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.