“I want a story.”

This mini-piece on the NYTimes Online touts a retrospective picture book on the movie posters of Bill Gold who, when confronted with the posters he was seeing made by everyone else said, “I don’t want to just do a concept with three heads in it. I want a story.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/movies/05posters.html?ref=movies

The work pictured in the article is marvelously idiosyncratic, very much a product of its time (mostly the 60s and 70s–not just a bygone era of posters, but also of filmmaking). But note the guy is 89 and has traversed MANY decades (the portfolio goes from the 40s until the 90s) of style and design technology, never losing sight of the most important thing: telling the story of the film and not how perfect Tom Cruise’s pores are.

Old Times

Recently, I designed a poster series for Coastal Carolina University Department of Theatre’s 2010-11 season. Did a version of Pinter’s OLD TIMES that was met with the comment, “What are you after?” Never a good thing if you have to explain. Though I then DID explain: a metaphor for instigation and crawling into the abyss with a sense of the rustic and isolated, thus getting at both character and context. But it don’t mean a thing if it don’t have a ring…of truth to it.

So I did a second version. In this one, I played with the power struggle central to the play using rock/paper/scissors to bring out the menage-a-manipulation-trois. The design clearly has a nod to the Swiss and Mr. Josef Muller-Brockmann.

Then, the first poster? It “grew” on the director. And now it’s the winner. Meanwhile, I think I got more attached to the second’s use of scale.

Sometimes it’s hard to sync the strongest message with the strongest design. I find myself torn.

Snark and Bad Corporate ID: A match made in heaven

See this post on the UnderConsideration blog to read what I mean. And enjoy a designer’s perspective on the type of scabrous work that is “designed by committee.”

http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/the_best_and_worst_identities_of_2009.php

NYMF!

New York Musical Theatre Festival, baby! POPart: The Musical is in! And I’ve mostly been posting the updates on my OTHER blog about POPart stuff. I seem to have blogged myself into a corner. Insert “Dirty Dancing” quote here–something about “baby” and “a corner.”

POPart: The Musical water bottle

I’ll see if I can’t ramp up the effort. And I’ll post graphic design-y things I’m doing for the show as well. Such as this SIGG water bottle for sale on our CafePress site.

Uhh…

Missed me?

It’s a two-letter day.

Two rejection letters, that is. One from the Larson Grant (for Blackout), our second rejection from that organization (the first being for Lift over two years ago). And another from the New Dramatists Fellowship. That one was a long-shot, since it’s a NYC residency. But I thought I made a good case.

Maybe a nut-case. A basket-case. A charity-case. A brief-case. Maybe just a handbag. An old bag. A grab bag.

Enough wallowing. Moving on.

Getting “lift”-ed

A closed industry reading. Does that sound sexy? I’m told it does. I’m also told to use the phrase as we approach potential investors for our upcoming one of lift in New York in March.

We did a reading almost two years ago, not of the closed kind, but of the developmental lets-just-see-what-we’ve-got-here kind, at an Off-Broadway theatre. What we had was even better than we thought, but still needed some TLC. Many rewrites, a lot of rejection letters (as well as a few of interest), and a new director later, we’re ready to let it go forth and hob-nob with the creatively powerful–or powerfully creative–or something–much more directly.

A talented and impressively-experienced cast abounds. I’ll have details soon.

Caricatures or Celebrity Eye Candy?

There’s an article on the New York Times Arts Beat blog about illustrator, Robert Rodriguez (not the Planet Terror director, though that would be an interesting twist), and his work on the poster for Broadway’s upcoming revival of LEND ME A TENOR. He laments–well, that may be too strong a word; but he mentions it—the disinterest that Hollywood has in using illustrations on their posters, that it’s all about the luscious celebrity gloss.

What I find interesting in the poster is how photo-realistic his style is, though clearly taking some liberties with proportion. He says the advertising agency wanted the image to imply a lot of action as it tries to hint at the farcical slap-stick nature of the play (which, I hear, has already been turned into a musical).

When’s the Blackout?

Had another phone—after iChat refused to cooperate—meeting with our Blackout director, Diana. She agrees with me that the rewrites so far have made a big difference in the set-up and ongoing stories of the characters. Sean is the weak point now. His goals and obstacles are muddy, whereas the women are strong and clear.

As for upcoming readings, we may do the table version when I’m in NYC in February for the Lift reading. We still plan the big staged version for spring break.

Nine.

Just an interesting comparison of posters between the 2009 film version of NINE, out in theaters on Christmas Day and not exactly raking in the critical praise, and the 1982 Broadway version (which was, of course, a musical based on Fellini’s 8 1/2). Lather the public up with sexed-up celebrity photography or give them something impressionistic. If you’ve seen 8 1/2, what do YOU think is more appropriate? This pairing is a classic case of Hollywood’s monsters versus theatre’s metaphors.

The 2009 movie

The 1982 Broadway musical