Art of the Title is pleased to announce that Ian Albinson will be returning as a juror for the 2012 SXSW Film Design Awards.

A SXSW Announcement

As part of the SXSW Film Design Awards, the Excellence in Title Design Competition aims to discover the best in contemporary title sequence design.

Eligibility for the Title Sequence Design Competition is open to any film or television title sequence completed in 2011 or later. The title sequence can stand alone, and does not have to be related to a feature or short film submitted to the festival.

Applicants will be informed of the status of their project no later than February 9, 2012.

Submit Your Title Sequence Here

To celebrate the release of the long-awaited book Saul Bass: A Life In Film & Design, I put together a brief visual history of some of Saul Bass's most celebrated work.

Saul Bass: A Life In Film & Design, by Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham, is available on Amazon.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will also celebrate the life of Saul Bass with a film screening and talk on Monday, November 14, 2011, at 7:00 p.m. This special event features the New York premiere of Saul and Elaine Bass's Academy Award-winning short Why Man Creates (1968), newly preserved by the Academy Film Archive, as well as a rich selection of title sequences, commercials, and corporate campaigns.

Among the evening's guest presenters are the book's author, Pat Kirkham, a distinguished design historian who knew Bass personally; Chip Kidd, the award-winning contemporary graphic designer and writer noted for his brilliant book covers; and Kyle Cooper, a legendary graphic designer in his own right, with such unforgettable film title sequences as Se7en, X-Men: First Class, the Spider-Man trilogy, and countless others.

Full details here: The Academy and MoMA Present Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design

- Ian Albinson, Editor-in-Chief

"I sent my soul through the invisible, some letter of that afterlife to spell: and by and by my soul returned to me and answered, ‘I myself am Heaven and Hell.’" - Omar Khayyám (from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám)

A spectral camera soars languidly through a deep valley, conjuring up images of the American frontier: towering mountains, evergreen trees, and serene water lucidly captured through a wide-angle lens. Sweeping across the landscape, the camera begins to follow a tiny yellow VW Beetle making its way up a winding road carved into the steep mountain cliffs. The lens frequently relegates the car to only a fraction of the frame, revealing how minuscule the vehicle is against the grandeur on which it is trespassing. This bird’s eye chase foreshadows the events that await the Torrence family and the film’s harrowing themes of isolation and madness.

After being offered The Exorcist and its sequel, Exorcist 2: The Heretic, the iconoclast filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, declined both and opted instead to adapt a story from Stephen King’s novel, The Shining. The title sequence introduces viewers to Kubrick’s unorthodox vision of horror, as haunting landscapes and unnerving score combine to cause an ineffable unease. By discarding genre tropes such as creaking doors, spiderwebs, dark corridors, and excessive blood, the title sequence outperforms convention.

The stunning mountain ranges were filmed by Greg McGillivray (from MacGillivray Freeman Films), a cameraman personally chosen by Kubrick.

From the book Kubrick by Michel Ciment:

The aerial shots share many characteristics with the hotel footage filmed using the Steadicam, a stabilizing camera mount pioneered by Garrett Brown. Kubrick’s innovative use of the Steadicam on The Shining was considered groundbreaking, and the seemingly effortless gliding motions and long takes afforded by the system closely echo the title sequence. This hitherto untested stylistic choice imbues every move of the camera with a sense of tension and dread. Unaware of what lies around the next curve in the road or hallway corridor, viewers are lured deeper and deeper into the world of the film.

Unusually, the title sequence for The Shining also employs rolling credits, a design element normally reserved for end credits. When paired with the unsettling musical score, the austere Helvetica typeface — cryptically colored a hot blue — seems immediately at odds with the pristine wilderness.

Dies Irae (Latin for Day of Wrath) is the name of the 13th century Gregorian chant re-envisioned by composers Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind for the title sequence. Their modern take establishes the haunting atmosphere using the sounds of an electronic synthesizer — a common trope in many subsequent horror films. The synth fades in and out periodically, allowing a Native American ritual hymn to enter. The shrill wail of sirens pierce the vast sky and add to the uncanny mood.

Like many of cinema’s most notable title sequences, the introduction to The Shining touches on themes later addressed in the film. For a celebrated and chronicled filmmaker such as Kubrick — known for his trenchant observations and perfectionism — myriad readings can be taken from viewing this opening. Jack Torrence’s ascent into the celestial Rocky Mountains is also a descent into the depths of his own personal hell; the lonely and strangely claustrophobic mountain road is the first of many labyrinthine constructs the film forces the Torrence family into. Here Kubrick introduces the viewer to an uncharacteristic form of horror: the domestic kind. When stripped of its supernatural elements, The Shining is an all too familiar tale of abuse, alienation, and paranoia.

WRITER: Shaun Mir
© Art of the Title, 2011

Art of the Title's Ian Albinson has been asked to be part of the judging panel for the 58th Annual Type Directors Club Competition - Title Design section - and is honored to join Competition Chair Karin Fong (Imaginary Forces), Matt Lambert (Motionographer), and Shane Walter (onedotzero). Details of the competition below.

This Saturday, October 22, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis will open Graphic Design: Now in Production, a joint exhibition with the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

The exhibition features work produced since 2000 in the most vital sectors of communication design, exploring the world of design-driven magazines, newspapers, books, and posters; the expansion of branding and identity programs for corporations, subcultures, and nations; the entrepreneurial spirit of designer-produced goods; the renaissance in digital typeface design; the transformation of raw data into compelling information narratives; and the storytelling potential of film and television title sequences.

