TYPOGRAPHY IN TITLE SEQUENCES
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MARIA FIGUEIREDO 2010
TYPOGRAPHY IN TITLE SEQUENCES
TYPOGRAPHY IN TITLE SEQUENCES POLITECNICO DI MILANO FACOLTÀ DEL DESIGN DESIGN DELLA COMUNICAZIONE TYPE DESIGN 2.L C1 PROFESSOR JAMES CLOUGH
MARIA FIGUEIREDO 749283
JUNE, 2010
MARIA FIGUEIREDO 2010
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INTRODUCTION Long time ago, singing, acting or storytelling were the only methods of communication and expression. Ideas and thoughts were painted on walls, carved into stone, written on paper. Pictograms and ideograms were used in the first attempts at recording information along the time. Then, since Gutenberg, the discipline konown ad typography has evolved, a practice that was developed in order to transmit a message to an audience. Although, even though letters and text have remained the same or thousands of years, the technologies and culture are always in evolution, and so are the visual communication, the information, the visual aesthetics. Typography can add a lot to a movie, unfortunatly this seems to be overlooked for such a long time. Since this area is only a sliver of both film and graphic design history, there is not much research or analysis on film credits. While those engaged in film studies have for the most part ignored title sequences, historians of graphic design tend to treat them purely as graphics which through cinema technology have taken on a temporal dimension. But after the implementation of sound, titles began to function as a transition, a begining for what is now so many times an extension of the film. The idea of getting people ready for the feature film started to become a more prominent idea. Type is critical in conveying information, but also style and personality. Usually text and type is usually limited to a brief encounter, bracketing or selling something else, but type and text can be central to a film’s design or even a main narrative feature. By “playing” with typography and text, letters and words can be endowed with new levels of meaning beyond semantics. Typography can be an active participant in the narrative, and it can bu exploited in
TYPOGRAPHY IN TITLE SEQUENCES
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different ways: to underpin a visual design, tu support the story or even to steer it. In an environment full of clutter, the first impression of the film in the movie theater, or on the television screen, prepares the viewer for what is to come just like the cover of a book. In this respect, film credits fulfill the important role of outlining the filmmaker’s intentions and setting up the expectations of those that are watching. Film opening sequences are likely to become more and more important. In the book “Type In Motion: Innovations in Digital Graphics” it is also suggested that film title design is the mother of all moving typography, now common in music and art videos. It’s in a typographic approach that I made this research, about the use of typefaces on films and title sequences, their evolution through the decades and their relation with the movie genre and content. An attempt to understand if it is still subjudged, if typography plays a relevant role and its interaction with the graphics and images. I choosed six films of different genres: comedy, thriller, horror, drama, animation and fantasy. This work is the analysis of each one individually, and then a general overview of the use of typography on films based on twelve movies that I picked, also occasionaly, of different times (since the 1920’s until the present), different genres and different countries and directors.
COMEDY
THE ROYAL TENEMBAUMS 2001
This movie is a wonderful comedy created by Wes Anderson in which is witty and has an unusual outlook on family life. His characters are all extremely loveable and unique, a super eccentric family. Three grown prodigies, all with a unique genius of some kind, and their mother are staying at the family household. Their father had left them long ago, and comes back to make things right with his family.
The director Wes Anderson has a very particular style. A unique sense of humor, design, decoration, fashion and colour. “His films employ a similar aesthetic, employing a deliberate, methodical cinematography, with mostly primary colors. His soundtracks feature early folk and rock music, in particular classic British rock. Anderson’s films combine dry humor with poignant portrayals of flawed characters (...)” He is also very often referenced as a cinematic auteur, because he is involved in every aspect of his films’ production: writing, cinematography, design, and music selection. Just like is very commom on the other movies from this director, the typography is used in a extensive and careful way, in particular Futura and its variations, just as we can see on “The Royal Tenembaums”. The funny fact is that this typeface seems to be used to identify the characters, because Futura appears along with every member of the main family of the film, and then, other typefaces (such as Helvetica) are used with other characters that aren’t part of the family. Another intersting point that made me choose this movie, is that Futura is present in almost everything, as if the Tenembaums exist in a world dominated by Futura. The typeface is on buses, on books, posters, the cabs,at the hospital, for a cruise line, museums, etc. Not only because Wes Anderson has used the type in such an integral way in the film, I also think that Futura goes along perfectly with his scenarios and character’s aesthetic,
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because I see its style and his movie as a mix of modern and antique, simple and kitsch, modest and eccentric, and Futura is a great element on this game, with its simple geometrical forms combined with colourful and complex scenarios. Most of the times, the font is presented in bold, and always in upper case.
