Art Art 05 Mar 2008 09:00 am
Art and Titles
- The artist Raul Vincent Enriquez has developed a site for flipbook portraits. He’s created a series of multiple screen portraits using several Quicktime images anchored together.
Digital self-portraits taken by photo booth visitors and then animated by the artist to resemble flipbook images will be broadcast onto the Times Square Lumacom screen. This began yesterday, March 4th, and will run for two months.
The photo booth quality of the portraits makes for unusal imagery. It reminds me of some early multiple screen works by the likes of Nam June Paik
You can get an idea of these pieces on line by going here. You’re also given the opportunity to participate in these photo booth animations by contacting the artist at this site.
The title artist, Saul Bass, gets a lot of attention at the site Erin Laing: Film and Process which features a lot of YouTube movies of the title sequences for The Man With The Golden Arm, Around the World in 80 Days, Psycho, Seconds, Alien, and Scorcese’s Cape Fear. ( Great scores as well Elmer Bernstein, Bernard Herrman and Jerry Goldsmith.)
She also gives links to: Anatomy of a Murder, North by Northwest, Walk on the Wild Side, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and Casino.
Bass was something of an inspiration for me in my early days. I was particularly excited when I got the job of designing titles for a number of films. I took great pleasure in reworking the type for all the films I did and even designing a typeface for one of the films. I always felt the connection to animation in all the work and artwork I did for these titles even though it wasn’t always apparent.
On my first title design, which was for Prince of the City, I did a number of sequences of identification for many of the actors who were unfamiliar to audiences. We wanted to make sure the audience always knew who was who. When it came time for my credit, Sidney Lumet didn’t want my company, Michael Sporn Animation, to get credit. He thought audiences would question what was animated. I had to just use my name and that of Phillip Schopper, who photographed all the ID’s and shared a lot of the work. Someday ‘ll write more about this film.
My interest in title sequences, of course, continues. I hope to post a bit more about Saul Bass, and the brilliant but quietly executed work of Dan Perri. He hasn’t gotten the attention he certainly deserves. His most recent work for In The Valley of Elah is just as good as Gangs of New York or Raging Bull or any of his older titles. I guess animators wouldn’t get a charge out of his work, but designers certainly should.
