11.30.2010

SHOAH



I'm proud to present the poster I designed for Claude Lanzmann's SHOAH, an epic documentary about the survivors of the Holocaust that has been considered by many to be one of the greatest works of documentary filmmaking ever produced. The film, nearly ten hours long in total, is a profoundly beautiful work, an essential masterpiece of the cinema that has an unforgettable effect on anyone who watches it. The man on the train in the poster is one of many Holocaust survivors who were interviewed by Lanzmann 25 years ago in an effort to create a "new" history of what happened there; these interviews are intercut with some of the most hauntingly beautiful cinematography you'll ever see as Lanzmann revisits the locations and landmarks that were the scenery to this historic nightmare. SHOAH is one of the great important works of film-- I would go further to say that its one of the great important works of art ever created by a human being-- and I couldn't be more humbled to have worked on this poster in celebration of the re-release. It tours theatrically in the coming months courtesy of IFCFilms for its 25th Anniversary.

11.23.2010

SHOW!



For the month of December, a selection of my film poster art will be on display at the Gallery at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville. There will be a little opening on the evening of Thursday December 2nd coinciding with the village Art Walk. Select prints will be for sale in limited quantities. This is the first "show" I've ever had so stop by, have a glass of wine and say hello!

11.22.2010

BEN FOLDS BENEFIT POSTER



These 18x24 offset prints will be for sale at the Ben Folds concert benefiting the Nashville Symphony and local volunteer firefighters Saturday November 27th at TPAC. All proceeds from sales of the poster will go to this cause in the wake of the Nashville Flood, which hit the basement of the Schermerhorn Center pretty hard. If you're in Nashville, grab a ticket, grab a poster, enjoy the show, and support a great cause and one of our city's treasures.

11.19.2010

Process: CARLOS



Olivier Assayas' epic international thriller CARLOS is set to open this weekend at Nashville's historic Belcourt Theatre, one stop on a roadshow around the country that isn't to be missed. I was honored to design the theatrical poster for IFC, and the process was rather brief. Thematically, we wanted to capitalize on this idea of Carlos as an iconic celebrity, with as much danger and sexiness embedded into the presentation as possible. Stylistically, I looked to the posters for various international thrillers of the late 60's and 70's, with their prominent taglines and quotes, bold fields of color and borders... a style outlined very well by Adrian Curry in this Movie Poster of the Week piece. I hoped to capture this same spirit without getting too campy, referential or ironic, and create a poster that felt vintage but also contemporary.

I went right to this shot of Carlos walking off a plane in his signature outfit, half-reaching for a bag on his shoulder containing who knows what kind of dangerous weapons... He's walking with supreme baddass confidence, he's obviously been jet setting around, and he's on a mission. It was perfect for how I wanted to present Carlos and how I think Assayas wanted to present the character in the film. I initially tried it black and white with a little blue, one where the whole poster was yellow with shades of red and orange, and then various versions with white backgrounds and different color schemes on top of Carlos (we ultimately liked the orange one the best). Below I've posted an alternate poster concept I worked on for a little while before setting on the final poster. The title treatment seen in both posters is a modified version of Fat Albert inspired by the SERPICO poster/typeface, and I used Eurostile for all of the billing.




The special roadshow edition of CARLOS plays this weekend at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, where you can also pick up a limited edition program guide that I designed. Read the Scene's interview with Assayas here. Thanks again to everyone at IFC!

11.17.2010

Process: MODERN TIMES


When Criterion asked me to try my hand at a design for Charlie Chaplin's MODERN TIMES, I was quite intimidated. It's the first Chaplin film to join the Criterion Collection's esteemed pantheon, and its one of those films you'll run into quite regularly if you're browsing through lists of the best and most beloved films of all time. I was given free reign to come up with whatever ideas I wanted to try, so after watching the movie again (it had been a while) I started doodling in my sketchbook. I don't have scans of those pages with me, but that process led to some rough drawings like these:


And, later that night, some cut construction paper collages like this:


I knew that it was going to be important to represent the modern city as a major character in the artwork, but also that I needed to feature Chaplin himself. The above cartoon of Chaplin's hat becoming a kind of cityscape / landscape had some potential, and it would come up again later. The yellow drawing above touched on a vision I had in my mind of a massive cartoon landscape that showed both the looming industrial city with its giant buildings and gears as well as the natural landscape, with the gears and the hills blending together, and in a more polished version of this concept I imagined a great volume of tiny details-- people, cars, shops, trains, houses, trees, a whole miniature modern world contrasting the modern city to the open American landscape. These initial sketches and doodles served as a way to explore the themes I wanted to focus on while also providing some graphic and textural templates to work with, like the above paper cityscape which would later end up serving as the template for the entire package.

This led to a cover idea that I envisioned as a landscape of gears. The images of Chaplin crawling around and through these massive factory gears are some of the most well-known in movie iconography, and I was initially hesitant to use the gear imagery just since its so obvious. At the same time, if a good design came of the gears I didn't want to rule them out, as some things are obvious because they have good reason to be. Initially, we considered the possibility of using die-cut holes in a cardboard slipcase, where images of Chaplin would slide through the die-cut openings and reveal different moments and scenes. So I made this unfinished "gearscape" layout with that idea in mind.