For the latter section, Art of the Title was asked to guest curate a 'screening room' for the titles section of the show, and for the past ten months we've worked to produce a comprehensive list of film and television title work created within the last ten years that exemplifies contemporary title design.

Twenty eight sequences were chosen, representing both US and international film and television, from studios such Prologue, Imaginary Forces, Digital Kitchen, Elastic, yU+co., Lobo and MK12, and designers like Gareth Smith & Jenny Lee, Kuntzel+Deygas, Daniel Kleinman, Tom Kan, Jamie Caliri and Johnny Kelly.

With this wide variety of sequence choices we hope to highlight work that has influenced the design field, shown creative vision and use of materials, innovative practices and methods, and which embodies the timeless tradition established by past eras of title design.

A comprehensive, illustrated catalogue produced by the Walker Art Center accompanies the exhibition. The title sequence section will contain a specially commissioned introduction from Ben Radatz, Partner and Creative Director at the Kansas City-based MK12 (Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner, Quantum of Solace) as well as write-ups and interview excerpts from Art of the Title.

Exhibition catalog

We would personally like to thank Andrew Blauvelt at the Walker and Ellen Lupton at the Cooper-Hewitt for this opportunity. It has been a tremendous honor to work with them on this and we are extremely proud and excited to be present for the opening.

Further details can be found here: http://calendar.walkerart.org/canopy.wac?id=6189

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The first major museum exhibition on graphic design in more than a decade, Graphic Design: Now in Production will run from October 22, 2011 - January 22, 2012 in Minneapolis and then travel to New York in the summer of 2012 and other venues thereafter.

Curatorial Team:
Ian Albinson, Art of the Title
Andrew Blauvelt, Walker Art Center
Jeremy Leslie, magCulture
Ellen Lupton, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution
Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio, Brand New

Graphic Design: Now In Production is co-organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York.

Walker Art Center
1750 Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55403
1-612-375-7687
http://www.walkerart.org/

Walker Art Center

WRITER: Ian Albinson
WALKER IMAGE: j. fo (flickr)
LAST UPDATE: October 19, 2011
© Art of the Title, 2011

A solitary shell placed carefully by dark hands sets the stage for a bunraku play of prehistoric ages past: papier-mâché cephalopods give way to darting sea creatures and lizard beasts locked in combat. Humanity is introduced as the style changes to the two dimensional and animated cave paintings begin to slaughter one another with newly discovered weapons. Time progresses further and mankind’s weapons grow increasingly efficient, requiring less and less effort to kill and maim.

Utilizing varied styles of stagecraft to denote each passing era and narrated by a deep and commanding voice, Guilherme Marcondes’ title sequence for Guy Moshe's Bunraku brings us forward to the time of our story. A tyrant strides forth with his axe and an army stands in formation.

"This is a job for the Australian!" - Louison

Crass laughter drowns out the man’s final whimper as a meat cleaver comes crashing down, delivering his end as well as the opening titles for Delicatessen. The butcher shop's emblem, a hanging pig, sways back and forth, in and out of the shadows. It is a dismal reminder of the realities of this post-apocalyptic world: meat of pig, cow and chicken is a rarity, and the only substitute is that of human flesh.

The descending notes of a piano usher the camera towards a notepad, passing a severed hand along its way, and the first set of film credits. With a macabre charm the title sequence glides through various twists and turns, the camera deftly capturing remnants of survivors past, while the jovial intro music underscores the film's black comedy.

Delicatessen's distinct visual aesthetic can be attributed partly to an intricate chemical process called ENR. Named after its inventor, Ernesto Novelli Rimo, a technician at Technicolor Rome, the process was created for legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, Reds, The Last Emperor). The bleach-bypass process imbues the film stock with a sanguine overcast, giving it a cannibal quality that matches the subject matter.

We asked friend of the site Karin Fong, a creative director and designer at Imaginary Forces, whose title work includes Terminator: Salvation, Boardwalk Empire and Rubicon, for her thoughts on the Delicatessen titles:

“One of my all-time favorite main titles. I love how it creates a whole world in tabletop. The production design in macro is fantastic, all the details and texture, along with the music, are so charming. But more than that, how it weaves in each of the crew credits with cleverness – the DP’s credit etched on the camera, the music credit on a broken record. I’ve always appreciated how integrated the titles are with the environment, as if they are waiting for you to discover each one. It almost becomes a game, and once you realize what is going on, you delight in seeing the idea in each one—yes, of course the costume designer would be stitched on a clothing label! It’s like every credit is its own little a-ha moment.

I can’t remember when I first saw it—somehow independently from the film—but it always stuck with me. When I first started designing titles I very much wanted to do something in that vein. I remember one of my first pitch boards, for the film Dead Man on Campus, involved hiding all the credits on student “cheat sheets”: written on the sole of a shoe, on a pencil, tucked away in the top part of boxer shorts peeking out from jeans. That exact idea didn’t fly but it hasn’t stopped me from thinking about the next time I could use such an approach.

Of course, most people don’t realize that when it comes to making these sequences, it can be harder to get the studio’s legal department to approve how you are treating the names, since every one of them has some variation in appearance. Most major films have clauses in the cast and crew contracts about how the names must appear in the credit sequence. It’s tricky when you’re using different fonts and camera angles, but, knowing that, I suppose it makes me appreciate those title designs that do ingeniously weave in the credits even more.”

WRITER: Shaun Mir
LAST UPDATE: October 8, 2011
© Art of the Title, 2011