REEL Film & Art Magazine Th e
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D e a l
O n
M o v i e
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Interviews with Saul Bass and John Alvin Film Posters and Title Sequences
Issue 1 December 4, 2014 $4.99 ReelMagazine.com
DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT
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DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT
JOHN
A LV I N
“Creating the promise of a great experience”
J
ohn Henry Alvin was an American cinematic artist and painter who illustrated
many popular movie posters. Alvin created posters and key art for more than 135 films, beginning with the poster for Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles in 1974. His poster art is among the most iconic of the last 40 years, from Disney films such as Beauty and the Beast and Pinocchio, to Empire of the Sun, Gremlins, Blazing Saddles, Predator, and Star Wars 30th anniversary posters.
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John Alvin Poster Collection
John Alvin, second from the right, with fans and wife on far left.
Poster Design for Blade Runner By John Alvin
First of all, I’d like to thank you for agreeing to do this interview with us. Well, it’s really my pleasure. I was directed to Reel magazine, I really didn’t know that you guys were around and a friend of mine said ‘Go look at Reel Magazine.’ And you had a couple of very comprehensive notes there on the new Blade Runner piece that I had done, and I said ‘Hey, these guys are sharp!’. (both laugh) So it’s really my pleasure. Well, thank you. We really don’t know much about you, so perhaps you could start out by telling us about where you’re from, your education, that sort of thing. Alright. Well, I was born in the east in Massachusetts. We ultimately headed to California and that’s always felt like home
Poster Design for Star Wars By John Alvin
even though I’m still drawn to the east. I’ve been an artist all my life. I was always the kid that got out of class in high school, you know, to go paint sets for the play. I’d always draw pictures of women and airplanes for all my buddies cause I could draw things that they liked. Somewhere along the line, I decided I wanted to be a doctor. I think it was that everyone had discouraged me from really attempting a career in the arts. No one felt that that was a real viable thing to do at that time, I’m talking about the mid-60’s. So I fell victim to that and declared pre-med as my major. And I floundered around for a while and fortunately was not drafted at the time. The draft for the Viet-Nam war was very heavy. I stayed in school and ultimately talked to my folks and they agreed they would help me foot the bill and I wanted to go to art
school. So I went to Art Center College of Design, which still even today, although I have HUGE philosophical disagreements with them, they’re the school to prepare somebody for any career in commercial art. I graduated there in 1971, and at that time everyone Blazing Saddles poster was going back east to work in editorial or magazine illustration. I looked around and realized that I’ve always loved the movies. And the movies seem to be made in Hollywood, California. It seemed to me that right where I was living and going to school there had to be work. One thing leads to another and pretty soon I found myself involved in a very different world than I had learned in school. Before I knew it, I was staying up late nights finishing a piece of work for a movie called “Blazing Saddles”, which was the first movie I ever worked on.
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John Alvin’s Poster Design for Blade Runner
How does an artist get chosen to do work for a certain movie? Is he chosen by the director or by the studio? That is actually a fine and astute question that most people don’t really think to ask, and I appreciate you asking it. It’s not an easily structured answer but I’ll be as specific as I can. Very rarely does an individual artist get to meet with a filmmaker. It isn’t that they’re necessarily kept apart, it’s just that they are apart. By the time the filmmaker is done, they have to think about marketing the thing. They have to think about getting the public’s attention with it. And it’s sometimes the last thing on their mind and they depend heavily on marketing departments. What that amounts to is a group of hopefully skilled people that will come up with a strategy to sell the film to the public, to make the public aware of it. This includes buying television time, buying newspaper ads, and magazine ads, if any. Just the whole gamut of every kind of publicity on the feature that’s coming out. And somewhere in that milieu, someone decides ‘Well we need 5 | REEL |
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to have a good poster.’ And at that point usually a marketing department will come to someone like myself and ask for my services on either rendering an idea that they already have. And on rare occasion we actually get to sit down with the film-maker, who is the party that is going to have to be pleased in most cases. Especially the bigger name directors. People like myself are usually hired and paid by a studio marketing department and their collective effort serves the interest of getting the film to the public. Also if you think about it . . . in post-production, by the time that some of these filmmakers are putting the finishing touches their film, that’s right around the time that the studio wants the interest to grow. And the last thing these poor guys have on their mind is meeting with some artists or designers and talking about what the poster should look like. Unfortunately everything gets a little fragmented, but if you’re lucky, it all holds together pretty well. How did you get the Blade Runner job?
