poster has Mary Steenburgen cut out and glued onto it later as she wasn't on the original poster that was painted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Struzan

https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/ejsb22/micha...

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It's just good illustration practice to stage your scenes if you can, as a way of getting the most detailed reference possible. The technique dates back centuries, only limited by the available technologies(grid viewfinders, mirrors, lenses).

By the 20th century photography was available enough to make it relatively trivial to take a snapshot of yourself to get poses and expressions, thus there was a rise in artists claiming they did not use references for PR purposes, e.g. Frank Frazetta made this claim about his paintings repeatedly, even though the documentation exists showing that he staged himself for photos in his comics work back in the 1950's.

Alex Ross (comic book artist who paints his pages; https://www.alexrossart.com/) also uses models for most (all?) of his work.

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