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Posted: |
Feb 11, 2017 - 3:15 AM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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How much are you going to charge me? 
Actually, I've sort of had this kind of experience already.
50 years ago, between 1962 and 1967, I spent 5 years working at the Saul Bass company in Hollywood in his film department as Post-Production Supervisor.
During that time Saul would always run his "Sample Reel" of work for prospective clients who came by wanting to consider his doing their titles for them.
Most of these kinds of production houses like Bass' were small, and independent of the major studios, and didn't really equip for 35mm projection---and this was long before non-network video formats---so Bass' "Sample Reels" were assembled in 16mm and ran approximately 25-40 minutes.
I don't recall the order of things or every single one of the titles included on the reels, but they usually contained at least CARMEN JONES, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, PSYCHO, THE RACERS, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, VERTIGO, OCEAN'S ELEVEN, THE BIG COUNTRY, THE PRIDE AND THE PASSION, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, EXODUS, WALK ON THE WILD SIDE......and later NINE HOURS TO RAMA, IT'S A MAD (4) WORLD, ADVISE AND CONSENT, SECONDS, The Prologue to THE VICTORS, THE CARDINAL and several others were added. The reels were pretty representative overall of the work he'd accomplished during the previous 15 years-or-so.
The black-and-white / flat titles were usually assembled at the beginning of the reels, and then were followed by the B&W or IB Tech / Scope titles---which necessitated a quick-change to the anamorphic projection lens somewhere near the middle of the reels.
Clients came out of these screenings pretty well set on doing a Saul Bass title for their film, assuming they could afford it. Bass' efforts were never cheap, and were time-consuming to accomplish production-wise, but they were almost always an asset for the film they accompanied.
During my years there we moved our offices to a larger building down the street on Sunset, and during the move it was decided that some of the stuff needed to be cleared out. So some of the sample reels were trashed (!!). I plucked one of them at random from the trash bin and added it to my film collection, eventually running it a few times. I doubt if I've screened it in 35 years or so now and it just sits on the shelf awaiting the next running.
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He was a genius.
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Bass assembled a 1977 short film (38:00, I think) called BASS ON TITLES, that was distributed in 16mm years ago by Pyramid Films. Its entirety was Bass looking directly into a camera answering questions from an offscreen interviewer. He would give a short into about approach, inspiration, etc., to lead into the title sequence for each of 10 different features.
In most cases each sequence ran intact, although in a couple of cases he would state some variant of "We've had to shorten this one or else we'd be here all day." This release preceded the era of letterboxing CinemaScope footage, so most of the 'Scope sequences were presented squeezed (except for GRAND PRIX, which was cropped to 1:37.1). This might not be the precise chronology, but these are definitely the contents:
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM
SECONDS
IN HARM'S WAY (squeezed, only slightly shortened)
THE BIG COUNTRY (squeezed; trimmed by final few seconds)
WEST SIDE STORY (squeezed, slightly shortened midway)
IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (squeezed)
GRAND PRIX (cropped)
THE VICTORS (squeezed; powerful prologue, not the titles)
NINE HOURS TO RAMA (squeezed)
WALK ON THE WILD SIDE
I have a 16mm print of this -- and like manderley above, I also violate good 'Scope etiquette by swapping the standard lens for the anamorphic lens during the Bass intro preceding each 'Scope sequence! However, this film was released on a Warner Home Video DVD called Ecstasy, which is Vol. 11 of a series titled Short.
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