Somewhere along the line a convention developed that the opening of a film was just a laundry list of credits. There was no incentive to complicate an area that was settled.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the unoriginality in film credits, suggesting that they lack creativity and complexity.
Saul Bass highlights how the tradition of opening film credits has become a monotonous checklist of names rather than an opportunity for artistic expression. He points out the absence of motivation to innovate in this aspect of filmmaking, implying that such conventions stunt creativity and fail to engage audiences from the very beginning of a film.
In practice
During a lecture on film history to emphasize the importance of innovative opening sequences.
In the course of our daily lives, we're bombarded with a barrage of visual messages, some blatantly aggressive, some subtle. The trick is to find a way to break through without adding to the clutter and the ugliness. We have to be responsible about that.
My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.
I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.
Logos are a graphic extension of the internal realities of a company.
My work on titles was a marvelous opportunity to learn about filmmaking. I think I touched on just about every aspect of the process, both creative and technical. And I worked with many wonderful people.
When I provided the disembodied arm as the logo for 'The Man With the Golden Arm,' it was the first time an advertising-publicity campaign was based on a single symbol. Until then film companies used a variety of symbols and photographs to cover all bets. The concept of using one logo was mine and Otto Preminger's.
What are our conductors giving us year after year? Only fresh corpses. Over these beautifully embalmed sonatas, toccatas, symphonies and operas the public dance the jitterbug. Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. From the churches comes the melancholy dirge of the dead Christ, a music which is no more sacred than a rotten turnip.
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
I figured as long as the music stayed hot and important and good, that there would always be a reason for 'Soul Train.'
What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait.
It's a sort of piss-take on culture, because a drag queen is a clown - a parody of our society. It's a sarcastic spoof on culture, which allows us to laugh at ourselves - but in a way that is inclusive of everyone.
When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope.' Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
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