Applied Animation: Anatomy of a Murder

Anatomy of a Murder is a crime drama film directed by Otto Preminger, and the title sequence for the film was produced by Saul Bass. Before I researched Catch Me If You Can, I had never really heard of Saul Bass, most likely because I haven't seen any of the movies that he has produced title sequences for. So I did a bit of research into him, and I can definitely see where Kuntzel and Deygas got their inspiration from. 

Anatomy of a Murder - Title Sequence

The title sequence focuses on the anatomy of the human body, which is obviously very fitting to the nature of the film. The body parts are depicted as silhouettes and they move around in time to the sound track. Despite it being very simplistic, I think the style accompanies the film well however I can't really say this for certain, as I have only seen odd clips and am just aware of the genre. I'm happy that I have looked at this title sequence as it shows that the animation doesn't have to be complex in order to be effective. If I felt it to be necessary I could always adopt a similar approach for my own titles. It would definitely be easy to do digitally, or I could even explore creating a stop motion using paper. I could even make the shapes more detailed/interesting by cutting into them with a crafting knife.

Two Book Covers - Examples of use of Silhouettes and Minimal Colours

Another thing that I like about this animation is the monochrome colours it has been produced in. They are very gloomy and I think this accurately reflects on the touchy themes addressed in the film (such as rape and murder). If I were to use silhouettes my self, I was considering using just a small selection of colours as Simon Kernick's book covers do the same thing; I thought it would be a nice touch to take inspiration from the cover in terms of the colours and textures he has used.