Saul Bass

Designer

1920-05-08

Books by Saul Bass

The album cover art of soundtracks
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Quotes by Saul Bass

Interestingly enough, the storyboard... that I did for 'Psycho' went precisely as I laid it up, and there was no change on that. And frankly, I myself at that point didn't even really understand the impact that some of these things would have.
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If the titles are treated in a straightforward way, nobody is really interested. The theory is that in those two or three minutes, you can set the tone for the films, so that when the story begins the audience hits the ground running.
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In 'Cape Fear,' all that water and the reflections and these threatening and submerged images in the water - that signals the awfulness that is to come. We're very good at awfulness. No, really, we do do some sweet titles, too.
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I began as a graphic designer. As part of my work, I created film symbols for ad campaigns. I happened to be working on the symbols for Otto Preminger's 'Carmen Jones' and 'The Man With The Golden Arm' and at some point, Otto and I just looked at each other and said, 'Why not make it move?' It was as simple as that.
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A corporation trademark represents a total program for a company. A good symbol will implement its products. Normally such a symbol will be around for an indefinite future 10, 20, 30 years or more.
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There's nothing more damaging than an irate moviegoer who hasn't seen what the film trailer promised.
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The very first pieces of film that I did were really graphic designs translated to film. Graphic designs that moved. That was a very new notion.
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In the course of our daily lives, we're bombarded with a barrage of visual messages, some blatantly aggressive, some subtle. The trick is to find a way to break through without adding to the clutter and the ugliness. We have to be responsible about that.
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My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way.
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The ideal trademark is one that is pushed to its utmost limits in terms of abstraction and ambiguity, yet is still readable.
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In 'Age of Innocence,' the opening flowers, that's a metaphor for the film, the Victorian veneer with the malevolence beneath it. We attempted to show that with flowers that start as sweet and then slowly become malevolent.
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I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.
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Design is thinking made visual.
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Somewhere down the line, I felt the need to come to grips with the realistic - or live action - image which seemed to me central to the notion of film. And then a whole new world opened to me.
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Dishonesty in trailers is more than a moral issue, it's a practical one. If you don't deliver in the film what you offered in the trailer, you'll get bad word-of-mouth.
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I want everything we do to be beautiful. I don't give a damn whether the client understands that that's worth anything, or that the client thinks it's worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It's worth it to me. It's the way I want to live my life.
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