Saul Bass began his career with an education as a part time student at the Art Students League in Manhattan. Shortly after he was taking night classes at Brooklyn College with Gyorgy Kepes. During his career Saul Bass made a name for himself with …show more content…
In the early days, title sequences were often just placed at the end of a film. If these sequences were at the introduction they simply provided time for the audience to get popcorn and settle in. Saul Bass came to realized that if he used motion he could use the concept of a title sequence to create a climate or texture. This climate could set the mood for the story and give the audience insight on the story from the very first frame of the film. Adding sound, and combining live action sequences with text made the sequences come alive. Prior to this they were simply just graphics and text. Later in his career these sequences would contribute to the films, like a prolog or even a time before the …show more content…
In this sequence Saul Bass created an image of a distorted human face to set the stage of the movie to come. The broken image created a metaphor using symbolic ideas from the story. Saul Bass worked with Elaine Bass to manipulate zoomed in photographs to achieve this effect.
West Side Story ( 1961 ) Longer than the majority of his previous sequences, some titles required much more information. This was common for plays and other adaptations. Having “Double Credits” was an issue Saul Bass had to deal with in this story. While having an additional problem of the majority of the characters dying during the course of the film. With West Side Story Saul Bass gave the audience a chance to pull themselves together at the end of the film. The graphic style of the credits grew out of the visual environment itself so it wouldn't detract itself or the audience from the film.
Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World (1963) This Film Sequence lasted over four minutes. This being his second longest sequence. The idea for this sequence was to take a globe and pull as many visual jokes you can get out of