THE FONT - FUTURA Functional yet friendly, logical yet not overintellectual, Futura remains an important typeface family and is used on a daily basis for print and digital purposes as both a headline and body font. The font is also used extensively in advertisements and logos w Its a sanserif based on strokes of even weight, perfect circles and isosceles triangles that became the most popular sanserif of the middle years of the twentieth century.
THRILLER
THE NUMBER 23 2007
“The Number 23” is a psychological thriller about a man that finds a mysterious book in which the number 23 seems to take on powerful cosmic significance, and become gradually obssessed with it. His mind fast descending into a dark and violent whirlwind of madness because he discovers that the book is actually a confession of a murder.
“We wanted to tell a bit of the story of how the number 23 is a recurring number throughout history, I wanted people to feel a little uncomfortable. By creating tension with the titles, you understand that this is not going to be a tame movie.” Michelle Dougherty M. Dougherty is an art director at Imaginary Forces. She studied at the Art Center College of Design, a leading graphic and industrial design college located in Pasadena, California. She also teaches a class there called Motion Communication. She earned an Emmy nomination in 2002 for the main title sequence for the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. Her work has been recognized by the AIGA and featured in numerous publications including Communication Arts, Step Inside Design, HOW, and Creativity. The opening sequence of this movie is made in order to simulate the font of a typewritter machine written on a piece of paper, referring the principal object of the film, the book. The words appear very natural and real, not digital, as the designer wanted: “When you look at a typeface that is supposed to feel very organic like that, when it’s repeated so many times it starts to look digital. We actually went in manually and cleaned each frame up so that each “23” didn’t look the same. We really had to fight against the typeface, in a way, to create that organic feel, by putting in smudges or erasing some of the typeface or creating new ligatures.” The opening is a visual continuity, a well susseced preview
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of the movie itself: the spots of the blood, the red of the book, the number 23 always present and a typeface from the typewriter and its movements (erase, re-write) that, in my opinion, is the perfect choice, once that the purpose was to atach to this opening sequence a bit of the story itself, a preview of the movie, that is all about an intense, mysterious and intriguing and addictive book written by an unknown author and by this way (typewritter).
THE FONT - FF Trixie Since its release in 1991, from “The X-Files” to “Atonement”, FF Trixie, created by Erik van Blokland, has served as the typeface of mystery and intrigue. For years, it was the most convincing typewriter font available. Just like typewritter forms, the letters dance on the baseline and reveal the effect of ink on the ribbon. FF Trixie HD sets a new standard for detail and realism. We can safely say no digital font comes closer to emulating a mechanical typewriter.
HORROR
PSYCHO 1960
Alfred Hitchcock’s twisted tale of psychological terror depicts the encounter between a secretary, who is in hiding at a motel after embezzling from her employer, and the motel’s owner, who stabs her to death dressed as his mother, while she’s taking a shower. Her family decide to go out to the motel and find out what happened, and discover the killer’s dirty little secret: the body of his dead mother hiding in the fruit cellar. At the end a psychologist explains that he killed his mother and then developed a split personality of her to compensate. Saul Bass, born in 1920, was not only one of the great graphic designers of the mid-20th century, but also the undisputed master of film title design. Before the he came on the scene, the opening titles of films were mostly a way to honor the studio’s obligations to the principal cast and crew. Just in utilitarian mode, occasionally interesting to look at. Bass’ work is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago as it continues to appeal to the audience’s emotions and intellect. As an innovative designer, he worked with big movie directors: Otto Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese (among others). His titles for “Psycho” are a classic case of “less is more”- a more complex opening sequence might have ruined the purpose, but Bass preserves the mystery of what is to come while still managing to set the tone for the film before we even see a frame shot by Hitchcock. As the music plays, horizontal and vertical lines appear, driven across the screen in a stabbing motion, predicting the action to come. Occasionally, a name appears on screen and sometimes becoming sharply disjointed, perhaps suggesting the degree to which identities will be jumbled throughout the course of the film, for example, the motel’s owner and his mother, the secretary who is split between stealing the money and doing the right thing, or maybe the schizophrenia of the main character. The splitting and the cutting of the image continue throughout this title sequence, which relies on the power of the line as a graphic element. Although lines are abstract, their shape, direction, thickness, formation and
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length can express a variety of moods: they can be seen as angry, quiet, romantic, happy, exciting, or nervous. The lines that cross the screen at the end of the title sequence fade into a shot of tall buildings, setting up the first scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie. Along with the dramatic music of the maddening violins that represent his fractured psyche, vertical bars sweeping across the screen in a manic, mirrored helter-skelter motif. The perfect setup for this terrifying horror film.
