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Saul Bass is responsible for reinventing the opening credit sequence. His titles became an art form. They were unique, controversial and often worth the price of admission.

Before Bass shocked audiences with the opening title sequence to The Man With The Golden Arm, curtains remained closed for a movie’s opening titles. According to Design Museum the instructions on the film cans read “projectionists – pull curtain before titles.”

This title sequence shocked audiences because of its graphic depiction of a heroine addict’s arm. The central theme to Preminger’s 1955 film.

Saul Bass’s background is in graphic design but for Michael Todd’s Around the World In Eighty Days, Bass created a short animated film.

Psycho was Bass’s third collaboration with Hitchcock. Combined with a brilliant score by Bernard Herrmann, Bass foreshadows Norman Bates’ split personality.

For John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film Seconds, Bass distorts a man’s face. Distortion being a central theme to the film.

The opening credit sequence to Alien happens to be one of my favorites. The simplicity, elegance and suspense that Bass creates with the measured appearance of thirteen straight lines is remarkable. Like the creature, the title reveals itself slowly and methodically.

Bass began a long term collaboration with Scorsese in the early 90’s. Scorsese has said the Bass was able to create “an emblematic image, instantly recognisable and immediately tied to the film.” A great example of their work together can be seen in Cape Fear. Look closely at some of the images used in the background. Look familiar?

Images from the opening sequence to Seconds can be seen layered under the water. Scorsese is also using a score by Bernard Herrmann. Scorsese wanted to unite Bass and Herrmann once again - to recreate the notorious team that was responsible for Hitchcocks’ masterpieces.

Bass’s credits were an integral part of a film because they “identified the one image which symbolized the movie.” He designed credits worth looking at and essentially changed the way movies were seen and made from then on.

Other credit sequences by Saul Bass worth checking out:
Anatomy of a Murder;
North by Northwest;
Walk on the Wild Side;
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World;
Casino

There’s an excellent book by Philip Meggs called Six Chapters in Graphic Design: Saul Bass, Ivan Chermayeff, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, Ikko Tanaka, Henryk Tomaszewski if you want to learn more about Saul Bass and his body of work.

Birthday Girl will have another screening in Vancouver on March 14th. The film will be showing as part of the Sistahood Celebration, a month long event that celebrates women artists from different disciplines.

This year’s festival will combine pre cinema performances, live musical scoring, interactive, experimental, and narrative filmmaking in an exploration of the origins, elements and possibilities catalyzed by telling pictures with stories.

Location: Cinema 319 (319 Main St)
Doors 6:00 / show 7:30pm
$8 (students/seniors) / $10 (adults)

If you’re in the neighbourhood, check it out. Wish I could be there.

The font.

When you think about your credits, you have to think about what you want to communicate to your audience. For Birthday Girl, I wanted to communicate a sense of timelessness and maturity.

One of the reasons why I love Woody Allen’s credits is because they never feel dated. I didn’t want to look back on my film in ten years and cringe at the sight of an outdated font. Nothing in the film suggests a time period, from the production design to the costumes, so I didn’t want the font to be any different.

Even though the film is about kids and takes place at a birthday party, I wanted to communicate a sense of maturity. It’s how I see my main character.

We spent a lot of time deciding on the proper font for the film. Before we even began filming, Matt was suggesting we use Adobe Caslon Pro for the credits, an elegant font used in French Vogue.

The font was a perfect combination of timelessness and sophistication.

The credits.

I wanted to keep the opening credits simple. It’s a 13 minute film and I thought anything other than the film’s title would have been excessive.

We tried placing the title over images, we tried a red title with a black background, but in the end, white on black was the most natural and least obtrusive.

End credits.

We ran into some problems after watching the first test print on 35 mm. We were using Caslon for the end credits as well, but didn’t realise that at a smaller size, the vertical lines in some letters, such as “N” or “R” virtually disappeared. The cast and crew names were illegible as the credits scrolled up.

I wanted to keep the font consistent with the rest of the film, so I insisted that we find another serif font that had the same qualities as Caslon. I think everyone thought I was crazy that I cared whether or not the cast and crew names were in Arial or Georgia, but it was so important to me that the film be consistent from beginning to end. Details!

At the last minute we stumbled upon Cheltenhm BdHd BT. It’s quite different from Caslon, but at a smaller size it was perfect. Thick, legible, elegant and timeless.

Most people can recognize a Woody Allen film by its opening credits. Allen is famous for using EF Windsor Elongated in all of his films - beginning with Annie Hall. There’s a great post about Allen’s credits and the story behind them over at kitblog.

Allen doesn’t change his font to suit the theme of his films, instead the credits are always the same. They are simple, white on black credits that are aesthetically neutral. Whether it’s a period piece (The Purple Rose of Cairo) or a contemporary drama (Crimes and Misdemeanors), Allen always uses the same font. It’s his trademark.

Hitchcock on the other hand used his opening title sequence to tell the viewers what the film is about. He worked with the brilliant title-designer Saul Bass.

The credits created by Saul Bass (often accompanied by a musical score composed by Bernard Herrmann) were short films in and of themselves.

Here’s the opening credit sequence to Vertigo:

In my next post, I’m going to talk about the opening credits on my film and how both Allen and Hitchcock played a role in the choices we had to make.

I just found out that the FCTNM (femmes du cinéma, de la télévision et des nouveaux médias) will be screening Birthday Girl as part of their Short Film Showcase series this year. The FCTNM is the Montreal branch of the WIFTI (Women In Film and Television International). I’m very honoured to have the film screening at this event.

Location: Segal Centre at the Saidye
Time: Saturday, March 8 from 7-9pm with a cocktail to follow