Friday, November 11, 2011

Masters of Motion Graphics

"When Juan Gatti saw the first cut of Pedro Almodóvar's new film "Volver," he was struck by how vividly the personalities of the leading characters, the women in a working-class Spanish family, were reflected in the colored patterns of their clothes.
He could be forgiven for focusing on something so esoteric, because Gatti designs the title sequences of Almodóvar's movies. For Volver's titles, or end credits, he created an animation of the flowers, leaves and spots on the women's aprons and dresses. "Pedro is very clever at building his characters with details like that," Gatti says. "And I love the idea of taking everyday images, and giving them a graphic sophistication.""
from NY Times "Graphic images to seduce the filmgoer" by Alice Rawsthorn, published 7/30/2006  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/style/30iht-dlede31.html






"While he was browsing in the bargain bin of a book store on Third Avenue in Manhattan, the young graphic designer Saul Bass was struck by the spiraling images in a book about the 19th-century French mathematician Jules-Antoine Lissajous. He bought the book and experimented with ways of replicating those spirals. “I made a batch. Sat on them for years,” Bass recalled. “And then Hitchcock asked me to work on ‘Vertigo.’ Click!”"
"Witty, gregarious and intellectually inquisitive, Bass executed each project in a seemingly simple, yet expressive style that reflected his fascination with constructivism, modernism and surrealism. In the book, Mr. Scorsese describes his designs as having “found and distilled the poetry of the modern, industrialized world.”"
from NY Times "The Man Who Made the Title Sequence Into a Film Star" by Alice Rawsthorn, published 11/6/11   http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/arts/design/saul-bass-made-the-title-sequence-into-a-film-star.html?_r=1&ref=design