The life and work of Saul and Elaine Bass
- "In a sense all modern opening title sequences that introduce the mood or theme of a film are a legacy of the Basses' work"
- "I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly things. That's my intent."
- Saul Bass was born May 8th 1920 and died April 25th 1966 aged 75 from non-Hodgkin's lymohoma.
- He was an American graphic designer and an Oscar-winning filmmaker.
- He mainly designed film posters, logos and opening title sequences of films.
- Bass worked with some of the most famous filmmakers of all time including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Stanley Kubrick to name a few.
Saul started his career in Hollywood in the 1940s designing print adverts for films, and then moved on to opening title sewuences when he impressed Preminger with his work.
- Saul takes an abstract approach to his opening title seuqences making them engaging and exciting to thne audience. In the opening to "the man with the golden arm" he focused on the arm of a paper cut out man to relate to the films theme of heroin addiction. It was highly successful and earned him a large amount of attention that propelled him into the rest of his career.
- Bass described his main goal form his work to be trying "to reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is all about and evokes the esscence of the story". He wanted the audience to see familiar parts of their world in an unfamiliar way.
- In 1955 Elain came to work with him on the title sequence to "Sparticus" and in 1961 they married which was the start of 30 years of close collaboration together.
- In the 1980s to the 1990s the Basses moved away from the optical techniques that saul had previously developed to the use of computerised effect feauturing new innovative methods of production.
- The majority of their opening title sequences and film posters are animated and visually stimulating with simplified, symbolic designs that comunicate the key elements of the film.
- During the 60s he was asked to expand to not only opening sequences but also storyboards and kew scenes. For "west side story" Bass filmed the prologue, storyboarded the opening dance sequence and created the ending title sequence.
- Bass introduced using montages of fast cuts and tight framing on the film "vertigo" to create violent, bloody murder scenes as an impressionistic and nearly bloodless scene. Hitchcokc was concerned that audience members wouldn't respond well to the extremely stylised scene. In the end it was given the ok and was recieved well by the public.
Saul and Elaine Bass created the opening title sequence to 'Cape Fear'
Martin Scorsese directed Cape Fear and is said to have a great admiration for Saul Bass, according to the article on Art of the Title saying “Before I ever met Saul Bass, before we worked together, he was a legend in my eyes”. Saul and Elain Bass created the title sequence for Cape Fear and used it to set the atmosphere for the rest of the film through the colour palette and ambiguous, ominous visuals. The actual titles are in a font that makes them jagged and wavy to match the rippling water in the background. They are easy to read due to the bold white colour against the darkness behind. The words are rarely in the centre of the screen until the end of the sequence where they are positioned more in the centre for the more 'important' names. The title 'cape fear' is only in the same font size as the rest of the titles which creates a sense of unease as if there is something dangerous approaching but it isn't immediatley obvious. The dark colours and tint of red and blues create a sinister tone with red and black connoting death or violence and blue combined with the water suggests somehting later in the film will have an element of water and that whatever and whenever this occurs the audience would be apprehensive because it has been suggested that it could be a warning of something happening.
Art of the Title says that the titles blend symbols and metaphors relating to the films main themes:
- liquid — as a physical setting and a moral quicksand
- eyes and eye-lines — surveillance, judgement, but also human connection
- the colour red or blood — rage, sacrifice, and collateral damage, and
- predatory alpha behaviour — manifested as a hawk in the sequence, and as Cady in the film.
The above bullet points are taken straight from the article on Art of the Title.
Websites used for research:
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