Kyle Cooper

 Kyle Cooper

Kyle Cooper is a modern designer of motion picture title sequence. He studied graphic design at Yale University and took his path from there. Earlier in his profession, he worked as a create director at R/GA which is an advertising agency. At this time, Kyle Cooper created the title sequence for the American crime film 'Se7en' (seven) which was in 1995 and this caused an uproar. His work on Seven inspired many young designers. Cooper then went on to do many more work for films/music videos and even commercials.

(This is a clip to an interview with Kyle Cooper and he talks about his work in the film 'Seven'. It's really interesting to see how he visualises his work and how he feels, from an audience's perspective, is what they want to see and how he wants to achieve this: http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/00170-kyle_cooper_interview_pt_1_2. You can also click on all his different works on this website) 

Cooper co-founded 'Imaginary Forces' with Peter Frankfurt and Chip Houghton - this came out of the West Division of R/GA. As Cooper became more involved with the company for the business-side of things, he wanted to travel the route of designing. He left 'Imaginary Forces' and in 2003 he founded the creative agency Prologue.

This is some of his most well-known work (films) over the past 9 years:

Immortal Beloved (1994)

Braveheart (1995)

Seven (1995)

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)

Flubber (1997)

Mimic (1997)

Arlington Road (1999)

The Mummy (1999)

Zoolander (2001)

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001)

Spider-Man (2002)

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004)

The New World (2005)

Superman Returns (2006)

Across the Universe (2007)

Iron Man (2008)

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Orphan (2009)

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Tron: Legacy (2010)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

The Walking Dead (2010)

Arthur (2011)

Cooper has also done commercials for: Apple, Canon and Coca Cola, as well as doing music videos for bands like 'The Black-eyed Peas'.

Cooper shows common elements and themes through his work. He likes to have a lot of movement in his work such as 360 views around objects, he also likes to build up and layer a lot of his work on screen and this looks effective due to the frame looking filled and built up so that it looks really interesting. Shapes and lines occur in a lot of his work which make it look clean and striking and again, very interesting. You can see how much time he spends on his work as it's so detailed and it's so visually appealing to an audience and this is why he is so popular and idolised because his work is so pleasing to viewers.

FACTS

• He claims his greatest influence in his choice of profession (i.e. title designer) is Stephen Frankfurt's opening title sequence for To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962.
• Cooper now oversees a ninety-person team.
• Andrea Codrington wrote a biography about him; the book called 'Kyle Cooper'. She claims that Kyle Cooper is an essential reading for anyone engaged with graphic design, film, and visual communication.

• He has been nominated 6 times for a Primetime Emmy and won one in 2006 shared with Hal Honigsberg for 'Outstanding Short Form Picture Editing'.

 Kyle Cooper's demo reel on youtube: 

'I Am Legend' title sequence analysis

When watching the title sequence for this film, analysing it, knowing the film itself was so well-done, the big acting names they have in it and the film industry who produced it - 'Warner Bros', I thought the title sequence was poor.

 

I thought it was a bad example from a big Hollywood film company because the titles were so badly placed - big names such as Will Smith and Emma Thompson could hardly be seen. They tried to place the names of actors in clever places but it just didn't work; you could hardly read the names as they blended in with background and they were in such small font. They placed the names in such irrelevant, awkward places that you sometimes can't even spot whether a name was being shown or not. In contrast to the actual film, the title sequence just looked tacky and it's such a shame as they probably could've done something more interesting and impressive.

'Don't Look Now' opening title sequence

So in today's lesson, we looked at another opening sequence and tried to identify what editing techniques were used in it and what was the meaning behind it. 'Don't Look Now' is a very good example when analysing editing because the genre is physcholocigical horror, meaning a lot of the story has to be conveyed through the use of edit as we can only show 'supernatural' features this way because it's obviously not real.

The sequence used a lot of 'match cuts'. This is where it looks as if one thing i.e an action of a character in the shot, is triggered by another action in a different shot but they link - whether it is obvious or not, the editor has done it purposely. The different shots are trying to convey the same meaning between them, even though they're usually in different places, they're are linked/related somehow. In this case, 'match cuts' were used to link what was happening outside was relating to what was happening inside. One example in this is where the girl outside throws the ball to her brother, and when she does it cuts to the dad, inside, throwing the cigarette box to his wife/the mother. These match cuts helped identify that the characters were linked and were family. 

