Saul bass

Saul Bass 

Saul Bass was born in America on the May 8, 1920 and died on April 25, 1996. His career streaked over 40-years working in lots of different filed such as graphic design and film maker. He worked for some of Hollywood's most famous filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Martin Scorsese. He also designed some of the most iconic corporate logos in North America including the Bell System logo in 1969, as well as AT&R's globe logo in 1983.  

Saul Bass Inspired Posters 




Looking at posters that had been inspired by Saul Bass. I looked at each image a took out what made them Saul bass inspired. Either it was the colours used or the shaping of the images or text. I wanted to take inspiration from these images and what I didn't want to do with my own work. Such as the amount of colours used in The Wizard of Oz poster. This didn't fit that well with what I see as a Saul Bass poster and could of been done better by only using three colours. But I think the type face for this poster is one of the best and I wanted to take that on as inspiration. But the Batman poster was the one.


Snow White and The Huntsman 

I choice Snow White and The Huntsman because the film has iconic scenes and a really good underline feel to the movie. Along with the classic fairy tale everyone know this story and with the dark twists I thought it would be good to see a Saul Bass inspired version.

Mind maps and Y diagrams on Snow White and The Huntsman 

This is my first mind map. I did this to show my first ideas for my story boards. I looked at the different themes and how I could work with different elements in the film like the feeling. I wanted to use the colours used in the film to help portray this. I then moved on to do a group mind map taking ideas from other people, this really helps in my development and it gave me lots of ideas. And as everyone knows the story of Snow White so I got ideas about what other people think about this classic story. We then did Y diagrams, this is when you think about the feelings, sounds and sights you would get in the film. I looked at one setting in the film which was the Dark Woods. The scenes that are set here are very powerful as the characters have a lot of conflict and hallutions.





Mood Boards 

I looked at different areas of the film suck as the weapons, animals The evil Queen and the colours which I think were mostly used. I looked at weapons because this film has a lot of violence in it and some of the characters have different weapons. I looked at the animals because nature is a big part of this film and this theme links in with the idea that Snow White bring hope back to the kingdom. The Queen queen is a large character in this film and how they are very stereotyped in fairy tells I thought it would be interesting to see what I could find.

Saul Bass Font Types
I looked at different Saul Bass font that were online and took them in to consideration for this project.  Also they helped me think of ideas of my own Saul Bass styled font. I wanted to use the three colours that I think is linked the most with the film. Also I wanted the text to be jumbled up so that it showed the disorder that happens in the film and how the lost of power can be messed up. I also wanted sharper shapes so that is links with the theme of weapons. 

First Sketches & Second Sketches 

Before I story board my ideas I thought it would be a good idea to re-watch the film. I did this so I could pause the film at scenes that I thought would look good in the Saul Bass style or were iconic to the film. I just quickly sketched these so I could move them on to further development.After the first sketching I decided to do some silhouette in the Saul Bass style. I started to look more at the objects in the film then the scenes  and the three different colours I wanted to use in my work. I choice these three colours because of the colours that are focused on in the film.

First Story Board & Second Story Board 

This is my first story board. I wanted to draw the story board out and start to think of what I could do before I brought in the Saul Bass style. I thought this would give me strong ideas of what would and   wouldn’t work.  After thinking about how I was going to set the story board out. I choice to use the objects I started to sketch. Also using the three colours I have choice. After doing my second story board I decide to scrap my first one as it didn't as well. I knew that using the objects was a better idea then going with icon scenes from the film. 

My First illustrator Tries

I started with a mix of the idea I had from bother of the story boards. I wanted to see what I could do before making my final story board. I  tired out my own type face in the type using a snowflake as the "O" as it would link in with her name. But after creating this and trying out the Hitchcock font I thought this was a good idea but I liked the ready made font better.  Also I decided that using grey as the background didn't work that well, enough though I really enjoyed the idea of the snow. The grey didn't make the text stand out as much as when I used the white. Also it didn't really go with the three colour idea of Saul Bass. I really liked the idea of the mirror man as this is an interesting when they film makers have created a main feature object/character. But when I started to put all my work together it didn't really work with the colour I had choice.  I had a idea of using the face of snow white but when I tried it out on Illustrator it didn't really work that well and I choice to take it out of my final story board. I knew I wanted to bring the mirror in some how so I tried out a simple mirror shape instead and it worked better with the red, black and white. I got to this conclusion by trying out different ideas with the mirror man and more simpler shapes.



Final Story Boards 


In my final story boards I used the ideas from my seconds but I looked using the three colours in different ways and tried to make the slide more different from each other. I used the Hitchcook which I found when I was looking at Saul Bass fonts. This is because I wanted something that was iconically Saul Bass so that it fits in more with his style.

Evaluation



Progress of learning



We started our project learning about Saul Bass, his style and how he was the first of his kind to do this style of film posters and film credit animation. His style of using bold silhouette shapes, a set of three bold colours and his own hand made font. This was different to other film posters of the time because they used mainly scenes from the film painted. Where Saul Bass used symbolic parts of the films such as in Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock) he used the silhouettes of the two characters along with a spiral shape this is symbolic of the dizziness you get when you are experiencing vertigo. We looked at a lot of different film poster what he had made and also his fonts. And tired out the fonts we had found on Illustrator with different colours and different ways.



