Saul Bass

Saul Bass(1920-1996) is an American graphic designer that is well known for his work in films and classic logos. He is known for his simple, geometric shapes and their symbolism and has a very distinctive recognisable style. Most of his title sequences consists of bold block colours and shapes. Before Bass became a graphic designer, film posters were very simple in the fact that they consisted of a photographic images of members from the film cast. However, when Bass came into designing, which was during the 1940s, he approached in a very abstract way by not using photographic images and playing around with shapes, silhouettes and colours. He entered to the world of title designs first when he collaborated with Otto Preminger(filmmaker) in which he was creating prints for film ads. He impressed Preminger with his graphic skills and was asked to produce a title sequence for him. From then and on-wards he produced more and more title sequences. Bass is a very inspirational designer and has revolutionised the way people view title credits. He has collaborated with great directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanely Kubric and Martin Scores and has made over 60 title sequences.

                           

A quote of his:-“I want everything we do to be beautiful. I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything, or that the client thinks it’s worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way i want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.” I really like this quote and feel that it connects to me and inspires me.
                                     

Title sequence analysis for 'The Man with the Golden Arm'

This title sequence is simple and bold as it consists of only black and white colour use. Throughout the sequence there is a plain black background with only white text and white lines crossing the frame. The lines crossing the frame creates a cut out effect and appear to be coming in a motion of stabbing giving the connotation of conflict and claustrophobia as the lines are close to each other. At the start of the title sequence, when the white lines first appear, a confusion is created towards the audience as the lines appear randomly but when you watch the sequence till the end you understand that the lines made up an arm, therefore showing that the lines symbolised veins in someones arm. This then gives the rough idea of injecting drugs into veins of the arm(white lines). Immediately the audience is given the impression of this film having a dark unsettling side and leading into a thriller genre. The use of colours, black and white, gives also adds onto the impression of the film being a dramatically genre based. The jazzy non-diegetic sound is highly contrasted to the sequence as the sequence is shown in a more dark and gloomy way however the sound is presented in an up beat way. However the sound does slightly lead to an ironic way as the music can represent to the audience a way the character feels when being injected by drugs. The jazz music also gives the response of the film being based around the early 1920's near the American gangster era as around that time jazz music was the most popular one.

Codes and Conventions of title sequences

17/01/14 

Emily went through the codes and conventions of title sequences. The codes and conventions was STINCS the settings, theme, iconography, narrative, characters and style.

My notes

• Setting - When, where and what time/period the film is set?

• Theme - What the mood of the film is and what is it really about?

• Iconography - Costume, props, make-up, etc.

• Narrative - What is the storyline is?

• Characters - Who they are and What are they like?

• Style - Cinematography, sound, editing, etc.

Learning the codes and conventions of title sequences will really help me when creating my title sequence as it will help me understand of what i should include in my title sequence.

We then as a class watched the title sequences of ; Catch Me if You Can, Skyfall and Se7en and discussed the connotations and denotations of it. We then watched Se7en title sequence again and listened out for the different foley sounds. We was then given a task to do, by Emily, in our coursework groups to record different foley sounds that we could create that were typically heard in horror films, for example opening and closing a stapler to give the impression of it being a lethal machinery, creaking noises of the door being opened and scratching the walls to give that screeching sound. I really enjoyed this task, however i don't think it will come use to us as we are doing a romantic title sequence so the sound used mostly will be music to enhance the cinematography. 

Karin Fong

15/01/14
Leanne went through a PowerPoint on Saul Bass in which we had to take notes on. The PowerPoint was really interesting in the fact that we got to understand and see the different styles of title sequences that Saul Bass created and how it has inspired many other title sequence designers nowadays. After we had gone through the PowerPoint we was given a task to research and create a similar PowerPoint but on another title sequence designer. Our PowerPoint presentation had to include a brief biography on the designer, a catalogue of their work and a close analysis of their two title sequences. The designer my group and i chose was Karin Fong.
We went into the Mac rooms and started to create the PowerPoint presentation. We split the briefs into three so that i do the biography of Karin Fong, Hayley looks at the catalogue of her work and Aaron closely analysis two of her title sequences. After we had all done our research and completed the brief given we constructed our individual research into one presentation.

Here is our PowerPoint presentation on Karin Fong:

We were then all set homework individually to summaries the first lesson on Soul Bass and to post it on our individual blog. By researching Karin Fong it gave us an idea of how to create title sequences in different techniques for example animation and only typography shots. However i don't think that she was inspirational for creating our title sequence as the genre we are going for is romance and most of her title sequences are based around animation. I think this presentation we had created on Karin Fong was fairly successful as the information we got about her was fairly interesting as well as the in depth analysis there was done for two of her title sequences.

Film Pitch

13/01/14 
In Sinead's media lesson all the coursework groups in our media class went through there pitch presentation on there films.The pitch we created consists of the plot for our film, examples of films that follow a similar genre and rough research of the films. From the research we gained a rough idea of what the budget will be for our film, the estimation of box office and the actors and directors that will be included.

Here is our pitch for our film idea:

I think the pitch we created was pretty successful as the feedback we received from Sinead was good in that our film plot and genre went really well. She loved our film plot which made our group a bit confident with the romance genre idea. Creating this pitch will help us when creating our title sequence as it gives us a rough outline of what our film will be about and therefore what our title sequence will be about. There is also examples of other romantic films in which we could look at the title sequences to in the future to help give us an idea.