Nekia Henry Business of DesignYear Two

Nekia Henry Business of Design

Contents

Project BriefGroup BrainstormGroup Project BriefWarner Brothers PicturesDC ComicsBatman FilmographyArtist Inspiration Saul BassBatman in the Style of Saul BassHand Drawn StoryboardsFinal StoryboardsBox Set Design

Project Brief

In your assigned groups you are required to discuss and identify a suitable subject that will benefit fromyour professional and creative contribution. You might start by looking at broad areas like sustainability,food consumption, ethics and technology or you might focus on a company or organisation that provides anintersting challenge.The subject could range from an awareness campaign, brand development to new packaging orinformation design among other things and the solution could take a range of forms and media. As a group, agree on the subject and prepare a written A4 Brief that articulates what the subject is, what the context is for your planned design response, what you are required to do and what the intended deliverables might be.You must keep a record and notes of your group meetings and discussions and show evidence of howyou arrrived at your subject and formulated the brief. You must also have a photographic record of thisprocess that will be included in aprt two of the brief.

Group Brief

Warner Bro’s pictures have requested a title sequence to coincide with the box set release of one of the following Film series which will be included as an extra feature on a bonus disc. The films being pitched are the following:• Batman• HarryPotter• Superman• LordoftheRingsA Title Sequence is the method by which cinematic films or television programs present their title, key production and cast members, or both, utilizing conceptual visuals and sound.They would like the title sequence to include the names of the actors/actresses included in all the movies not just one i.e. it can include characters that were not featured in the same film, e.g. Joker, Bane, Poison Ivy, Catwoman and so on. The title sequence should appeal to a variety of age groups, and should be completed in a relatively minimalist style and should not be very eccentric or detailed. Baring in mind that the title sequence must be completed within a Clients Time Period.Please focus on one film that you would like to create the title sequence for. You should research the film and its attributes i.e. did it stem from a book, comic book, graphic novel etc. Observe the colour scheme and sound you would like to include and if it works with the film rationale, keeping in mind the films will have its own ‘theme music’. Also look into typography to see what font will enhance your work try to keep the font consistent. Think about previous tutorials and workshops you have done in past projects and what is the best programme to use for the final piece. You could use a combination of programmes to create the best visually dynamic sequence.

Try to identify the key elements within your chosen movie, such as iconic scenes and quotes. The dimensions of the animation should be HDTV 1080 with a frame rate of 24. Your research should include:• Backgroundonthecompany• Visualandwrittenresearchonthechosenfilm• TitleSequenceartistresearch• OneA2storyboardoutliningaclearconcept• Aresearchnotebook• Onefinalmotiongraphictitlesequenceapprox1minutein .avi or .mpeg format

Key Websiteswww.artofthetitle.comwww.motiongraphics.nuwww.youtube.com/watch?v=xI7YtkA7Vd0www.tomato.co.ukwww.watchthetitles.com/www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/19/30-unforgettable-movie-title-sequences/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/13/saul-bass-title-design_n_1090963.html

Warner Brothers PicturesWarner Brothers entertainment inc, also known as Warner Bro’s Pictures or simply Warner Bro’s is an american producer of film and tv entertainment. Being one of the major film studios it is subsidiary a Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank, California and New York. They also have other brand name companies, Warner Bros interactive entertainment, Warner Bros TV, Warner Bros animation, Warner home video, New line cinema, theWB.com and DC comics. Warner Owns half of the Cartoon Network Television Network.

DC ComicsDC comics inc (founded in 1934) is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media it is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment. The initials DC came from the company’s popular series Detective Comics which subsequently became part of the company’s name. DC comics and its major, longtime competitor Marvel comics together shared 80% of the American comic book market as of 2008 DC’s first logo appeared in april 1940 and in the 2000’s they created a new logo

Batman 1960-1990

B a t m a n ( 1 9 6 6 )

Starring Adam West as Batman, Burt Ward as Robin, Cesar Romero asthe Joker, Burgess Meri-dith as the Penguin, LeeMeriwether as Catwoman and Frank Gorshin as the Riddler. The film was di-rectedbyLeslieMartinson

B a t m a n ( 1 9 8 9 )

Starring Micheal Keaton as Batman and Jack Nichol-son as the Joker. The film was directed by Tim Bur-ton and the soundtrack was written entirely by Prince. Batman received positive reviews, broke numerous box office hits and grossed 400 million.

