Horror Movie Poster: Research

Saul Bass style horror movie posters

Horror movie posters which use aspects of the Saul Bass Style

Blair Witch Project Posters

Location of movie - Burkitsville, Maryland, USA

Objects and characters in the movie

Colours and textures examples

Saul Bass: Image Development

To get into the feel and style of the movie, we were asked to create a moodboard of images/scenes from the movie.

A moodboard of scenes from the movie, depicting key objects and colour schemes.

A moodboard of colours, using various swatches under the "nature" category in Illustrator.

On top of this, we were asked to create 6 images in the style of Saul Bass, experimenting with colours and detail.

Sketches of important or prominent objects/characters from the movie.

6 shapes related to the movie, using different colour schemes.

Once we had played around with the style more and got a feel for what we should include in the final outcome, we began planning out our storyboards. The idea was to almost retell the story through the images, or while keeping it at vague but as understandable as possible. 

Rough sketch of final storyboard

Final draft of storyboard.

Final storyboard.

Saul Bass: Development

For this project, we were asked to create a storyboard for an introduction sequence of a movie or TV show in the style of Saul Bass. I decided to choose My Neighbour Totoro, a movie by Studio Ghibli.

Before we got to creating the storyboard, we began  practising fonts and text in the style of Saul Bass. Below are 10 fonts in the paper cutout style, resembling Saul Bass. I gathered these already created fonts from various free font sites, including dafont and fontsquirrel as reference.

Then, I began creating my own fonts. I played with the shape, counters, capitalisation and weight of the characters until I was happy with what I had. 

Finally, I settled for this font. I find the mixture of capitalisation and tall, thin shape aesthetically appealing and easy to read.

Saul Bass: Research

Saul Bass was an award winning director, but is most commonly known for his graphic design work. The bold paper cutout style he used for countless movie posters is known worldwide, as well as the logos he created for various companies, including United Airlines and AT&T.

Saul Bass used saturated colours (generally no more than 3 or 4), and simple geometric shapes used sparsely to create symbolism based on whatever it is the poster is for.
Saul Bass' work has inspired a large collection of work since he began, including posters and animations.

A moodboard of movie posters in the style of Saul Bass

Above is a Saul Bass-inspired intro animation for the popular TV show American Horror Story: Asylum. 

The animation follows the same cutout theme as Saul Bass, and uses a black and white/monochrome colour scheme which fits well with the theme of the show. 

I noticed that on the different objects, noise had been added to make it seem like it was actually made out of paper. I like this a lot, as I feel it gives a subtle but great spin on the overall style. 

Additionally, I think that in some cases, the noise could be added to certain elements of the animation to give it a more "real" feel, for example; only adding noise to the rings of the record, or to the bark of the trees. 

I also like how the creator used the same font as the original posters/title sequence. This makes the animation easily recognisable as to what show it's for, and, although it doesnt follow the Saul Bass style, it fits in well with the animation as a whole.