 |
| images of youtube video, made on photoshop. |
Saul Bass is a famous title sequence artist, who's worked very closely with director Alfred Hitchcock in the past. One of the most famous ones is Vertigo, about a detective suffering for 'acrophobia', who slowly becomes obsessed with an old friends wife. To fit the mysterious and eerie mood of the narrative, Saul Bass created an opening sequence which fitted this, which I willl now analyse..
Firsly, it fades from black slowly to a shot of the right hand side of a womans face. Its in black and white, which adds mystery, the extreme close up adds more effect to this. It pans slowly across to show the whole of the bottom face, then moves into the lips. It adds a feeling of secrecy as she has a little smile on her face. As it pans further up, the lighting creates shadow over the eyes, further emphising the mysterious-ness. It then finally settles on one eye as an extreme close up. We feel some-what intimidated, she's staring at us like she can see us. We also ask questions like who is she? Why is she in the opening title, and why do we focus upon her facial features in such detail? Our questions are almost answered when an overlay of blood red covers the eye. It suggest blood, violence and secrecy that we're yet to find out. As the 'VERTIGO' title disapears off the screen, a purple swirl comes from her pupil, which gets bigger until the eye fades out - this, mixed with the close up of the eye and the eerie music, almost hypnotises us. As the screen turns black and more 'psychedelic' shapes come on screen, we wonder what the purpous is. You will also notice that each shape, in some way, references back to the shape of an eye. The question raised then is what the signifigance of the eye will be to the film... The eye then fades back blood red, for a few seconds when it then fades back to black again.
The sound is an incredibly big part. Throughout the music is all the same, there isn't a range in the tune or notes which gives it a sense of repetatition, made stronger with the recuring images of an eye. The sequence opens with high, eerie, tinkling music accompanied with violins. Its slow and high with an upbeat tempo which gives you chills. The music is harmonious to the sequence, especially when the music becomes much louder for a few seconds when the woman opens her eye wide. When the colourful swirls appear in the eye, another range of music accompanies the origional. It gets higher and higher, fitting in time of the movement of the patterns. It never changes all the way through until it fades out with the picture at the end..
Both sound and image suggest a movie which has some evil and eerie implications, like obsession, murder, love and violence. It sets the mood and scene for the film and suggests the narrative is that of a not so happy film.
No comments:
Post a Comment