John Alvin’s Poster Design for Mickey’s Universe
As I mentioned a bit ago, the first movie poster I did was “Blazing Saddles” for Mel Brooks. And that came about through a friend and an associate and a great designer named Anthony Goldschmidt. He had a job designing the title segment of “Blazing Saddles”. And he came to me with the option of ‘Hey, Mel Brooks isn’t happy with anything the studio has shown him. What do you say we try out our skills at designing a poster.’ So he had a lot of ideas and I had a good wrist, so I did that. One thing begat another and after a point, this same man, Anthony Goldschmidt, had opened a design studio called Intralink. Given that I had a long association with them, he called me. And I got to sit down with Ridley Scott, who is a terrific guy and a really very, very artistic director. So it came
not apologize for it, let’s put him out there stepping through a portal, you know, about to kill you. I found some good references on it in Cinefex magazine and from my own files here, images I had kept around. I tried to make a really respectful portrait of the alien creature itself. I felt badly that Ridley might not have liked it that much, but I was doing what I was asked for in terms of merchandising, in terms of a product that Fox would sell. They never marketed it very successfully, I think. It was fun to do though. I’ve always admired “Alien”. I think it was a wonderful piece of work by Ridley and it was my chance to toy with the subject, so I’m still very pleased with it. You’ve done a lot of one sheets for animated movies. Are they easier to do than for live action movies?
about just by having the association before and having performed before in that arena. Very often it’s a question of who you know, not whether you’re any good or not. You mentioned that you were unable to work with Ridley again on the Alien anniversary artwork. What’s the story behind that? Well, I was approached by 20th Century Fox consumer products merchandising to do that and I figured that fifteen years before all we knew was an egg and “In space, no one can hear you scream.” And the scary thing about “Alien” was how little we saw the creature itself. It was always hidden, quick and deadly. Now though, I figured everyone knew what it looked like so let’s
Well, there is something pleasing about animated films in that the animated film is artwork, per say as opposed to photography. And so artwork to sell artwork is kind of a natural way to go. And I love doing it, especially since so many one-sheets today are simply publicity shots of who’s starring in the film. There’s not a lot of art or design really involved. I’ve been very privileged to do a lot of work for Disney on some of their films over the last ten years and those are pieces I show with great pride. I’ve been able to take the subject of the film, let’s say “Beauty And The Beast” or my “Lion King”, and elevate it way, way beyond just a scene from the film or a single animated cel to almost a mythological or allegorical kind of view. Which I think is appropriate, I mean the power and dynamics of Disney animation is just unparalleled. No one comes close. The marketing staff at Disney has been very wise in reaching a broad audience. They know it’s not just for children. So they’ve often asked me to do images that would appeal to more than just a young audience, it would appeal to the adults out there who want to see this stuff too. And I’ve been very fortunate to have some high-visibility pieces. I’m able to adapt my work and my style to suit, shall we say, part of Disney magic.
