Just as a matter of interest anyone know of at least 2 movie producers who used multiple type faces in there titling other than barleycorn’s psychiatrist or parole officer

Lighten up barleycorn you are way too serious

Rory. MBA. BA N masters.

A few examples of the use of contrasting typefaces:

Spielberg - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (opening credits)
Lars von Trier - Breaking the Waves (closing credits)
Joel Coen - The Big Lebowski (opening and closing credits)
The Wachowski Brothers - The Matrix (closing credits)

A particular style:
John Huston - The Maltese Falcon (opening credits)
Polanski - Chinatown (opening credits)


> 'Lighten up barleycorn you are way too serious'

I wasn't aware that levity was obligatory.
 

You miss spelt lavatory

Thanks for the refs I will squizz them on the weekend

Thanks
Rory

I did read the parts of those books that were freely available. I'll probably buy some of them as typography holds a considerable interest for me. What I read was not easy to understand, not that I'm dumb, just that typography is an ancient dark skill, being a typesetter puts you in the same league as a mason.

What I did bring away from my brief reading is the feeling that if you don't have a clue and the eye for typography then the "rule" under discussion might be a good one to adhere to. However it's one that the masters of the craft don't adhere to. The danger with rules is people take them as absolutes. Some are because there's technical reasons for them. Others are just there so dumbies like me don't get into too much trouble artistically. If you want to go from beginner to master you do need to throw away much of the stuff you learned for The Dumbies Guide to XYZ. I've found this with audio and with lighting, no doubt typography is the same.

Bob.

never mind

i haven't thrown anything away and that's a wrong conclusion to reach from what I'm saying.

Favourite book on audio, Audio Postproduction for Digital Video by Jay Rose.
Most 'provocative' person I've listened to on audio, Bose.

I still put my mics where everybody else does, it's safe but there's many ways to record sound, especially natural sound. That's an art as much as a science. How about recording an orchestra, you'll find a variety of conflicting views and techniques used, Decca Trees, soundfield mics or even close mic everything. What about VOs, I've heard just about every type of mic recommended for that and I've seen shotguns and LDCs used in VO booths. Read one book on the subject and you could believe that half the people have got it wrong.

Where I learned basic lighing, Light It Right, Victor Milt and DV Enlightenment. The former is better than the latter and I have no problem recommending it.
Where I try to learn more from, every issue of the American Cinematographer. My favourite on lighting, Vittorio Storaro, I should buy a few of his books!
I use 3 point lighting just like everyone else but that means my lighting looks like everyone else's. So why not try something different, how about using large softboxes, a big Kino, umbrellas, scrims, bounce. How do you light so it doesn't look like it's lit but doesn't suck either. Every time I see something shot with 3 or 4 point lighting I'm thinking "where's that light coming from?" Then I came accross the term "motivated lighting".

So no, I'm not saying to throw out the rules, I'm saying don't be limited by them. I'm not attacking those who write the books on the basics either, far from it, I'm saying just remember they're just that, the basics to get you started safely on your journey. But unlike taking a wrong turn in the bad part of town nothing bad will happen if you step outside those basic rules, unless you do it while you're on someone else's payroll :)

Bob.

i found the books under the focal press imprint pretty damn good - especially 'lighting for tv and film'.

but i'm with bob here (well, it's a small country), know the rules before you start breaking them. i regularly take my 3 point lighting set ups apart and swap in a softbox, or whatever i happen to have to hand....

at the end of the day, a boring three point is infinitely better than a bad 'experimental'. ditto sound.

leslie

an old dog trying to learn new tricks. (yeah, just look at me thread on hd to dvd - i'm almost regretting the demise of betasp)

Corncob have you been smoking your Rittalin again

Indiana Jones and Matrix are treated as a brand and rightly so. But all the titling after that is a single type

What next you going to tell me you see dead people?