A clever 'match cut' used was when after the liquid had spilt onto the photo, the red ink started to run across the picture, creating a shape, this then faded into the girls body shape when she is being picked up out of the water. They're both in the same colour as well - red. The red colour symbolises death as it looks similar to red, and red itself has connotations of: danger, hate etc. 

A lot of the 'match cuts' are used to trigger a lot of incidents, in this case, it setting up an idea one after another, getting worse and worse and it was as if the girl is getting nearer and nearer to her death; this is shown when: she is being shot again and again going through puddles after puddles, getting closer to the pond. Another example: when the father spills the glass over the picture, the girls ball falls into the pond. 

There is an edit where the brother and sister are outside, and the boys bike breaks so his face is towards the camera but his back his away from his sister. The boy is out of focus, whereas the girl is in focus. We see the boys eyeline looking down, so we can easily identify he is not aware of this sister behind him. This represents that the girl is the important character, and it also recreates the idea of 'depth of field' where it looks as though she is so lonely and vulnurable and there is not contact through them, again suggesting something is going to happen. This creates meaning that anything could happen to her as she is on herself. There a quite a few long shots through the sequence to create how the girl is distant just to keep reminding the audience that she is on herself, so that we feel more worried for her safety. 

The opening starts on a pond, the pond which the young girl drowns and dies in (but we find this out later in the sequence). The scene shows that it is raining, which instantly sets up the idea of pathetic fallacy: the weather reflecting the mood. Opening on the pond also suggests something symbolic about the it as well as we as an audience do not know where/why it's being filmed. The camera then zooms into the pond, closely, and then the title shows up. The title itself instants start to set up ideas of why we shouldn't 'be looking now', especially right after we have zoomed into something that doesn't contain a lot of eye catching attention. It is only shown for identification and knowledge.

From being shown the 'depth of field' and the 'match up' shots, we get a real sense of the girl being unprotected. The meaning created is that although the parents are not with the children, the dad has moments of realisation and feelings shown through close ups, however the mother has completely no realisation. In one shot, the mother has her back completely turned from the dad, showing she is distracted and throughout the sequence it becomes stupid that she has no concern or awareness towards any of the characters. This shot was created with a long pause/hold to express this meaning of her being uninterested. The way the shots are put together, the parents do not once give eye contact to each other which is unusual and slightly odd. This creates meaning that they, particularly the mum, have no interest in the situation inside the home or outside the house, even though the dad is acting slightly on edge and conscious.
 

Storyboarding - our first draft

In Friday's lesson my group started story-boarding our idea out. We started to discuss appropriate shots, length of shots and what we wanted to convey on camera.

Our total time length came to about 1 minute 10 seconds; this created a problem as we realised that roughly, the length of the total opening sequence needed to be around 2 minutes 30 seconds. The storyboard is our first draft, so this has enabled us to be aware of specific things. My group now knows that the length of the opening sequence needs to be longer and we can solve this by adding more things and changing timings for certain frame shots.

We also discussed with my media teacher whether the title to the film 'The Camera Man' was appropriate. This was because we came up with a problem that the title could suggest that the 'Camera Man' was perhaps working for the police in a case for example because the idea is that we do not know who he is, however, we want to convey that he is an obsessed stalker but not know why he is. We discussed that the name 'camera' suggested a more 'investigating' representation, however, we came up with a title name of 'Video Camera'; this name suggests it's less professional and more stalker-ish because 'video-ing' someone is slightly odd and more perverse which is what we want to show.

Lastly we talked about a good soundtrack to go with the representation of this perverted, obsessed/OCD man. We thought a non-diegetic sound of piano keys in the background would suit the piece well as it could help set quite an uncomfortable, eerie tone. This sound would not be very involving meaning that it would not be loud and pacey, it would set a slow, waiting pace which supported the man's actions and his OCD.

