Saul Bass

Saul bass from leannacatherina


In lesson we looked at Saul Bass and his titles

Saul Bass made title sequences using generic shapes and simple animations.
Using this style he aimed to capture the mood of the film

He uses a lot of symbolism in his works causing the viewers to think
he would often have one stand out image in the sequence that would be the used within the poster

Bass revolutionised the way title sequences were made as instead of using shots of the actors for posters and the title sequence he used the generic often hand draw shapes to make the sequences.

our film applied to Todorov's narrative Theory

1. A state of equilibrium: there is a happy couple planning to get married.

2. A disruption of that order by an event: Man gets called to fight in a war, goes missing in action

3. A recognition that the disorder has occurred.: Military phone girlfriend and inform her that her boyfriend has gone missing, woman lays around the house depressed and upset at her loss.

4. An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption: The man fights for surveil in an attempt to get home, meanwhile the woman is convinced to move on with her life and goes out with friends.

5. A return or restoration of a NEW equilibrium: The man returns safely to find that his girlfriend has moved on, he decides that she is happy that way and continues to be dead in her eyes.

pitch feedback

This is the feedback we got on the pitch for our film we got good feedback all round with a few improvements to be made to the pitch

the biggest suggestion for improvements was that we needed to specify what gender of target audience we are aiming our film at
we also needed look at fonts for our title sequence and figure out how we want our film to end
we were also asked to revise the release date to the film or at least explain more as to why we chose the date

Pitch-take 1

Pitch take one video

This is video of our first pitch for our film idea

Coursework- Film narrative idea

Our film is a love conquers all story of a couple divided by war, it is a modern "cold mountain"

our film starts with a happy couple who have recently got engaged and are planning there wedding, in  turn of events the male get called out to war and is promised he can get back before the wedding, our film will then divided to two different story arcs follow the man as he fights and the woman as she goes about her daily life.

As the Male is set to return home his plane gets shot down and it becomes a fight for him to survive during this story there will be cut-aways to the other part of the story following the woman and how she copes with the loss of her lover.

Towards the end of the film our hero returns safely, and prevents the military form calling his girlfriend  as he wishes to surprise her on his return as he approaches the house he discovers that she is with another man, accepting her happiness he decides to remain dead in her eyes.

se7en analysis

The se7en title is dark and unnerving, it features quick cut close-ups hiding information,this could be used to the character we are following wants to hide,we also get a close up shot of the character removing his fingerprints further showing us he wants to disappear.

There are two fonts used in the title sequence one for the credits and one for the names, both look to be handwritten with the biggest difference being that the casting credits are bolder, the credits look scratched onto the title and most have erratic movements around the screen, the credits can be used to give ideas of the characters such as Brad Pitts name being distance this could tell us his character is far from the case or he is split over his decisions that he has to make,another example is |Morgan Freeman's' name flips around and back again suggesting that his character will have to change his mind about something, the actors names are white and are written across a pure black background, where as the production credits are positioned across various shot be placed at the top or bottom of the screen so that they don't distract from what is being shown.

The music is stretched out creating an eerie feel to the sequence with the only words being spoken are "it'll bring you closer to God". informing the viewer how people are killed based upon "Gods" word            

Zombieland analysis

Using the title we can tell that the film is set in a modern time zombie apocalypse, using what is going on we can tell that is comedy as this is suggested in the mise-en-scene with such as the man running form the stripper zombie and the three legged race with the zombies, we are also shown that there will be a lot of gore within the film as there is blood everywhere even in the font for the film

Using the title sequence it can be assumed that the main theme of the film is survival as it features people running for a danger, It also starts with four basic rules of survival making this feel like the main theme of the movie, We also get shown that this is a comedy as all the danger is placed in ridiculous situations and there is unnatural amounts of blood.

The key iconography we can see in the is thing such a blood, people running in panic, the world falling apart.

Coursework-part 2 fonts

today we discussed how important the font typing can be to showing thing such as the mood and tone of a film, and the time period it is set in

An activity was ran where the class was given the fonts of some famous films such as: back to the future, Jurassic park, Harry Potter and a few others, we had to try and identify the films with only the title sequence fonts to go by.

In the second hour of our lesson we got into the groups we would work with on the sequence and began to discuss our ideas for the first time.     

Coursework Start

today we discussed starting the title sequence and how important they can be to film

We also discussed the theory of STINCS and how it can be applied to a title sequence

STINCS stands for

Setting- This is where/ when a film is set.

Theme- This is the mood of the film or what the film is really about.

Iconography- This is the costumes, props and make-up used to give a sense of the genre of the film.

Narrative- This is what the story of the film is about.

Character- who/what are they, what are they like,

Style- this is how things are filmed, focusing on Camera shots, the way they are edited and the type of music placed over the sequence


We then applied the theory to Three title pointing out what genre we though it was, what mood the film had, what type of characters there were(who was good, who was bad)

We also discussed how title sequences can be used as prologues to set up what is happening in the film, they can be used to set out the themes of the film or the mood/ tone of the film.