Batman Returns (1992)

Michael Keaton reprised his role as Batman, Michelle Pheiffer as Cat-woman, Danny DeVito as Penguin, Chritsopher Walkin also appeared in the film, which was again directed by Tim Burton and written by Daniel Waters.

Batman 1990-1995

Batman Forever (1995) Val Kilmer was cast as Batman, JimCarryasRid-dler, Tommy Lee Jonesas Two Face, Nicole Kid-man as Vickie Vale and ChrisO’Donnell asRobin.Tim Burton was replaced by Joel schumacher. The film was a financial sucess earning over 350 million.

Batman 1995-2005

Batman and Robin (1997)

Val Kilmer was replaced by George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze while Uma Thurman was cast as Poison Ivy, Chris O’Donnell reprised his role as Robin. The film wascritically panned for its toy-etic and campy approach.

Batman Begins (2005)

Christian Bale was cast as Batman, LiamNeeson as Ras Al Ghul,Gillian Murphy starred as the Scarecrow and Michael Cane as Alfred. Batman Begins was extremley sucessful and grossed 48 million and an 84% approval rating.

Batman 2008-2012

Batman the Dark Knight (2008)

Christian Bale starred again as Batman/Bruce Wayne, HeathLedgerasJokerandAaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent/Two Face. The film was met with positive reviews and set numeous records in the process.

Batman the Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Christian Bale reprised the role of Batman and Bruce Wayne for Nolan’s Trilogy, Anne hathaway was cast as Selina Kyle and Catwoman, Tom Hardy as Bane, the film is due to be released in January 2012.

Artist Inspiration

Saul Bass SAULBASS(1920-1996)wasnotonlyoneofthegreatgraphicdesigners of the mid-20th century but the undisputed master of film title design thanks to his collaborations with Alfred Hitch-cock, Otto Preminger and Martin Scorsese.

When the reels of film for Otto Preminger’s controversial new drugs movie, The Man with the Golden Arm, arrived at US movie theatres in 1955, a note was stuck on the cans - “Projectionists – pull curtain before titles”.

Until then, the lists of cast and crew members which passed for movie titles were so dull that projectionists only pulled back the curtains to reveal the screen once they’d finished. But Preminger wanted his audience to see The Man with the Golden Arm’s titles as an integral part of the film.

The movie’s theme was the struggle of its hero - a jazz musician played by Frank Sinatra - to overcome his heroin addiction. Designed by the graphic designer Saul Bass the titles featured an animated black paper-cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm. Knowing that the arm was a powerful image of addiction, Bass had chosen it – rather than Frank Sinatra’s famous face - as the symbol of both the movie’s titles and its promotional poster.

That cut-out arm caused a sensation and Saul Bass reinvented the movie title as an art form. By the end of his life, he had created over 50 title sequences for Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, John Frankenheimer and Martin Scorsese.

The above images show the style of Saul Bass, I would like to use this typographic and visual style when creating a title seqence for my chosen film series

Saul Bass

Batman in the Style of Saul Bass.By taking an image such as this one, I could grasp the style to which I wanted to aspire. I wanted to keep all the illustrations in the same style as the original comic books, I will use this image as a basis and transform it into the tyical illustrative style of my chosen artist.

As you can see here I clip pathed around key tonal parts of the image and fill the path with block colour. I really wanted the image style to show the basic block tonal range of illustration simulating the style of the comics from the 1960’s. By doing this I keep a constant tie to the anniversary of the first Batman movie, which willl be represented in the retro style of illustration.

I also want to use a com-ic book background in some of the images to represent the new direc-tion that comic book il-lustration has taken.

The above image is the first page of my rough storyboard. I will use storyboards to guide me in what works best.

As you can see from the images I have drawn I want to include a variety of the most well known characters in the film series.

These are the final storyboard designs for my title sequence.

Boxset Design

Before I make the boxset I first need to look at the net design which will aid me in making the best possible outcome. I have de-cided to use a Card Box style design which will be more ethical for the several DVD’s that will be included within.

Nekia Henry Business of Design Year Two