Meanwhile, I had sketched out two other simple ideas that I thought might work for the cover. The first featured the last shot of the film. I hate to spoil it for anyone reading this, and if you don't want to know what that shot is you might stop here, but I also had the thought that if there were ever a last shot to give away in a poster or cover, this would be a good contender... It's just that good. And what I really, really loved about it was that it showed both Chaplin and his wife at the time, Paulette Godard, and the story is ultimately about these two characters, as a couple. I loved that idea, and although it wasn't ultimately represented in the cover, I tried to spread this theme out through the rest of the package and menus later. This image wasn't the ideal choice for the Criterion cover because it didn't really address any of the modern or technological themes of the movie. The image of the couple walking away had also been used in existing posters and we needed to create some new iconography for the film.




Another doodle led to this concept of Chaplin's face with mismatched gears for eyes. Here I was really inspired by the Czech and Polish posters I love that used a decisively abstract style and didn't necessarily concern themselves with matching the look or story of the film they represented. The black rounded border and some of my type experiments were conceived as a direct homage to these kinds of posters.


Criterion really responded to this design, and we realized it actually worked quite well thematically as well as graphically, in that the movie is about Chaplin's Tramp becoming a part of the industrial machine and going kinda crazy in the process. From here I added the branding and set out to find the perfect typeface to use, at which point our friend F. Ron Miller helped out by suggesting some typefaces from the period. Throughout the process, we also refined the actual image of Charlie's face to make it slightly less abstract than my original concept. I must have tried about 50 different type and layout variations, but we finally found one that felt just right.





From there it was time to start on the menus and booklet. While Criterion Blu-ray menus are built around one image or video with an overlaid interactive menu, their DVDs use multiple menus for each special feature, chapter menu, etc. I had a lot of fun working with some cut-out paper illustrations and integrating them with images from the film. Here I had the opportunity to play with all of Chaplin's personas, sequences and locations within the movie, aside from the industrial gear & factory imagery everyone associates with it, and really create my own playful visual world. I applied this style to the booklet as well, the cover of which used my earlier hat-city idea and became a screenprint for the Belcourt's Chaplin Festival. Here are some selected images from the menu and booklet art:










I came up with the above image as an homage to that last shot of the film, "SMILE" being the theme song of that section and the song that closes the film. This image, without the text, became the back cover of the booklet.

It was a tremendous honor to work on this release and once again I fell in love with this movie while working on the package. Sifting through hundreds of publicity stills and behind-the-scenes photos from the Chaplin Archives was as wonderful a treat as any movie lover could hope for, and I hope that all the Chaplin fans out there enjoy seeing some of those great images in the booklet and supplements. Janus Films is touring the new Chaplin prints around the country right now and I've been surprised how many people I know have admitted they've never even sat down and watched a Charlie Chaplin movie all the way through. If any are playing near you, check them out and get ready to be moved and entertained. At home, you can enjoy Criterion's MODERN TIMES Blu-ray and DVD, for sale now. Thanks again to Sarah Habibi, Abbey Lustgarden and everyone else at Criterion for this opportunity.

11.15.2010

WILLIAM TYLER - BEHOLD THE SPIRIT



Coming November 23rd on LP and CD from Tompkins Square: William Tyler's Behold the Spirit. The above album cover photography is by Mike Vallera, and I had the honor of doing the overall layout and design for my dear friend William. This is his first record released under his own name (his last full-length was released as The Paper Hats) and as you would expect from any musical endeavor by Mr. Tyler (Lambchop, The Silver Jews, Kort) it is an essential title for your music library. Beautiful instrumental, guitar-centric compositions that you can hear for yourself for a limited time courtesy of NPR at this link. I'm so happy to be even marginally involved in the release of this wonderful record, a perfect soundtrack for the changing of the seasons and the coming winter. Check it out and support your local indie record store by picking up a copy. Enjoy!

11.14.2010

THE KING'S SPEECH



This is stupid, but after all the making fun of the official poster for THE KING'S SPEECH-- one of this year's Oscar-bait dramadies about Britain's King George VI (Colin Firth) and his speech therapist-- I decided to take a few minutes and give it the Polish poster treatment for fun. It's crap and it's rough (King George VI mashed with period-era microphone), but I wanted to see if a completely abstract, tonally inaccurate design could make for just as good a poster as the old standby floating-head-montage poster that we were treated to with this one. I don't really know the answer, but it was a fun 30-minute experiment!

11.06.2010

BEN FOLDS TOUR POSTER



I just left Nashville for a short 3-week tour playing with Ben Folds. Before I left I had the opportunity to design this tour poster for Ben, which will be available at all the shows. It may be for sale online too in which case I'll update this with a link. If you're nearby for any of these shows come check it out and say hi!