Research posting on Saul Bass

As part of my research for my thriller opening sequences i decided to look into some of Saul Bass’ outstanding work. He is most famous for designing motion picture opening sequences. I will be looking into a few of his opening sequence’s and analysing it as i believe it will help when it comes to filming my own opening sequence. I have looked at four sequences in detail and have analysed them as follows:

Psycho

Psycho is the most simplistic of all the sequences I looked at but this is no way makes it less effective. It used two elements: lines and text, which seem to be a signature of bass as it appears in many of his sequences. The colour scheme of the sequence was monotone as is the film, this is a reflection of its context. The simple crossing lines and sliding text was very fast paced and flowed continuously. Which helped build up an anticipation that a thriller such as psycho requires. This is the suspect of this sequence that I like so much. With as little as a black and white striped animation and accompanying music bass has built up tension effortlessly.

Around the world in 80 days.

This was he longest of all the sequences that I have watched and although this seemed to drag it seems as though it represents the 80 days, as it is almost as long, of the title. As with this simple fact the animation of the whole sequence seemed to reflect scenes form the film and therefore made this the main focus. By doing this bass has made the text of the opening titles minuscule and unimportant. It is almost ignorable amongst the obscene images such as marching elephants and bright changing colours. The sequence had very upbeat music which set the comical mood. The animation though 2 dimensional was a very cleaver and specific artistic style. This may reflect the artistic style of France, Italy and other places visited in the Narrative of the sequence. In contrast to psycho it was a lot slower moving but still seemed to have effortless transitions and simplicity. The colour plate of this sequence is bright and varied to show a fun side that goes with the comical animation and the comical movie it is opening. Another great aspect of this sequence is bass’ use of text, though small he animates that as well turning it into fireworks among other things.

Oceans eleven.

Oceans , though a similar simplistic design as psycho it uses a much more digital design of animation. It is simply a count down to eleven and then transitions into casino related images. The colours as before are very limited but bright and showy depending on the image to give a Vegas feel. The animation is kind of penalised and moves very slowly as if dissolving. This is in contrast to the fast paced psycho and the positive around the world. Like around the world the simple casino elements alude to the setting of the film though it is no where near as revealing as the other. Like around the world it has upbeat music that reflects the more positive themes of the film. Another comparison is the use of cards in this film as in around the worlds this too could be a motif of bass. I am less of a fan of this sequence then I am of psycho despite their very similar style.

Goodfellas.

As I have been looking at animation sequences I have decided to look at a realistic sequence and compare the two. The first thing ive noticed in the extremely different style to animation the only thing that remains the same is the use of texts and this is inevitable in a title sequence as characters need to be introduced. It starts with sliding and lines as the others but there is no musical accompaniment instead diegetic sound of a car passing goes along with the sliding text until the text fades and we see a real scene of a car on a road. Having no music is very odd and different and builds tension in a different way to Psycho. The real action goes straight into the story we are half way through a scene. The scene itself is very direct violent and shocking. This is to capture the audience attention straight off the bat as well as like before give a snapshot of the style of the film. Although the scene is realistic and shows the characters in the middle of the scene there is a voice over that gives us background to help introduce us into the film. There are also many new techniques applied with a real scene. Bass freezes the frame, he uses sweeping camera angles and mixes both the diegetic sound of the car with the non diegetic music. Although basses animation is fantastic an works well as a simplistic but effective tool I was much more intrigued with Goodfellas and it real scenes.

I have also included in this blog a documentary on bass that has him talking about his opening sequences. Who better to hear it from then the man himself!