We then moved on to looking at inspired film poster, these really help with working out what I wanted to take away by looking at what other people have done. There was one image I analysis of The Wizard Of Oz, this image was a Saul Bass inspired image but I really didn’t like it and thought it was a failed attempt at it. As the image of the path and the shoes used too many colours making it nothing like a silhouette and their fore I don’t think it was a good example. This poster could have been done with three simple colours, red, black and yellow but the artist decided to use about five. I did take away from this image the use of font, I found that it fitted really well with the Saul Bass style and it was the only thing I really liked about the poster.



After we researched into Saul Bass we choice our films. I choice my film because it is a darker and dirtier version of an old classic, Snow White. Snow White And The Huntsman takes the original story to a new level featuring more sword fighting and witchcraft. I thought this film has a lot of iconic scenes and objects I could use in my storyboard and I could explore the differences between the old and the new versions like with the shapes and the character and objects.



We then did more research into our films. I did an independent mind map of what I thought of the film with the themes, settings, colours, characters, moods and objects. I wanted to make sure I looked at every little idea I could think of before I started my development. This mind map was small but in class we did group mind maps where I got loads of ideas from other students, this really helped because it gave me lots of different ideas that I could take on. After this we did the Y diagram, I decided I was going to use this for one setting, as the setting was full of the three things I was looking for, sights, sounds and feelings. All of these research devices helped me develop and improve my ideas.



A thing that really helped me with my work was the moods boards and colour boards I created, these made me look at the themes in the film and how I could use other influences to make my storyboard more interesting. Also I could look at all of the images together from that subject each and chose between each them what I wanted to use.



At this time I re-watched the film and made sketches of iconic scenes. I thought this could be a good idea for my storyboard showing the whole story in simple iconic images from the film. This is an idea from a Saul Bass inspired film opening done for Catch Me If You Can, it tells you the story in a 1.5 minuet in a very simple way. But after I did the sketches I decided to do some silhouette of objects in the film. This worked well but I wanted to take both of the sketches to further development in a storyboard because I didn’t know what I really wanted to do with them.



After all the research I took them all into the storyboard and started to think of the best ideas I could have done. I started with the first sketches drawing them out for this I didn’t really do the Saul Bass style because I wanted to look more into how I would lay out the images before I took them into a Saul Bass style. But after finishing and colouring in the storyboard I found I couldn’t really set the three colours as the film moves location a lot and I couldn’t find the best colours to represent the feeling of the different images. So I started again and did another story with the objects I sketched out, this worked better as I could use the three colours that I wanted to use (red, black and white) and it worked really well.



I made the decision that I wanted to try out some of the two storyboards on Illustrator so I could see what I could do with the ideas and my skills. I wanted to see if my work would of improved with this program. I found that the second storyboard deigns worked better then the first storyboard. This was because of the shaping and deigns I had done in the second one I didn’t feel as restricted as I did with the first one as I had already got a idea of would work and now also I think it is because when I was drawing the second one out in my paper storyboard I was focused more on Saul Bass’s Style and how I wanted to use his style in my work. In the end I only used the ideas I took from my second storyboard as I felt I had developed them with more success.



If I Had More Time



I would have tired out my idea by hand and also tried different typefaces. Saul Bass did most of his film posters and film opening by hand making them out of card. This is a line I didn’t go down as I didn’t have enough time and it took me a while to develop the idea of Illustrator. I think this would of gave me more understanding to his work as it would have been to his style fully. But as I felt like I didn’t have enough time I didn’t go into this way of creating his style. I also could of used other materials such as watercolours and paints. This would of shown me different ways of exploring what I could do with his style. I also felt I didn’t have enough time to look at making my own font that really worked with my work. I ended up using the Hitchcock font I found on line as I felt it was well developed and worked well with my work. But still I wanted to do something different with my work and look into every aspect that I could of gone into.



What I Liked About Using Saul Bass’s Style



I really enjoyed how minimalistic his style is. It gave me a chance to use simple ideas that were linked with my film and use them in a way that wasn’t detailed but still affective. It also gave me the chance to do my work by hand and also on the computer as the style is quite simple and would be easy to develop with both. I really liked how Saul Bass worked in this area of graphic design as I could easily link my work with his and take inspiration from his work and others that have used him as inspiration. I think the idea of using three colours is really interesting as it bring more attention from onlookers. This is an tool I may us in the future with my own work, it as creates something different then what was around at the time he started to create his posters. Creating our own hand made typeface is something I really want to look into to as it could be something I could develop into the rest of my work as it is a personal way of making a font.



Self-Assessment



I think I did really well in my research looking at Saul Bass in detail at home and at college respectively going back to his work to get inspiration and ideas of how to move on. I made such that by doing a couple of mind maps and a Y diagram, trying to get as many ideas out of my head as possible before going on to sketching. When I did go onto sketching I felt that I could of gone down two different roots, symbolic items and the plot. This gave me a chance to try out different idea I could of gone down. Overall I think I did a good job with this task but I do feel that if I had more time I could of done even better by doing my in depth research into Saul Bass and what I could of done with his style and way of working. Also trying things out by hand, this is something I regret trying and what I think I should have really looked down. I grade myself a 7/10 because I think I did well but I feel I could of done better in the making and research.