OPENING UP
Remember the classic titles from the original Superman film, with each line coming at you from the depths of space leaving a laser like three-dimensional trail? Kyle Cooper, in respect to those original titles, reinterpreted the idea for the 21st Century update Superman Returns and, by capitalising on new technologies, took us round planets and into solar systems on a one man solo flight through space. Watching the sequence reminds me fondly of all the times I’d creep downstairs as a child before anyone was up, slip the dusty Superman VHS into the recorder, and sit there, entranced by the story I knew almost better than my own name. And don’t pretend all you guys didn’t do the same...
It’s this kind of emotional resonance that Cooper, the man behind such legendary title sequences as Donnie Brasco and David Fincher’s Seven, aims for in all his work, and it’s the reason his new company, Prologue Films, has that name: for Cooper, the film titles are not simply a means to deliver information, but the first scene of the story at large - a prologue, much like Stephen Frankfurt’s eerie sequence for To Kill a Mockingbird (see below), a piece of work that continues to influence Cooper even today:
“Achieving that poetic intimacy and melancholy, that’s very difficult,” he recently told Eye Magazine. “But the thing is, we have a tremendous platform, yet what are doing with it? There’s something redeeming about always doing the best you can. Doing something positive that advances other kinds of messages and doesn’t just entertain the culture - it does matter.”
Cooper won’t ever underestimate the significance of good design in film.