THE FONT - BENTON SANS The main title appears horizontally, set in an all-capital sans serif, bold typeface. Like News Gothic, Benton Sans follows the neo-grotesque model. The typeface differs from other realist sans-serifs in its organic shapes and subtle transitions of stroke width, all contributing to a less severe, humanist tone of voice. Benton Sans is well suited for use in newspapers and magazines for headlines and in advertisements.
DRAMA
TETRO 2009
“Tetro” is the story about a volatile and melancholy poet that had emigrated from Italy to Argentina, Buenos Aires. After more than 10 years missing, he is found by his 17-year-old brother. With the great musical success of their father Carlo, an acclaimed symphony conductor, the family moved from Argentina to New York. In the course of the film the two brothers grapple with the haunting experiences of their shared past. But at the end, the youngest member finds out that Tetro, the oldest, is not at all what he expected, he’s not his brother, but his father. “The two visual components that made a profound impact on me creatively for the development of the opening titles was when the character Tetro (played by Vincent Gallo) stares contemplatively at the light bulb/moths and the shots of the blurred light cells.” Stephen Faustina S. Faustina is a distinguished international cutting edge Art Director, Graphic Designer and Fine Artist who can work with the clients vision or aid in creating one. His mission is to create intelligent solutions for design, he is always exploring and developing his own personal design as a result oh strategy, reasearch and fun, as he says on his website. I really enjoyed this title sequence, because we can notice here a very strong relationship between typography and the graphics (in this case, the light cells). The words act like complement and extension of the image, going softly with the forms, playing with the light, a clever size and disposition on space that reminds my the work of the master and pioneer on title design Saul Bass. It is a clean, elegant and simple sequence all in black and white, yet the interaction of type and frames forms a beautiful composition. Typography here has a life of its own, dancing on light and reflexion ornamented screen, . The choosen font was also smart, Sabon, that fits very well in these compositions and flows nicely with the titles and the music, thanks to its classic appeal. The personality and movements of the typography make me also think that it is
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related to the main character, melancholic and mysterious, and his girfriend, that is a ballet dancer. The baseline of the titles chances direction as the frame image changes too, so it can be a prediction of the imprevisibility of the life line and the sudden changes that it takes in the course of the fim.
THE FONT - SABON Designed by Jan Tschichold, Sabon was designed to provide a font that would perform well and predictably across a variety of imaging technologies. However, its creation predates digital imaging – it was drawn to satisfy the needs of metal typesetting. Full counters, moderated contrast in stroke variance and relatively sturdy serifs add up to a design that is ideally suited to a wide variety of typesetting requirements. Now, since Sabon has been translated into digital fonts, Tschichold’s achievement is also a modern Monotype masterwork.
