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SAUL BASS
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Saul Bass was an American graphic designer who developed many different influential graphics.
His most influential work was proven to be in his film title sequences, working on some of the greatest films ever made.
He has created titles for films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958) and the famous “Psycho” as well as many others. during the production of “Vertigo” he inventively used themes that appeared in the 2 hours of cinema that followed in the footage focusing on a female unknown to the audience but later seen with a spiral in her eye creating a hypnotising, vertigo like affect. Accompanied by the dramatic music this helped to create a very powerful and memorable title sequence.
“The title has a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.” – Saul Bass
“The Man With The Golden Arm” is another well-known title sequence from Saul Bass. During this title sequence he demonstates a more simplistic approach compared to that in Vertigo and shows animated white lines both on and off the screen at off angle positions. This could reflect the nature of the films themes including drug addiction and prison life being off blanace life-styles.
This style has proved very influential and is still very prominently used in productions today. For example in the TV Drama “Hustle”, the title sequence can be noted using a very similar technique to achieve very much comparative themes of the threat of prison life.
From the work of Saul Bass i can learn the importance of having a dominant blod image and strong theme when wanting to creative an effective title sequence. As he created titles for many films from my groups chosen film genre.
Analysis Of Texas Chainsaw Massacre Title Sequence
The opening of this film starts with the presence of eerie music which immediently builds suspence and gives the audience the impression that something not particually normal is either happening, happened or about to take place. The music involved in this scene works effectively as it not only creates a certain amount of tension amongst the viewers to prepare them for the events that are due to follow, but also compliments the low key lighting to ultimately generate a dark mysterious setting typical of a horror genre. The low key lighting is created by the use of candles, which also act as the key light. The candles during the title sequence create a gothic feel as they are mostly identified in churches and hold religious significance.
This title sequence is dependent on the use of photographs, a very simple yet effective decision as it makes the audience feels as if they are people told a story from a family photo album, making them more interested to proceed to find out about the storyline. The use of close-up shots on the photographs and news paper cut outs also helped to create a feeling of involvement towards the audience as if they are being shown the items personally. However, the camerawork was presented as very fast paced. The effect of this is that it dosen't reveal too much of the storyline and helps to also build tension and suspence, keeping the audience gripped and staying true to the horror genre.Other aspects that contributed to making this title sequence successful were the use of iconic and conventional horror figures. For example, blood.Blood is commonly connected with movies from the horror genre as there is usually always elements of death present within them. The other conventional aspects involved during this title sequence were the use of knives and chains. As the film title includes the word 'Chainsaw' this could also be a play-on aspect. The title of the film also suggests mass murder within the word 'Massacre' and therefore, the presence of knives are chains could help portray this idea and theme of muder further.Close-up shots of dead animals and newspaper cutouts involving the words 'Killing' and 'Murder' also help do this.
At the end of the title sequence, a photograph of a baby with a deformity, a cleft lip (which was also shown at the beginning of the title sequence) is being burnt. The connotation of this action is that it suggests the innocent baby in the photograph is nomore, and could infact imply that the baby is now of another form and plays some involvement into the murders that have been taking place as the photograph was shown at the both the beginning and end of the sequence.
Analysis Of Hustle
Hustle comtains elements used witih the iPod advert which eventually is the product we plan to produce with our short film coursework.
The opening credits of this television drams has acted as inpiration for our film and also provided us with a few ideas of which we would creatively change, and incorporate into our own work.
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