Iconic Title Designers: Saul Bass

Saul Bass was a graphic designer who became known as somewhat of a founding father of the movie title sequence. He had a unique geometric style with crisp shapes (often created out of paper) that logically came together into a balanced composition. The style was very minimal, yet modern. Simple, yet sophisticated. 

Over the course of his 40 year career he designed for high profile directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese.

Here are some of my favorite titles of his and some of his most famous body of work.

O Clone (Brazilian Telenovella "The Clone")

Now that I am thinking in terms of abstract motion graphic pieces, I have been collecting some sources to draw my inspiration from. My mother is really into learning different languages so we happen to have the Brazilian Portuguese channel Globo. The channel is known for its various entertainment programing but its mainly famous for its Telenovellas. A Telenovella is a form of soap opera that runs for about 100 - 200 episodes. They are very popular in South America and for some reason the Brazilian ones seem less cheesy!

Anyway, enough with the rambling but straight to the point. A few years ago, Globo shown the series called O Clone, or in English, "The Clone".  It has an interesting plot in the way that it questions various modern issues and also those of posthuman world.

Here is the synopsis: 

The series has two storylines. One, that explores the impossible love between son of a magnate, Lucas and a Muslim of Moroccan descent Jade and the other story deals with Leandro, the unknowing clone of Lucas, growing up and trying to find the truth from his surrogate mother and her husband Augusto about his origins. It begins with Lucas' twin brother crashing in a helicopter, but their godfather Albieri (who is a genetics professor) cannot cope with the death very well and so he starts to experiment with cloning after doing a biopsy on Lucas' mole. But the eggs get mixed up and get artificially inseminated by mistake. The woman who chose to become inseminated, is unaware of the fact that she, in fact, became a surrogate mother to a clone. The novela progresses to see the clone growing up in a different environment from his father/brother Lucas, which makes him a totally different individual, even though they both share the same genes and even the same thoughts and interests. They later even begin competing over the love of the same woman. 

While the plot has relation to our general project theme, I am particularly interested in the title sequence for the series, which can work as an experimental piece alone. I love the way they have represented the theme of cloning in such a simple yet beautiful way. It has a bit of performance art flavor to it and I love the way that the human form was used through out the clip.

Sorry for the abysmal quality!