ANIMATION
WALL-E 2008
This is a story directed by Andrew Stanton about a robot named WALL-E, who is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future. He falls in love with another robot, and follows her into outer space where he found all of the humans who evacuated Earth 700 years earlier. They ride around this space resort on hovering chairs and they drink all of their meals through a straw out of laziness and/or bone loss, and are all so fat that they can barely move. At the end WALL-E brings all the humans back to Earth. The reason that made me pick this movie and analyse the credits was not only because of the use of typography itself, but because of the beauty inherent in this ending credits (on this example its not at the begginig, but at the end of the film). The author of these ending sequence was Jim Capobianco, a writer/director/story artist at Pixar Animation Studios. He graduated from California Institute of the Arts in 1991 with a BFA in character animation. His passion for animation since a kid made him applied at Disney where was hired into their story department shortly after graduation. Jim Capobianco’s end credits to “WALL·E” are essential because they work as the actual ending of the film, a complementary extension, a perfect and fantastically optimistic conclusion to a grand, if imperfect idea. Humanity’s past and future evolution viewed through the history of art, from the Stone Age to the Impressionists to the wonderful 8-bit pixel sprites. “Unlike our credits in the past, the main goal of the credits was to finish the story. To communicate that the humans were going to be okay. They would survive. It became a balancing act of telling the survival story, using art history to do it and to make sure things weren’t too distracting from the names themselves.” J.Capobianco An intersting point on this sequence, is that they are made in 2D, wich creates a big contrast between the film, all made in 3D. Maybe because the artist wanted to recreate the
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history trough art iconic phases as the evolution of Humanity represented by art, a way to tell us, the viewers, that human kind will be all right, but also because the typeface lends to a 2D approach as he says: “The text is in 2D space so it is easy to imagine other 2D elements occupying that space and interacting with the text.” I couldn’t find out what is the typeface used on the credits, but according to my research, its believed that it is created by Pixar Studios. It is non-serif, upper-case and simple lines. The font of the title “WALL-E”, combines straight angles and rounded edges, is a bold and futuristic font for an advanced, technological look.
FANTASY
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE 2009
Filmmaker Spike Jonze directs a magical, visually astonishining film, version of Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic “Where the Wild Things Are”. Nine-year old Max runs away from home and sails across the sea to become king of the land Where the Wild Things Are. He rules a wondrous realm of gigantic monsters
Geoff McFetridge was the designer behind the credits caligraphy and opening design of this movie. He is a artist based in Los Angeles California. He is a truely multidisciplinary artist: from poetry to animation, from graphics to 3D work, from textile and wallpaper to paintings, McFetridge has complete control over these widely divergent disciplines. Geoff has created in his work and in his commissions a unique imagery, which is detailed and abstract at the same time. Full of hands and teeth, objects and animals, hands and heads... If we know this designer’s work, we can understand that it fits perfectly on this movie’s identity , a unique language for a unique film. “I was given the opportunity to interpret not only Spike Jonze’s interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are, but also Maurice Sendak’s original book.” says McFetridge. As a fantasy movie, with fantastic creatures and a little boy wearing a fluffy monster costume as the main character, and with a visual language that attracts either children and adults, the film titles are not written with a conventional typeface, but hand-made, not respecting any rules as it seems, just like a kid’s writting, as the designer confess: ”He (Spike Jonze) wanted to ensure that all the material created by the film reinforced the spirit that went into it’s creation. In critiquing the work he would often say; “It should look handmade...” and would recoil from things that looked “too good”. For him this was a handmade film. It’s images were not made of pixels; they were sewn, molded, carved, drawn, photographed and scratched into reality.”
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The caligraphy of the title “Where the Wild Things are� as it is seen on the fourth image of the left page, it is written in a diferent way of the other words (for example in the end credits). That is because that appears at the beginning of the film, during a angered play between the main character (little boy Max) and his dog. I see it as reflexion of the boy’s feelings, because in the first part of the film, he is at home feeling lonely and revolted because of the lack of attention by his family. It is like he is writting the title itself, projecting his anger on that.
OVERVIEW Besides conveying meaning as a collection of signs, typography is also an image which, in that it is designed and not a personal handwriting style, also has a pointedly graphic and aesthetic function. Typefaces started to establish certain genre conventions. At the beggining, from the 20’s to 50’s, they were appropriate and communicative, but no thought was given to the on-screen relationship of word and image. The text of the credits generally appeared drop-shadow, against a background of a single static image or a short sequence shot from an immobile camera
pointed at an attractive background, such as a rippling sheet of silk or a rural landscape. Westerns were titled with the kind of typeface that would have been used on ‘Wanted’ posters for bandits, romances were often written in letters that appear to be fashioned in pink ribbon, with sinuous and generally serifed typeface, comedy in funny typefaces that suggest foolishness and jokes, crime or action in agressive, strong and imposing typography, usually non-serif and bold and horror movies in bloody letters, or also strong typefaces combined with scary or mysterios backgrounds.
