18. Saul Bass Research Essay

Saul Bass

Saul Bass is known his well known for his designing of film posters and title sequences as a graphic designer and film maker. His career lasted for forty long years and during that period of time he worked with some great filmmakers in Hollywood like Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock. The start of his famous career began with him creating the title sequence for The Man with the Golden Arm by Otto Preminger in 1955, for which he became noticed by other filmmakers. 

For each film title his flair varied. For example with Alfred Hitchcock films he designed similar but unforgettable title sequences using a type of kinetic typography for films such as North by Northwest, Psycho & Vertigo.

His wife Elaine Bass worked alongside him for the majority of his famous career and they made some of the most famous graphic design for film during those forty years. They met while Bass was creating the title sequence for Spartacus in 1960, in which Elaine was directing and they married in 1961. For then after they collaborated for almost every title sequence. The first collaborations they did together were promotional films such as For Here to There for United Airlines in 1964 and The Searching Eye for Eastman Kodak. They had their children Jennifer and Jeffery in 1964 & 1967. But later on in their career during the 60's to the 1980's, they stopped making title sequences and concentrated on film making and their two children.

However near the end of Bass's career, he was uncovered again by Martin Scorsese for whom they together made title sequences for Cape Fear, Casino, Goodfellas & The Age of Innocence. These were his last title sequences of his whole career. 

14. Opening Sequence Class Analysis

How can we analyse the opening title sequence of a film?

A title sequence is the opening introduction to a film giving us an idea of what may be in the film or give us any clues as to what may or may not happen.

Catch Me If You Can opening sequence film task:

Ingredient	Purpose
Production and Cast Credits	Telling us the companies, directors, actors etc. that are involved with the film.
Cartoon overview of the whole film	Giving us a very brief overview of the theme and what is going to happen in the film. The type of characters etc. Without giving away too much to the audience.
The main characters	Giving us an idea of what the characters are like
Setting	Where the film is going to be set and how it ties in with everything else.
Genre	Giving us an idea of what the film is about and the kind of things that may happen
Mood or atmosphere	This adds to the genre in that we see whether the there is any conflict or anything significant between the characters.

Memento:

The opening title sequence for the film Memento begins with a credit sequence, which introduces the audience to the main cast and crew of the film e.g., the main character played by “Guy Pearce” and the director of the film “Christopher Nolan”. The transition used to introduce the text is a slow fade and the text is presented in a blue font, which could be suggesting (connote) a theme like sadness of the character or a theme in the film. The mood that is created by the non-diegetic sound which is a contributor to the theme and atmosphere of the opening also suggesting the sad element as the music is slow and doesn’t suggest violence or happiness in the film at first. The music builds up from the start, increasing the tension and mood.  The character’s life at the start of the film suggests is full of violence and not exactly happy as he just killed a man therefore his equilibrium isn’t exactly normal and it also suggest that he is quite a cold and heartless person. The enigma in his life is that he has gaps in his memory therefore he took a picture of the man he just shot in order to remember it. This also ties in with the title of the film as he keeps it as a memento in order to remember what he just did. In this opening scene it is going backwards in order to show to the audience how the man came to be lying dead on the floor and the character taking a picture. It starts off with the main character holding a picture and then the scene gets rewound back to it going back into his camera, then the guns goes back into his hand and then we see that he actually shot the man. This then makes more sense for us as it shows that the reason he is taking the picture isn’t because his characters is a detective or something but another reason which gets the audience intrigued as to what is going to happen next. In one part of the opening sequence is a scene where the character is in a room and the whole screen is black and white and the characters deep in thought and trying to piece together where  he is as he has the gap in his memory that need filling.

10. Filming Language

"Rolling" - said by the Camera Operator beforehand and they start recording


5 Seconds

"Action" - said by the Director which is to tell the actors/scene to start


5 Seconds

"?" - Actor


Cut 5 Seconds after lines said by actor

"Cut" - said by the Director to stop the actors and the scene altogether. 



Turns Off Camera - Camera Operator

12. Progress Review - September

September 2015:

Mr Allan told me to finish my shot types film by finishing titles and transitions. He also said to add music/sound.
Below is evidence of me completing the target. 














Mr Allan told me to add images and examples to my theory blog post and my media techniques blog post.
Below is evidence of me completing the target. 

This evidence is the images I added to my theory blog post which was showing Todorovs theory in films. 

This evidence was also showing the image is added to my techniques blog to show one of the rules in media.