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Are we talking logos, or the actual screen as the cover?
If it's logos then add The Rocketeer and Back to the Future. Oh, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
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I thought this was common practice?
It is standard practice to use the poster/print logotype on soundtrack releases---but studios frequently do not use the same logotype---or even the same font family---for the onscreen titles.
Movies like Star Wars and Conan The Barbarian are more unusual in that they had a comprehensive approach to marketing. It's more common today, but it still surprises me when a big release deviates from this practice.
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Movies like Star Wars and Conan The Barbarian are more unusual in that they had a comprehensive approach to marketing. It's more common today, but it still surprises me when a big release deviates from this practice.
Jaws and The Godfather spring to mind.
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Posted: |
Oct 15, 2014 - 6:17 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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Let me say here that I have never heard to what Steve H. refers called "Title Screens".
In the industry here in Hollywood---in artist contracts, contractual credit sheets, opticals, etc.---I have always heard them referred to as "Credit Cards." I feel fairly sure that this terminology goes way back to the early silent days of film, when the credits for the performers and staff, as well as the intertitles, were actually painted on stiff art board and photographed on film which would eventually be inserted into the final negative. For the main title, the terminology was "Title Card".
For the rest of the titles, you'd have a generic kind of "card" reference, so it might be listed as "Star Card", "Producer Card", "Director Card", "Crew credits card", etc. etc. In the early days of film, the cards were very limited in crediting the personnel (many were left out), with perhaps no more than 3 or 4 cards on a film.
Eventually, of course, we had painted-on-glass titles, 3-Dimensional tabletop setups, optical titles over live-action backgrounds, animated titles, and unusual one-of-a-kind titles---and the old art-on-card-stock titles were pretty much gone. But in the behind-the-scenes legal or contractual areas on paper they were still usually referred to as "Credit Cards" and soon stretched to encompass many individual cards in the credit roll.
There is an old story that actor Tony Randall occasionally told about, I believe, the shooting of LOVER COME BACK at Universal around 1961. The director had rehearsed Randall on his first scenes in the picture, they had worked out all his movements around the set, and then turned everything over to the cameraman to supervise his lighting while Randall went away to finish makeup, etc.
When he came back, the Director of Photography needed to go over the entire action with Randall to show him where his "marks" were so that he could hit them exactly, be lit properly, and be in the proper camera frame to deliver each dialog speech. So he worked Randall through the movements---something like this: "Now Tony, you start at the coffee table, walk over to your first mark and say your card, then you walk over to Doris (Day) and say your second card, then turn away and walk over to the desk, turn back to Doris and say your third card." !!!
Randall didn't understand at first, but when it was finally explained to him, he thought it was hysterical! The cameraman was from the silent film days, and the "cards" the actor would have mouthed then were the intertitle dialog cards which would be added later. This cameraman was still using silent film references to Randall's dialog moments instead of something like "Say your line here, Tony" and it was at least thirty years later!!!
I don't know whether it is still as legally specific and difficult as it once was to lay out titles or advertising for a film as it once was, but I can't imagine much has changed. When I worked at the Saul Bass graphic design company many years ago, I used to see official credits sheets come from clearance in the studio's legal department on a regular basis. These were many, many pages long, with very specific demands as wrangled over and agreed to by the various creative participants in the filmmaking process.
The actual art of the film's title (in font style, height and width) or film logo (in the case of print advertising) was the key to the process. The title was considered as "100%" in size for the
contractual credits relationships. So, if the title was 100%, the size, shape and font of the two leading stars' names might be 80% of title and probably had to be "above-the-title" in print ads, or "before-the-title-card" in some films. The co-stars had to be after the title, and often less than 50% of title, with other credits diminishing in further percentages. Then came the producer/director credits---in later years always producer first, and director last before first shot, and usually the size of the star credit---in this case maybe 80% of title. Depending on the fame, the boxoffice clout, the cleverness of the agent, and the willingness of the studio management, these creative credits could vary quite a bit from film to film, but there was always an original plan in place from which to start the negotiations.
In this particular thread, I agree with several of the posters that there seems to be some confusion about the film's title imagery as exactly seen on the screen (and then used on the record album) and the film's logo. I can think of hardly any of the first example, but many of the second. The title can be in a generic font which was once the case on a regular basis, while the logo today is almost always specifically designed---particulary so it can be trademarked and exploited. I think George Lucas was really the first to exploit---on a grand scale---a designed title trademark/logo for commercial purposes----although the Disney Company was also well into this, particularly for their "character" imagery like Mickey Mouse.
I'd like to see more examples here of art which is EXACTLY lifted from a film title card, INCLUDING BACKGROUND AND SURROUNDING AREAS, and then used as an album cover---and not just the use of logo art. There is another example I can think of which---though not the title card--- was a beautiful LP album cover taken DIRECTLY from a film. That was the Warner Bros. Records release of the then-newly-recorded score for FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, as conducted by Ray Heindorf---a cover featuring one of the film's gorgeous close-ups of actress Ingrid Bergman. It was an astonishingly gutsy cover design---there was no text whatsoever---and I think it won some advertising design awards at the time of its release in the early 1960s.
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