COMEDY “Cops”, 1922 Buster Keaton, USA
CRIME “The Sniper”, 1952 Edward Dmytryk, USA
ROMANCE “Platinum Blonde”, 1930 Frank Capra, USA
ROMANCE “Jules et Jim”, 1962 François Truffaut, France
WESTERN “Duel in the Sun”, 1946 King Vidor, USA
CRIME “Il Boss”, 1973 Fernando DiLeo, Italy
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This kind of rule for type on films is still aplied, what changed was the technologies and the culture, that demands a progression of the visual communication. With technological improvements, digitalization and special effects became more prominent. Beyond that, the majority of the credits now appear at the end of the film since most people do not have the patience to watch them all. That gave even more freedom to the opening sequence to expand its horizons and become more appellative.
The major difference between the past and now, is that while before the words were still, just combined with static images, now-a-days it interacts for real with the graphics, its moves, dances, plays, has life for itself, working as a part of the film, a continuity or a complementary form of it.
DRAMA “Ehe der Maria Braun”, 1979 Rainer Fassbinder, Germany
DRAMA “Ossos”, 1930 Pedro Costa, Portugal
ACTION “Shogun Assassin”, 1980 Robert Houston, Japan
ROMANCE “A Carta”, 1930 Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal
COMEDY “Life is Sweet”, 1990 Mike Leigh, UK
DRAMA “Mar Adentro”, 1904 AlejandroAmenábar, Spain
CONCLUSION The opening credits can be the most important moment in a film, and so its typography. It is a way of communicating abstract ideas through symbols that we learn to understand throughout our lives. We encounter it constantly, perhaps taking for granted how different our lives would be without it, emotionally, sensually and intellectually. Trough a typeface a designer can transmit the main idea of a film: fear, love, sensuality, fun, strength... The development of technologies lead to more creative works, and with all these innovations and improvements, film credits are becoming closer to works of art, where graphic designer are taken more gradually a more important role. Graphic design is the communication, it’s the way messages reach us. It is the designer’s responsibility to make it reach the audience in the most attractive and good way. And for that typography plays the most important job, because type is saying things to us all the time. Typefaces express a mood, an atmosphere, they give words a second meaning, a certain “coloring”. We can observe a big evolution on the opening credits trough the years. They prepare the audience for what will follow on the film, they are growing up in the sense that they are given more and more importance and attention as time passes, they are easier to make thanks to technological evolution, they are getting more appellative, and gaining the status of work of art, but typography is always there as the central part of the work, giving to the credits the meaning and the essence that is suppose to be transmited.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bellantoni, Jeffrey, and Matt Woolman. Type In Motion: Innovations in Digital Graphics. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1999. Champion Graphics, < http://www.championdontstop.com/ site3/clients/wwta/titles.html>. Curran, Steve. Motion Graphics: Graphic Design for Broadcast and Film. Gloucester, Massachusetts: Rockport Publishers, 2000. Design Museum, < http://designmuseum.org/design/saulbass>. Forget the Film Watch the Titles, <http://www.watchthetitles.com>. Good Type In Film: Typography On The Big Screen, < http:// bryanconnor.com/2009/09/good-type-in-film/>. Grito, < http://www.grito.com.br/artigos/simonson001. asp>. Imaginary Forces, <http://www.imaginaryforces.com/>. Marc Siminson Studio, <http://www.marksimonson.com/ article/87/royal-tenenbaums-world-of-futura>.
Nerve, < http://www.nerve.com/archived/blogs/thetwelve-greatest-opening-credits-in-movie-history-part-1>. Jim Capobianco, <http://www.pixartalk.com/pixarians/jimcapobianco/>.
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The Art of the Title, <http://www.artofthetitle.com/>. Sfaustina, < http://portfolio.sfaustina.com/>.
Studio Daily, < http://www.studiodaily.com/main/ searchlist/7756.html>. Wikipedia, < http://www.wikipedia.org/>. What the Font, < http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/>.
POLITECNICO DI MILANO FACOLTÀ DEL DESIGN
TYPE DESIGN 2009/2010 MARIA FIGUEIREDO