Saul Bass

Analysis of Saul Bass's title sequences

Saul Bass was born on the 8th of may 1920 i the bronx, New York City. He died 25th of April 1996. He won Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject, Lion of San Marco for Best Film about Adolescence. He attended James Monroe High School, Brooklyn College, Art Students League of New York.

Saul Bass is a title sequence designer who is very unique with his style of editing. In his work he doesn't tend to use live clips of people moving, instead he creates animation sequences where he animates random shapes or actions and in corporates those with the text to create his title sequences. In some of his work he uses still images and just moves them across the screen and adding in credits. Sometimes the still images can reference or establish scenes or narrative in the film. For example in the title sequence ''Around the world in 80 days'' the audience is shown cartoon images of different places around the world to establish that the film is going to be about traveling the world.

 

This is a screenshot from the title sequence for around the world in 80 days. Here we can see a man who is likely Asian as he has his hair tied up in a bun and has a paper umbrella. This shows that at some point in the film there will be a scene in Asia. Due to his appearance the audience instantly begins to relate him with stereotypes however Bass's work is known for animating characters within the film and begin to establish their values and opinions. There are other stereotypes within the title sequence, one would be a character (pocket watch) in a top hat drinking tea, this figure would be considered to be British as it expresses British values. In this sequence we see a butterfly flying through to all the different scenes (possibly countries). The butterfly could represent the characters in the film traveling around the world. This is the first symbol that represents the theme of travel, as the title sequence progresses the audience can see other forms of travel. An example of these would be the boat and train. All forms of representations within the theme of travel move forward, this suggests the story is progressing and the journey is being discovered. This also ensures the audience that travel is apart of the narrative.

The butterfly leads the story as it transitions across screen, unraveling the new shots. The butterfly also enables the audience to begin to get an understanding of the characters within the film, it is very conventional for a title sequence to establish themes and characters within the film and Saul Bass manages to do this in an abstract unique which manages to engage the audience right from the start. It is because of this he is one of the most successful title sequence designers and very well known in the film industry, his iconic work never fails to amaze its audience.

By Max Rowlands and Tommy Devaux. 

Catch me if you can

Analysis of Title Sequences - Catch me if you can

In todays lesson we watched and discussed the title sequence for ''Catch me if you can''. The title sequence is a Saul Bass styled title sequence as we don't actually see any of the main characters from the film but we do see cartoon characters possibly representing those characters. The other reason this is a Saul Bass styled title sequence is because the animations and the text interact with each eachother  in the clip. 

In the title sequence we can see that a character likely to be Leonardo DiCaprio because we see his name and then an arrow pointing towards a small animation character. The character stands out from the others as they are all walking with a straight posture where as he does not have such a great posture. We then see his character pass through an animated line, when he comes through the other side he is in a uniform and begins to walk with a better posture. This shows that he must be trying to hide from someone as he is in a disguise. when the camera moves out from the close up he is in a new setting, this can show the passing of time in the film. In this new setting we see a much larger character sitting down with ''Tom Hanks'' next to him, telling the audience that this is the character being played by Tom Hanks. His character looks well dressed as if he is a detective looking for someone. In this case its fair to say that he is looking for Leonardo's character as we see the animation of Tom Hanks watching him walk away. Once again we see the yellow arrow pointing at the character telling the audience that this is Tom Hanks. 

In the next shot we see Leonardos character walking as normal whilst bigger characters are walking past him, this tells us that he is trying to blend in with everyone to avoid being spotted. We also see a scene of a plane flying which tells us that the film won't be taking place in one area and will be traveling to different places. A lot of the time we see Tom Hanks get close to catching Leonardo but just mess him. For example we see a scene where he is climbing out of a swimming pool and just as he gets into his new disguise and leaves the scene, Tom Hanks enters the shot. We are teased again at the end of the title sequence when we see Tom Hanks chasing Leonardo and just as we think Tom has caught him, the scene blacks out leaving the audience in suspense and curious to see what happens.

Hulk

Analysis of Title Sequence- Hulk

In todays lesson we watched and disscused the title sequence for ''The Incredible Hulk''. The sequence starts off in some kind of lab or hospital, we can say this because we see pictures of an x-ray and loads of machinery. The first thing that we see on screen is a danger sign in red, this immediately tells the audience what the genre is about because associate danger with action movies. The first character we see is Bruce Banner in a chair with machinery moving around him and lazers pointing at him. The next character we see is Betty Ross on the other side of the glass separating Bruce from everyone else. We can tell these two characters are close or know each other well when Bruce winks at her whilst in the chair, Betty is also looking worried showing that sh obviously cares about him and his safety.

We get a point of view of Bruce sitting in the chair looking at Betty who is walking towards the glass looking worried. Whilst she is walking forward the machine slowly moves in the cameras way blocking our view of betty. This could suggest that this is the last time she see's just Bruce and not the Hulk. This is an important time in the film because this is the rebirth of Bruce as now he is not just Bruce but the Hulk.

