"I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly things. Thats my intent" - Saul Bass
Saul Bass was an American graphic designer, Oscar winning filmmaker, who was best known for his high designs in motion-picture title sequences, film posters and logos. Throughout his career he got asked by some of Hollywood's top filmmakers (Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese) if he wanted to work with them. Bass became widely known in the film industry after creating title sequences for these top Hollywood filmmakers, as of how popular these title sequences became and the feedback received from them. To this day he has influenced a mass amount of filmmakers around the world.
Elaine Bass was Saul Bass' partner. They worked alongside each other for 40 years. As a couple, they developed multiple projects for multiple directors together. Elaine Bass showed an early interest in art, creating stories and drawing them and over time this lead her at the age of eighteen to begin work in the New York fashion industry where she produced fashion renderings and sketches for multiple fashion houses. This eventually lead her to more exciting things as she wanted to keep on challenging herself and then she started working for Saul Bass as his assistant and after working together for a year they got married and still continued to produce film title designs, short films and title sequences.
Together Saul and Elaine Bass have created some of the strongest graphic designs in filmmaking to this day.
West Side Story (1961) - Title sequence
West Side Story (1961) is an American musical romantic drama film directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise. This film is about two teenage gangs who are both struggling for control on the Upper West Side in New York City in the 1950s.
This title sequence is portrayed at the end of the movie. The way Saul and Elaine Bass created these credits and their creativity behind the sketches and designs were very clever and suited the atmosphere of the film.
Having both the different gangs portrayed through the credits including each gang member part of the gang was very well thought and the titles which were designed very much suited each gang by the way "Jets" was written and "Sharks".
The titles portrayed throughout the credits are all in a thick bold font type and in capital letters, in a dark grey / black colour type. This links with the themes and moods of the film as the film itself has a dark and intense atmosphere consisting of the toxicity of racism, themes of love striving to rise above hatred and the fear of immigrants.
Throughout the credits sequence the soundtrack which is used is very contrapuntal and contrasts the images shown and the way the titles are being presented. The soundtrack portrays the genre of the film as a romantic drama genre, which is not shown through the titles.
Overall this was a very well produced and creative credit / title sequence and highly aesthetically pleasing and satisfying to watch and look at.
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