Now go to the mirror have a good look and slap yourself for wasting my time

Rittalin is a type face by the way

There is a very good movie intro the 6th day with [Arnie]

Where the producer used modern[ san seraph] brilliant use of motion graphics and text, then went to a page from Genesis bible [seraph] then back to modern [san seraph]
While maintaining the whole look and feel brilliant stuff, why? Read on.

One reason for using limited type is to establish credibility. How?

Well you are doing a docy on jet fuel where a comparison is made between two types of fuel
Change the type for either and it looks as if different standards were set for the test.

Now go deeper

In the intro you have 4 different actors but to establish credibility to the story you unify them through type one type one story
So it is not just for visual beauty but sound reasoning
So you use one type face to establish a logical cohesive plot

Imagine you are doing a docy on a couple getting married Dick & Jane now you develop the theme and you say Dick was previously married to…
WHOOOOA . What the hell are you thinking?

It’s the same with type,you develop your story change the type and run the risk of losing your audience and plot.
That is why the 6th day is brilliant they change type without losing the plot but in fact bring a piece of history 3000 years to the future with out skipping a beat.

Remember type face is the style look and feel of the text. So you might have different fonts in one type face designed for the above purpose


So now my next statement will send corncob into a state that can only be described as confused hysteria

Limiting your type to one or 2 faces on your projects is not just a rule it is a golden rule

I have had the pleasure of working with amazing old farts who have since pasted on.
In 3 months taught me more than 5 years in the National school of the Arts.
Out of respect for them and what they taught me I write this

Now i am of to the mirror have a good look and then slap myself very very hard for wasting my time with corncob

I am currently employed as a producer full time
Producing content for TV Docys, ADS, BLA BLA BLA.

Rory Cooper
Senior producer
TSOGO SUN

> 'Indiana Jones and Matrix are treated as a brand and rightly so. But all the titling after that is a single type'

How many typefaces do you see when it says 'Directed by Steven Spielberg'? How many when the closing credits to The Matrix begin to roll?

> 'So now my next statement will send corncob into a state that can only be described as confused hysteria'

On the contrary (incidentally I don't believe I'm prone to either confusion or hysteria).

> 'Limiting your type to one or 2 faces on your projects is not just a rule it is a golden rule'

One would rarely use more than two typefaces. I've said nothing to suggest otherwise.

Let's just be clear here: we are discussing the titles recommended by Siby and your statement 'dont use seriph and san seriph type at the same time on the same page thats a type rule'. Can you cite a single authority for that statement?

Incidentally, how many typefaces are used on a typical page of the Vegas 6 manual? Do they have serifs?

> 'modern[ san seraph]

'Modern' has a particular meaning when it comes to type classification. You are misusing it.
 

> 'I did read the parts of those books that were freely available. I'll probably buy some of them as typography holds a considerable interest for me

I can highly recommend James Felici's book and believe you would enjoy it.

> 'if you don't have a clue and the eye for typography then the "rule" under discussion might be a good one to adhere to'

Combining faces is more of a design than a typographical matter but I do believe that 'dont use seriph and san seriph type at the same time on the same page' is not only no 'rule', but also not good advice, even for the beginner. To quote from Robin Williams' The Non-Designer's Design Book (Third Edition - also available as half of The Non-Designer's Design & Type Books, and not a bad book ('design and typographic principles for the visual novice')):

'Don’t be a wimp [her italics]. Most effective type layouts take advantage of more than one of the contrasting possibilities. For instance, if you are combining two serif faces, each with a different structure, emphasize their differences by contrasting their form also: if one element is in roman letters, all caps, set the other in italic, lowercase. Contrast their size, too, and weight; perhaps even their direction. Take a look at the examples in this section again each one uses more than one principle of contrast.
For a wide variety of examples and ideas, take a look through any good magazine. Notice that every one of the interesting type layouts depends on the contrasts. Subheads or initial caps emphasize the contrast of size with the contrast of weight; often, there is also a contrast of structure (serif vs. sans serif) and form (caps vs. lowercase) as well.'

