Quotes from Saul Bass

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.

Symbolize and summarize.

There is nothing glamorous in what I do. I'm a working man. Perhaps I'm luckier than most in that I receive considerable satisfaction from doing useful work which I, and sometimes others, think is good.

I want everything we do to be beautiful. I don't give a damn whether the client understands that that's worth anything, or that the client thinks it's worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It's worth it to me. It's the way I want to live my life.

If the titles are treated in a straightforward way, nobody is really interested. The theory is that in those two or three minutes, you can set the tone for the films, so that when the story begins the audience hits the ground running.

When Braniff abandoned stripes, they wound up with a flying jelly bean and that's not a good feeling for passengers.

A corporation trademark represents a total program for a company. A good symbol will implement its products. Normally such a symbol will be around for an indefinite future 10, 20, 30 years or more.

When a well-known creative person such as me is perceived to have created a knockoff of my own previous work, such a perception is a mortal blow to my reputation as a creative person.

If it's simple simple, it's boring. We try for the idea that is so simple that it will make you think and rethink.

This is my real concern: to give each film a unique individuality.

There's nothing worse that you can do than create an aura about a company that's not substantiated by fact. It's not only ineffective but actually harmful to the company. You can create an image or whatever, but it won't stick.

I'm a filmmaker and I intend to continue making films of all kinds, in any manner, shape, or form - short or long.

There's nothing more damaging than an irate moviegoer who hasn't seen what the film trailer promised.

The very first pieces of film that I did were really graphic designs translated to film. Graphic designs that moved. That was a very new notion.

I had felt for some time that audience involvement with a film should begin with its first frame.

We are truly bombarded by images. To break through and be observed, let alone focused on, you have to have impact and power.

In TV you have to open a show the subject, you deal with an idea. Then you deal with a sponsor - but fast. Then you have to announce the guest stars. As a result, you have a big fat 30, 40 seconds - 50 if they really lose their heads - to put together an unbelievable mishmash.

Hitchcock loved long convoluted shots that contained a lot of tracking and camera moves.

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 often think that presentations are more difficult than the work itself.

Interestingly enough, the storyboard... that I did for 'Psycho' went precisely as I laid it up, and there was no change on that. And frankly, I myself at that point didn't even really understand the impact that some of these things would have.

At one point it occurred to me that the title could make a more significant contribution to the storytelling process. It could act as a prologue.

In TV the main purpose is to have them keep their hands off the dial. In movies, where you have a captive audience, the opening is intrinsic to the film.

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.