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Our synopsis idea decision:

My group made a decision on what our final story idea was to be. We did go for 'The camera man' idea as we thought and planned what shots we wanted to do, use and what would work well. The setting/location could easily be done in the studio at my college, so this means we could focus a lot on what we want within the shot. We also covered that the idea was simplistic so that we could really put in effort in the work on screen rather than fussing over too complicated/busy story ideas.

First production meeting - narrowing ideas...

One idea was about a psycho path living next door to a family who moved away because of his weird attitude. The rest of the story then leads onto the idea of a new family moving in and who of which are completely unaware of who lives next door. The opening sequence idea was to have a car pulling in next door, supposedly meant to be the new family moving in, and the positioning of the camera is meant to be from the psycho's perspective. We analysed the negatives of how it would be hard to film somewhere where we could use two houses next to each other and to film from both houses - it wouldn't have been easy to keep asking neighbours to film from one house to another, and even if one house had said yes, it's neighbour might've said no.

One of my ideas was 'The terrorist' idea. This would've been hard as the opening sequence consisted of a lot of adults and a lot of action going on. It would've also been hard to film in an office that would provide my group to allow them to explore through all parts of the buildings as safety issues would start to occur.

We really, as a group, had to think of whether our ideas were reasonable because even though it may have been a fun or exciting idea, we could not put too much in the opening sequence, and most of the time, it probably wouldn't be reasonable to film because of location etc. One of the ideas included the location of Thailand, and we couldn't fly out to Thailand for one day of filming. It doesn't give enough context if you're not actually in Thailand - an audience want to view the location so they're familiar with where the characters are so we have to make it believable for them. If you were to recreate the idea of being in Thailand but were in England, you wouldn't create that same context.

Finally, my group managed to agree on two final ideas. These ideas were: 1. My idea - 'The letter' idea, which was about a letter, worth a lot of money, to be passed on for a young girl. The opening sequence would've consisted of a group of criminals who trash the girls house to try and find the letter, and then later on revealing the dead mother, but it not being revealed of who she is as we have no information, besides the fact that the house being trashed is probably hers. 2. Chris' idea - 'The Camera Man' idea, a story about a man who has an obsession with photographing one of his neighbours. He captures her every day movement and studies it. The idea is that woman being photographed finds the website with the photos of her on, and she is trying to trace who it is. We are never shown 'the camera man's' face. The opening sequence would be simplistic of the man setting up his camera, his website, his notes and pictures. Him scurrying through papers, writing notes, filing notes and sticking them up on his wall etc.

With our final 2 ideas in our heads, we really had to discuss and create pros and cons for each idea, so we knew that we were to pick the right one. At the end of my lesson, were still indecisive of which idea to proceed in. This was because we really had to consider both ideas.

'The Camera Man' had pros of: it was simpler, and more easier to achieve, precise in what we wanted from it (shots, angles, editing), the fact it was original, and because it was a more simplistic idea, it would be more achievable in the camera/editing etc. rather than getting to caught up in the story at the beginning, we only needed one actor and we had quite a few prop ideas we could experiment with. It's cons then were: maybe it would be too simplistic, making it boring, and if whether when filming it, would there be enough to film? Would we attract an audience?

'The Letter' had pros of: it would be more fun and involving because of the idea of trashing a house, there could be loads of things within the mise en scene to experiment and to have fun with, it would make the opening sequence quite punchy and get right into the mood and action of the story. It's pros could then back up questions like: would it be too detailed? Would it be the case that it would be too much work, especially if when you shot a bit, whether you could shot it again because it was too hard to recreate the set of how it was before and lastly, would we be able to find a location/house that was suitable to the characters context and whether it would actually be possible to trash the place? (haha)

At the end of the lesson, as I said, we were still undecided but our direction, as a team, seems to believe the possibilities of 'The Camera Man' idea would be more achievable to do.

Being put into groups!

We were divided into groups done by pulling names out of a hat. In my group it is: (me), Chris, Laura and Phoebe. I was really pleased with my group - I think we will work well together.

Today, we got into our groups and discussed the synopsis ideas we had for our filming. My group go down to 8 interesting narratives that we thought would be good; we then had to work out whether these narratives were too complex, also considering the idea of what would be an appropriate opening sequence as well.