recognition? For me as an artist, I know that whether I do really good art or not for a film, sometimes I’m riding the coattails of the film, and that’s all right. It’s okay that people would notice my art because it’s a hugely successful film. And sometimes one ends up doing great artwork for films that aren’t successful, and the artwork therefore doesn’t get recognized. I think that movies are such a fabulous, unique, and emotional product and experience that sometimes we all get swept along to everyone’s benefit and sometimes we all get trampled. In all the work that I’ve done, I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with good people, and sometimes directly, most times indirectly, with great filmmakers. And I’m hoping the trend of popularity photos shifts back a little bit. More and more, I’m being asked to develop work that looks like it used to be. And that’s a good sign. At this time, I can’t tell you what I’m working on, but I think that there’s going to be a bit of a shift back to the originality and the artistry and the drama of movie posters, like the kind I tried to achieve in films like Blade Runner. So I’m going to keep my fingers crossed, and I hope you will too. Of course. Mr. Alvin, I’d like to thank you for taking time to do this interview with us. My pleasure, Aaron, and I hope I’ve been of some interest to you and your fans. You guys do a great job and I’m delighted that you would have any interest in having me on there and I’ll be available for anything you might need in the future. You’ve thanked me for my time and I really think that’s a two-way street. I thank you for your time and attention and keep up the great work at Reel Magazine.
Do you ever wish your artwork got more ReelMagazine.com
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DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT
SAUL
BASS
“I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.”
S
aul Bass was a graphic designer and filmmaker, perhaps best known for his design of film
posters and title sequences. During his 40-year career Bass worked for some of Hollywood’s greatest filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, and Martin Scorsese. He became well-known in the film industry after creating the title sequence for Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955. For Alfred Hitchcock, Bass designed effective and memorable title sequences, inventing a new type of kinetic typography, for North by Northwest, Vertigo (working with John Whitney), and Psycho.
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“I
nteresting things happen when the creative impulse is cultivated with curiosity, freedom and intensity.
”
How did you get started designing movie title sequences? I began as a graphic designer and as part of my work I created many film symbols for ad campaigns. During that period I happened to be working on the symbols for ‘Carmen Jones’ and ‘The man with the golden arm’ for Otto Preminger. At one point in our work Otto and I just looked at each other and said: “why not make it move?” It was really as simple as that. Give an example of when you first put your creative and artistic skills to work? My earliest memory of artwork was my 9 | REEL |
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father giving me a Crayola box. There were forty-nine different colors in that box. And I used them and drew until I’d worn them down to the nub, and then he gave me another box and I kept going. What are your thoughts on title sequences in general? My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film’s story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. My position was that the film begins with the first frame and that the film should be doing a job at that point. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the
film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it. How do you normally go about the creation process for a title sequence? I think the creation of a title, which is obviously a small appendage on the film, has to be approached very conscientiously and with some sense of responsibility within the film’s total framework because it is, after all, the tail of the dog and the tail does not the dog way. The only way I work as a designer is to consciously avoid specialization. It happens to be my way and it suits my needs and attitudes very well. It may well be all wrong for some others.
Poster Design for Anatomy of a Murder By Saul Bass
Poster Design for Exodus By Saul Bass
Do you feel it necessary to adapt title sequences to the style of a director? Not really. I think what is most important is that the introduction to the film - which is what a title is - be true to its content and to its intent. Therefore, something has to be created that is expressive of that. A more profound relationship must exist of that. A more profound relationship must exist beyond a superficiality of style. If you understand style to be attitude, yes, but if you think of style as confined to the visual, then I would say no. Please explain the thought process behind your title sequence for the movie Exodus.
I used guns because that definitely made it of today. More important was expressing the basic idea of conflict, the idea of a fight. It was an attempt to symbolize the struggle of the Jewish people to establish their own lang. To me it had certain parallel to the American foothold in the West. But it also had something the West didn’t have, a spiritual overtone. The reaching hands are an attempt to imply spirituality. The film is about Israel. In its earlier restricted form, the flame has the symbolic connotation of the Temple and the ‘eternal light.’ At the end of the film.h How do you approach problems in your line of work?
The most stimulating source for a solution to a problem comes from the problem itself. This is the real source—the problem defines the solution. It is when you look at what other people are doing that you are liable to come up with a stereotyped answer to your problem. Each problem contains unique elements. No problem is exactly like any other. The only way you can find a good answer is to clearly understand the question. You can’t find the answer by using somebody else’s answer to another question. I am not even saying this is bad. It is merely untrue. It is not so much a moral issue. It just doesn’t work!
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