If you do get hold of the Felici book, do note the great subtlety of the contrasts (particularly a most effective yet almost invisible use of a contrasting sans serif (most of the book is set in Eric Gill's Perpetua)).

Incidentally, if you don't have it already and would like a most fine font family with which to experiment, Robert Slimbach's Arno Pro (amongst others) is included with InDesign CS3 (including the free trial). All thirty-two fonts together would normally cost A$415.00! You'll need a program like InDesign to use some of the OpenType features though (or Vegas' ProType Titler!).
 

Thanks, that's very helpfull to a newbie like me.
Prior to this discussion I didn't even realise that Typeface and Font were not the same thing. Just recently I'm having a bit of a baptism of fire over fonts designing digital signage in conjunction with a graphic artist.
Most recent bit of new knowledge, printers don't like / will not accept vector based fonts, so no Truetype or Opentype. The ones that aren't which are what I'm trying to use on this project seem rather iffy to even get to install under Windoz.
One of the other problems is how Vegas renders text in general and specifically into interlaced video. One reason I'm very conservative in what fonts I use is to avoid the text falling apart.

Bob.

> 'printers don't like / will not accept vector based fonts, so no Truetype or Opentype'

This can't be quite right: all fonts used in the context of printing are vector fonts. What printers do like is PostScript, so TrueType fonts and OpenType fonts with TrueType format outlines are less welcome. Perhaps this is obstacle you've encountered.

OpenType fonts can be either TrueType or PostScript 'flavored' (the curves are described in different ways). Most commercial OpenType fonts are PostScript based.

Vegas has supported PostScript fonts as well as TrueType since 4.0b (though there were circuitous ways to use them before). Windows has supported PostScript fonts since Windows 2000 so more or less any font should be usable (Multiple Master fonts - now no longer developed by Adobe anyway - are an exception (Adobe Type Manager - incompatible with Vista - is required)).

> I didn't even realise that Typeface and Font were not the same thing

The reason most people don't know this is that in practice it doesn't really matter: it's hard to imagine a situation where any great confusion could result because one term rather than the other were used.

That sounds right, some of the fonts I've tried to use do have multiple masters.
My other challenge is the double byte fonts, especially the chinese ones. The standard chinese fonts are OK but the nicer ones that use brush strokes are a no show. I've resorted to having my wife write chinese text with a brush and then scan that to get good looking chinese titles.
And now I do work with Bangalis, more font fantasy :)

Bob.

hi barleycorn

I enjoyed your last two posts thank you.

Constructive and usable info much more creative than the other crap you posted [joke]

In my experience branding, logos, labels, Corporate titles and movie titles are treated not as type or titling
When creating a logo, documentary title, you can mix you type as much as you like for ex GUESS by marciano
Is a good example
This should not be confused with titling . copy , messaging etc

To illustrate

If you went into a production meeting with Walt Disney Studios and asked for the lion king font or type face
While marching you out the back door would severely chastise you and explain that it is not a mere title or font but a brand icon
Not created with human hands but created by the victorious gods blah blah blah you get the picture

They would then beat you with the Lion king corporate manual which would be limited to 1 type face that you may use in
Creating any ads or projects surrounding the Lion king musical

So we can benefit from following these corporate giants production process. Why because it works.

So even if you are creating a video of your buddies wedding video “Bill & Jane together again”
Treat the title as a brand because it is more than a font or type face. It represents two people
Who love each blah blah blah you get the sense of it.

Finally another important lesson from the old farts I had the pleasure of working with

Pride in your work creates creative ability
Pride in your creative ability creates arrogance

arroganc is the rust that corrodes creativeness

Please I am not suggesting that any person posted here is like that
It is just a good principle to keep in mind

Rory

Ah..! So what you guys are collectively saying is that Coke-a-Cola would'nt look good in Ransom Note typeface.

Craig.