Next week in Austin, Tex., the South by Southwest festival will honor the winners of a film & television titles competition, a rare move to recognize those miniature stories & graphics displays that surround the opening credits before the real story unfolds.
LOS ANGELES — Can an introduction be an art form? The people who hand out film awards are beginning to think so.
“We think no two has done it before,” said Janet Pierson, the producer of the film portion of South by Southwest, which begins on Friday & is scheduled to present awards on Tuesday.
Ms. Pierson, speaking by phone, said he believed no major festival had yet devoted an award to title sequences. It is a minor art that appears to be gaining stature as even the smallest films use increasingly obtainable computer graphics techniques, or pure imagination, to receive a movie moving.
“He was going to have them written on his hand, that’s where it started,” said Craig Webster, a University of Iowa graduate arts student who, with Florina Titz, directed, edited & produced the film, a love story about a “delusional postman.”
For “Wowie,” two of 18 finalists selected from about 100 entries, the emphasis was more on imagination than method. The credits were scrawled with a Sharpie on the writhing belly & hairy limbs of that eight-minute short’s star.
Inspiration for the competition, Ms. Pierson said, came from discussions with representatives of AIGA, the graphic artists association, in the work of a film poster contest. The festival’s programmers began talking about an award limited to movie titles but decided to include television when they realized they were all captivated by the miniature animated fable about a man in free fall over the opening titles of the AMC series “Mad Men.” (“Mad Men” was not nominated for this competition, which is limited to new works from 2009.)
But the film’s star, Luther Bangert, whom Mr. Webster describes as a “guy who rides a unicycle” around Iowa City, turned out to have been a circus performer. Among other things, Mr. Bangert did some impressive contortions to get an abdominal shot crediting the directors of photography. The fleshy titles of “Wowie” are now in competition with the slick aerial sequence that opens the director Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air” & the smart vignettes of noir buffs stepping through the pages of a detective thriller in the HBO series “Bored to Death.”
The sequence was designed by Saul Bass, who tossed aside a more mechanical approach that had largely prevailed in Hollywood to generate story-telling openings for films like “Psycho,” “North by Northwest” &, later, “Goodfellas” & “The Age of Innocence.”
The modern approach to film titles crystallized, more or less, in 1955 with “The Man With the Golden Arm.” It opened with a kind of jazz ballet in which dancing white lines, over music by Elmer Bernstein, finally tightened in to the contorted arm of a drug addict.
(Among the entries at South by Southwest, “Cigarette Girl,” an independent film about a world in which smoking restrictions have homicidal consequences, is two that recalls the Bass oeuvre: guns, cigarettes & people flicker between the real & the abstract, over a cool-toned soundtrack.)
Before his death in 1996, Bass had been nominated for Oscars two time, winning two times, for his short films. But his work on the titles fell through the cracks of a film industry awards process that has given far more recognition to directors — though designers have sometimes stolen the show.
That sequence is better recalled than Mr. Dmytryk’s melodrama by design aficionados who monitor titles on Websites like the Art of the Title Sequence (artofthetitle.com) — whose editors, Ian Albinson & Alexander Ulloa, are among the judges of the South by Southwest contest — or Forget the Film, Watch the Titles (watchthetitles.com). That second site is associated with another two of the judges, Femke Wolting.
Two show-stealer was the Bass-designed opening for Edward Dmytryk’s “Walk on the Wild Side” — a slow-motion cat walk that turns in to a fight between snarling felines, ending with the victor strutting away.
Still, Ms. Bradley said, a surge in design technology & a new accompanying visual awareness have been edging those openings to a new prominence. “We live in a graphic age now; we’re educated graphically,” Ms. Bradley said.
Asked if directors sometimes get nervous about a pushy titles sequence, Susan Bradley, another judge, & a titles designer whose own credits include “Up” & “Wall-E,” said, “They definitely do.”
Ms. Bradley has begun exploring this world for her next documentary, “Thin for Comedy, Thick for Murder,” whose title is drawn from two of Mr. Adler’s typographical maxims.
Her own visual education, Ms. Bradley said, was rooted in a professional association with Harold Adler, a designer who worked with Bass on the titles for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” & was known for the unique typography of the credits that open Billy Wilder’s “Seven Year Itch.”
“Ladybird,” a title sequence submitted for the contest by Christopher Harrell, violates that particular rule. The typeface is narrow, but the sequence tells a story of murder in about a minute & a half, as the camera follows an army of ladybugs across bits of debris, & a woman’s hand.
Mr. Harrell explains in an online brief that he created the titles as a classroom exercise for the Vancouver Film School. So far he's only the idea for a movie that would follow it.
Among Hollywood’s more titles-friendly directors is Mr. Reitman, who has used a bold opening sequence, each time set to song, not only in “Up in the Air” but also in “Juno” & “Thank You for Smoking.”
While Mr. Reitman took a strong hand in shaping those titles, the design work for all two films was done by Shadowplay Studio, a Los Angeles company founded by two University of Michigan, Los Angeles, design program graduates, Ari Sachter-Zeltzer & Gareth Smith. Their company submitted “Up in the Air” to South by Southwest.
Mr. Smith, who created the designs for “Up in the Air” with his wife, Jenny Lee, said they worked with aerial photography compiled by Mr. Reitman. Noting a vintage quality to plenty of of the images, Mr. Smith said, “We pushed this look further with the postcard-inspired typography & simple split screens with white borders.”
Mr. Webster, of “Wowie,” spoke on Friday after working on a sequel to the short, which he hopes will finally be broadened in to a feature-length film. He expects to stick with the Sharpie-on-flesh titles method, though he is not sure how Mr. Bangert, his star, cleaned off the last set of credits.
