Saul Bass

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer who became famous for his logos. He used simple geometric shapes in his work and their symbolisms. He often hand drew his work to create a casual appearance. His main achievement however was the way in which he revolutionized the way that people view title credit sequences.  

Saul Bass` earliest and arguably his most notorious title sequence was that of the man with the Golden Arm. In this he created an arresting image of a distorted, disjointed arm. As well as being disconnected from a body, the black arm has the appearance of being petrified and transformed into something else. Saul stated that, “The intent of this opening was to create a mood spare, gaunt, with a driving intensity… [that conveyed] the distortion and jaggedness, the disconnectedness and disjointedness of the addict’s life the subject of the film.” The soundtrack for this opening was a jazz-like score, and set against a black background, white bars appear, disappear and form abstract patterns before finally coalescing into the film’s symbol. The contrasts between the black and white heighten the loud and harsh intensity, and the separation encapsulate the mood of the main character, a downbeat drummer with a penchant for gambling and drugs. 

Link to the opening of The Man With The Golden Arm-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS76whmt5Yc

Evaluation of first draft of film

The first draft of our film actually went particularly poor.We shot this opening sequence in Summertown within public space. Our idea was meant to recall one of our actors waking up from a bad hangover and ending up outside one of the shops in Summertown. We then would film him waking up, getting up, then would film him walking off. We also thought it was a rainy and windy day which would fit in with the atmosphere of the opening sequence. The type of shots we wanted to include in our opening sequences included Pans, Close ups, eye line matches, establishing shots etc... However, since it was rainy and windy it made it hard for us to film especially when the camera was placed on a tripod. This made slight jerky movements when filming. The parts of the first draft which I thought was very effective is when our actor was walking off when the old women entered the scene and when we added the slow motion effect I thought this was the most effective part of the opening sequence. Also we used voice overs such as a sports car in the introduction which represented the cars going past. We also used a lightning voice over which represented the bad weather and his gloom when walking off.

However the pan up the characters body didn't work out how we wanted it to. This was because the panning was actually jumpy and wasn't a smooth pan up. Also the pan was slightly longer than we had hoped it would be, which may have taken the viewers attention off the film as they became uninterested. Another part of our film we may change is the music we used in our opening. This is because the soundtrack didn't really match the film we made.

Conclusively in our next draft we hope to either improve the pan we used, or get rid of this camera technique completely. We would also like to change our non diegetic soundtrack to a soundtrack that particularly matches our film opening.