saul bass case study
DESCRIPTION
An exemplar case study of Saul Bass for Year 12 Media studies G321 portfolio.TRANSCRIPT
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CASE STUDY:Saul Bass
07/11/11
G321: Individual Media Studies Portfolio
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SAUL BASS
“making a main-title was like making a poster - you’re condensing the event into one concept, this one metaphor…a backstory that needs to be told or a character that needs to be introduced.”
1920 - 1996
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SAUL BASS
1920 - Born in the Bronx district of New York.
Bass studied at the Art Students League in New York and Brooklyn College under Gyorgy Kepes, a Hungarian graphic designer.
After apprenticeships with Manhattan design firms, Bass worked as a freelance graphic designer or "commercial artist" as they were called.
1946 - He moved to Los Angeles to get away from creative constraints imposed on him in New York.
1950 - After freelancing, he opened his own studio working mostly in advertising.
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1954 - Otto Preminger invited him to design the poster for his movie, Carmen Jones. Impressed by the result, Preminger asked Bass to create the film’s title sequence too.
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Golden Arm
Bass first made his mark on film when he designed a simple paper cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm for the opening titles of The Man with The Golden Arm.
1955
Bass chose the arm as a
powerful image of addiction
rather than Frank Sinatra’s
famous face - as the symbol
of both the movie’s titles
and its promotional poster.
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He is best known for his use of simple, geometric shapes and their symbolism. Often, a single dominant image stands alone to deliver a powerful message.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGnpJ_KdqZE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnG3OjIcN8M&feature=related
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Bass’s posters and titles had an uncanny ability to capture the mood of a film with simple shapes and images. This was his preferred method as opposed to using a boring photograph of a film star.
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Bass was heavily influenced by Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism
The constructivists tried to create works that would make the viewer an active viewer of the
artwork.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jFpQMpsMiE
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• Between 1970 and 1986 Bass designed for only a
handful of films: Such Good Friends, Rosebud, That's
Entertainment Part II, and The Human Factor.
• In an interview with Sight and Sound in 1995 he
explained,
'Eventually titles got out of hand. It got to a point where it
seemed that somebody got up there before the film
and did a tap dance. Fancy titles became fashionable
rather than useful and that's when I got out'.
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Bass was persuaded to return to the film title design in the 1980’s, when he began a rich collaboration with Martin Scorsese on films including Cape Fear, Casino and the Age of Innocence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoO0ZsQ7tBg
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bpP9sI72bM