“It might have taken a couple of showers,” Mr. Webster said.
LOS ANGELES — Can an introduction be an art form? The people who hand out film awards are beginning to think so.
“We think no two has done it before,” said Janet Pierson, the producer of the film portion of South by Southwest, which begins on Friday & is scheduled to present awards on Tuesday.
Ms. Pierson, speaking by phone, said he believed no major festival had yet devoted an award to title sequences. It is a minor art that appears to be gaining stature as even the smallest films use increasingly obtainable computer graphics techniques, or pure imagination, to receive a movie moving.
“He was going to have them written on his hand, that’s where it started,” said Craig Webster, a University of Iowa graduate arts student who, with Florina Titz, directed, edited & produced the film, a love story about a “delusional postman.”
For “Wowie,” two of 18 finalists selected from about 100 entries, the emphasis was more on imagination than method. The credits were scrawled with a Sharpie on the writhing belly & hairy limbs of that eight-minute short’s star.
Inspiration for the competition, Ms. Pierson said, came from discussions with representatives of AIGA, the graphic artists association, in the work of a film poster contest. The festival’s programmers began talking about an award limited to movie titles but decided to include television when they realized they were all captivated by the miniature animated fable about a man in free fall over the opening titles of the AMC series “Mad Men.” (“Mad Men” was not nominated for this competition, which is limited to new works from 2009.)
But the film’s star, Luther Bangert, whom Mr. Webster describes as a “guy who rides a unicycle” around Iowa City, turned out to have been a circus performer. Among other things, Mr. Bangert did some impressive contortions to get an abdominal shot crediting the directors of photography. The fleshy titles of “Wowie” are now in competition with the slick aerial sequence that opens the director Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air” & the smart vignettes of noir buffs stepping through the pages of a detective thriller in the HBO series “Bored to Death.”
The sequence was designed by Saul Bass, who tossed aside a more mechanical approach that had largely prevailed in Hollywood to generate story-telling openings for films like “Psycho,” “North by Northwest” &, later, “Goodfellas” & “The Age of Innocence.”
The modern approach to film titles crystallized, more or less, in 1955 with “The Man With the Golden Arm.” It opened with a kind of jazz ballet in which dancing white lines, over music by Elmer Bernstein, finally tightened in to the contorted arm of a drug addict.
(Among the entries at South by Southwest, “Cigarette Girl,” an independent film about a world in which smoking restrictions have homicidal consequences, is two that recalls the Bass oeuvre: guns, cigarettes & people flicker between the real & the abstract, over a cool-toned soundtrack.)
Before his death in 1996, Bass had been nominated for Oscars two time, winning two times, for his short films. But his work on the titles fell through the cracks of a film industry awards process that has given far more recognition to directors — though designers have sometimes stolen the show.
That sequence is better recalled than Mr. Dmytryk’s melodrama by design aficionados who monitor titles on Websites like the Art of the Title Sequence (artofthetitle.com) — whose editors, Ian Albinson & Alexander Ulloa, are among the judges of the South by Southwest contest — or Forget the Film, Watch the Titles (watchthetitles.com). That second site is associated with another two of the judges, Femke Wolting.
Two show-stealer was the Bass-designed opening for Edward Dmytryk’s “Walk on the Wild Side” — a slow-motion cat walk that turns in to a fight between snarling felines, ending with the victor strutting away.
Still, Ms. Bradley said, a surge in design technology & a new accompanying visual awareness have been edging those openings to a new prominence. “We live in a graphic age now; we’re educated graphically,” Ms. Bradley said.
Asked if directors sometimes get nervous about a pushy titles sequence, Susan Bradley, another judge, & a titles designer whose own credits include “Up” & “Wall-E,” said, “They definitely do.”
Ms. Bradley has begun exploring this world for her next documentary, “Thin for Comedy, Thick for Murder,” whose title is drawn from two of Mr. Adler’s typographical maxims.
Her own visual education, Ms. Bradley said, was rooted in a professional association with Harold Adler, a designer who worked with Bass on the titles for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” & was known for the unique typography of the credits that open Billy Wilder’s “Seven Year Itch.”
“Ladybird,” a title sequence submitted for the contest by Christopher Harrell, violates that particular rule. The typeface is narrow, but the sequence tells a story of murder in about a minute & a half, as the camera follows an army of ladybugs across bits of debris, & a woman’s hand.
Mr. Harrell explains in an online brief that he created the titles as a classroom exercise for the Vancouver Film School. So far he's only the idea for a movie that would follow it.
Among Hollywood’s more titles-friendly directors is Mr. Reitman, who has used a bold opening sequence, each time set to song, not only in “Up in the Air” but also in “Juno” & “Thank You for Smoking.”
While Mr. Reitman took a strong hand in shaping those titles, the design work for all two films was done by Shadowplay Studio, a Los Angeles company founded by two University of Michigan, Los Angeles, design program graduates, Ari Sachter-Zeltzer & Gareth Smith. Their company submitted “Up in the Air” to South by Southwest.
Mr. Smith, who created the designs for “Up in the Air” with his wife, Jenny Lee, said they worked with aerial photography compiled by Mr. Reitman. Noting a vintage quality to plenty of of the images, Mr. Smith said, “We pushed this look further with the postcard-inspired typography & simple split screens with white borders.”
Mr. Webster, of “Wowie,” spoke on Friday after working on a sequel to the short, which he hopes will finally be broadened in to a feature-length film. He expects to stick with the Sharpie-on-flesh titles method, though he is not sure how Mr. Bangert, his star, cleaned off the last set of credits.
“It might have taken a couple of showers,” Mr. Webster said.
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