George Melies – Biography.

George Melies was born on 8th December 1861 in Paris, His father was a wealthy shoe manufacturer. Young George was interested in sketching, and he liked to make sets for and perform his own marionette shows. His parents did not encourage these fanciful pastimes, and Méliès eventually found himself working in the family business. His fascination with art is what had led him at the Ecole des Beaux Arts a few years later, this is where he studied stage design and puppetry.

In 1844, when Melies was in London he had a keen interest in stage conjury after witnessed Maskelyne and Cooke’s work. This led Melies a few years later to purchase his own musical theatre which caused him to work fulltime at it.

When his father retired in 1888, Méliès sold his share of the business and bought the Théatre Robert-Houdin. He devoted himself to the running of the theater and would sometimes perform himself. Before long though, he would find a new obsession.

During 1895 Melies saw the Lumiere brothers and asked from their opinion about his invention however the both of them declined him and his work. This caused Melies to seek the help of Robert Paul about the understanding of moving pictures by demonstrating his invention; the camera projection machine which was firstly later screened on the 4th April 1896.

In autumn of 1896, Melies accidental discovered the stop motion trick which happened when his camera was paused for a moment then resumed. When Méliès looked at the film later, he noticed that at the moment of the break, the bus he had been filming suddenly disappeared and new vehicles replaced it. Making items appear and disappear by stopping and starting the camera would become one of his most commonly used film tricks. How lucky that he had the vision to make magic out of what would appear to many to be simply a technical problem. This made Melies to become a well known factor in cinematic history and was popular known as the first person to use exposures, photography and hand coloured paint in his work.

With Melies founded discovered it caused him to go under the name ‘Cinemagician’.

In 1902, only six years after starting work with the medium of film, Méliès produced its first masterpiece. A Trip to the Moon is believed to have been inspired by several works at the time that speculated about life on the moon. H.G. Wells and Jules Verne wrote about space travel, and Offenbach composed an opera about a trip to the moon. The public was ready to see the first science fiction movie. The film was a huge success in France, and Méliès hoped to make a fortune in the United States as well but soon after many other people tried to replicate his work for fame and fortune.

Many of the special effects in A Trip to the Moon, as in many of Méliès’s films, were created using the stop trick technique (also known as substitution splicing), in which the camera operator would stop filming long enough for something onscreen to be altered, added, or taken away.

My opinion on ‘A Trip to the Moon’ is that it’s very definitive and original in the sense that if you were shown the first few seconds of it. You’d be able to recognise its been done by George Melies right from the bat. The film itself reminds me of a dream sequence and takes me to another world through it’s great use of conveying power visual themes. The way in which Melies splices effects together really gives off a powerful ambience to the Sci-Fi genre. The whole theatrical piece reminds me of a silent fantasy film a little like the original ‘The Wizard Of Oz’ except with a more creepy unsettling vibe especially after the Moon appears with the human face.

Saul Bass – Biography. (Avant-Garde Movement)

Saul Bass is one of the most famous graphics designers for title sequences and logo graphics.

Born in 1920 in New York, he graduated high school and studied at the arts students league. He began to work for Hollywood in the 1940′s doing print work for film advertising. After keeping at this for so long his career defining moment came in 1954 where he created the movie poster for the film ‘Carmen Jones’. Upon seeing the poster the director, Otto Preminger was so pleased with Oskar’s work that he was asked to create the title sequence. This was the  first film title sequence created by Saul Bass and marked the beginning of Bass’s long professional relationship with Preminger. He became widely known for his hard hitting out of the box title sequences especially  for “Man with the golden arm”. Saul Bass worked with title sequences from his start in 1954, all the way to his last works in 1990.

Saul bass is famous for using simple shapes to influence emotions through degrees of movement and patterns. Using cut out animation most of his work was created using simple shapes, but in some cases figure like silhouettes were used such as “Man with the golden arm”

Oskar Fischinger is an artist in a similar discipline, he created animation in similar styles to Saul bass, but before Saul Bass had begun his work.

Many have tried to copy the stylish approach of Saul Bass, just to find out that his genius is not able to be replicated. The redesigns of his work were simply never good enough and lacked the minimal and stylish look of Saul’s typography, colours, and symbols.

Characteristics of Work – The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

Saul Bass didn’t just revolutionise thinking in design but also changed the way we enjoy cinematography. It’s hard to believe that before Saul Bass’s time the projections were so dull that once the movie was finished, the curtains were pulled back immediately. Bass created intrigue by making the title sequences more remarkable. This is particularly true of the design for the ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’, where showing the cut-out arm caused a sensation.

The colour block combined with a powerful image of an animated black paper-cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm reinvented the movie title sequence, making it a form of art and transforming the way that movies began ever since.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS76whmt5Yc