In the next scene we see Bruce banner in a new setting behind glass trying to escape. As he hits the glass his eyes turn green, this shows that his transformation into the hulk has begun. In the transitions from scene to scene there is a green pulse of DNA looking substance across the screen, this likely represents Bruce as the hulk as the conventional colour for the hulk is green. The soundtrack begins to increase and a sense of horror is added in. Whilst this is happening a quick montage of DNA pulses and scenes of Bruce's green eyes is played. This all leads into the HULK being revealed to the audiane for the first time.

Later in the clip we see a point of view from the HULK trashing the lab and hitting people out of the way. This is the begginging of the chaos in the film. From this shot we see the HULK looking at Betty who is on the floor badly injured and passed out, the camera then cuts to a flash back where we are still in a point of view but of Bruce not the HULK, we see him looking at Betty. They seem like they are in bed, this tells the audience a bit about the two charachters past. This also shows that Bruce cares deeply for Betty even when he is the HULK.

Love Actually

Analysis of Title Sequence- Love Actually

In lesson we discussed and analysed the title sequence for ''Love Actually''

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUoxXpqof8A

This title sequence is very unconventional as it doesn't establish any of the key characters in the film. The sequence is made up of multiple scenes of people showing love for each other in an airport. The only thing we get that could be reference to a key character is the narrator who is talking about love. It seems that there are no references to the story line or what the film is about. It pretty much just establishes that the film is about love and how we show it towards each other. Most film title sequences would reveal some of the story or clips from the film to show the audience where the film is set and what characters are going to be in the film, however this film does not show either of them details.

Another thing we could discuss about the sequence is the font used. It is a basic non aggressive looking font which matches what the film is about. Also the colour of the font is white which is all around peace which also matches the theme of the film. White also merges well with the actual clips being shown in Heathrow airport which are well lit.

The fact that this title sequence is all natural and not acted out makes it all feel that bit more real as the audience know that it isn't scripted and that we are really seeing the actually reactions of people seeing and greeting each other with love. 

In these two shots we see people showing great excitment to see each other as you can see in the way they are hugging each other and have huge smiles.

Se7en

Analysis of title sequence- Se7en

Title Sequence for se7en- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k2gsEI34CE

In class we watched the title sequence for ''se7en'' a thriller crime movie with some traces of horror too.  In the title sequence we do not see any of the characters faces, however there are also credits of key characters in the film so the audience can still work out who is in the film. In the clip we see a character who we could say has committed a crime or is some kind of act of violence. This is due to the fact we see him using a razor blade to shed the skin off his finger tips. The shot used for this is an extreme close up so the audience gets to see what he is doing in great detail and also how dirty his hands are, this suggests he is trying to cover up his tracks from the crime and that he isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. It could even be the other way round and this scene could be before this character committs a crime and means police won't be able to find any finger prints. This is also an un common technique of trying to hide from police, this shows that this character is willing to do whatever it takes to get his way. This makes the audience feel that the protagonist has a hard job to do as there is the saying ''how do you beat someone who won't give up?''. We see a lot of red filters in the clip which connotes danger.

There is a shot where we see a picture of a child who the character is drawing a line through his eyes and then cuts to when the picture has been fully scribbled out. This could possibly be someone he has killed or lost, possibly a child. We also see the character drawing lines through words to possibly create a message. This is also a way of knowing that this character is being looked for as he doesn't want to use his own hand writing. It looks as if he is creating some sort of collage of pictures of dead people and text in a book, the camera then cuts to a shot of multiple books showing that he's possibly made a lot of these collages and emphasises how crazy he is.

Continuity Sequence

Continuity Sequence 

Drafting our Continuity

Continuity Sequence 

In today's lesson we began to draft and story board our continuity sequence. We came up with the idea of an action sequence with a gangster theme to it. We agreed that it would be about someone who has stolen money from a friend who is well respected gangster with a lot of money. George who is the gangster is in disgust with this and decides he wants to kill john who has stolen the money from him. However when it came to filming our continuity sequence one of our members of the group was not in and we were limited on the amount of time we had to film, because of this we decided to change our story. We found a batman costume in a props section so we decided to make a comedy version of batman. We didn't have any additional lighting to help set the scene but because its batman it is expected to be low key lighting. In some parts during the convocation between the two characters (Batman and Gotti) we used a couple of iPhone torches to help light the faces of the characters but not too much to make it obvious. When shooting each of the characters speaking to each other, instead of switching the camera position every time someone else talks we just shot all of their lines at once and then in the editing process we separated it all out. This was helpful as it meant we could work quicker and in the final piece it didn't look like the camera had moved at all from its previous shot.

I feel that if we had a bit more time for filming and had the whole group then the final piece could have been better but i am still happy with the way it came out. I used final cut pro to edit our piece which i have used maybe once or twice before but not enough to no my way around it. However a little while i worked out where everything i needed was and it became a lot easier to create our final piece.

 Link to the final piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxM5-JHE-6Q

Video
Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.
Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.
All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group. 


This is the outline of the task ill be completing for coursework.