All language subtitles for Tom Kan The Art of the Titles

My interest in title design started
when I was a teenager

out of a love
of the graphic design of film titles.

Film posters led me there.

Title design came later.

I think my first love was simply
reproducing the titles from posters.

The textures.

The designs of some of the film titles
were sublime.

Some of them made a big impression.

When you look at the typography
of The Exorcist

or Star Wars designed by Dan Perri,

you realise that these are logos.

They're elaborate.
You don't realise.

They're almost like logos
for rock bands,

logos for music bands,
and I loved to copy them.

The Star Wars logo was probably
one of the first ones I copied,

just as I might have copied
the Iron Maiden logo in the 1980s.

So that's what led me
to graphic design.

Then, at the end of the 1980s,
I took a detour into graffiti,

but that increased my passion
for letters and lettering

and made me want
to study graphic design,

so it became a voyage of discovery.

Lots of people talk to me
about my Japanese roots.

It's a nation that is into graphics,
so why not?

But copying a logo
on your rucksack or whatever

is the true essence of design.

And pop culture played an important role
in my research.

When you're a teenager,
you see films you like.

You identify with them,
so you inevitably want to copy things.

The typefaces 'm Apocalypse Now
and Rambo...

There was a whole period,
I don't know why,

perhaps it was post-Vietnam,
but there were lots of things like that.

Then, where my parents live,
there's a big graphics culture.

Packaging. In Japan
there is a packaging culture

and that has definitely influenced me
since my childhood.

People know me
for my work on title design,

but I've worked a lot
with electronic music,

so I have cinema influences
but I've done a lot of techno design, too.

And that techno design
comes from sweet packets

and all the Japanese packaging
I saw when I was a kid

which... which inspired me.

Food packaging was
a source of inspiration.

Sweets, for instance.
They're pop, they're fresh.

They're perfect for techno.

I still photograph them.

There are games and toys.

The packaging for electronic games
and toys, anything to do with robots,

is incredible.

The Gundam series, for instance.

It's less useful in films,

but for a period it helped me
design flyers for electronic music,

for instance during the '90s
for French Touch bands.

I collaborated with Daft Punk
on Burnin'.

They asked me to create a logo
that was like a film title.

So I created a logo
like you see in the cinema.

I designed the album cover
as if it was a videodisc.

Young people won't know
what a videodisc is.

It's a 32cm LaserDisc

which you have to turn over
after 45 minutes,

but it allowed you
to watch good-quality films in PAL,

which is 576 by 768.

So the picture wasn't very big,
but it was a must-have.

The colour plays
just as important a role as the font.

There are colours
that recur frequently in film titles.

There's also the genre.

The colour and typeface
tell you what the genre is.

A white logo doesn't have the impact
of a red logo on a dark background.

There are lots of other things, too.
I like things to be different.

For example, I was struck
by the visuals for Annette.

The titles are green.

I suddenly thought,
"That's a good idea."

But those are things
you have to work on.

It continues to surprise you.

It sparks new things,
new options to explore.

I like to think about colour
in my approach to my design.

When it comes to associations of colour
and fonts in title design,

you could say it's like music.

You can compose different things,

but some registers seem
to work better than others.

Technically, it's our role,

when it comes to the poster
and title design,

to create an impact.

It has evolved.
It's no longer just illustration.

It goes beyond that.
It's almost branding.

It encapsulates the film.

So thrillers, horror movies, fantasy films
all call for certain colours.

Obviously, you can suggest
new associations.

You have to navigate
between the artistry and the marketing.

You've got both those things.

You might have one title on your film
and different title on the poster.

They perform different functions.

For inexorable
by Fabrice du Welz

I used a typography
that works extremely well for the film.

It's red, the letters are close together,
it fits the 2.35 format.

But will it be legible on the poster?

"Inexorable" is a very long word.

It might not work the same way.

The poster designer said to me,

"I might use this font
or I might suggest another one."

So they can be different.

The poster must make a big impact

whereas in the cinema
you have plenty of time to read the title.

The difference between the poster
and the credits

is obvious in Climax,
for example.

I finished the end credits

with the main title at the end
on a white background

when the girl
puts LSD drops in her eyes,

but the poster is completely different.

Gaspar's poster designer,
Laurent Lufroy,

had time to work on the Climax logo
and add a border

whereas we'd already finished
the post-production.

So, sometimes the logo on the poster
is different to the logo on the film

and sometimes
we work together on it.

For example, with Star Wars

you can see that the logo
is so good, so striking,

that it works for the film
and for the poster.

I think that's a mark of success.

I worked on various projects
with the Wachowskis,

starting with The Matrix 2 and 3.

It was done American-style,
so we worked in stages.

Supervisors delegated the work to different
post-production houses around the world

and in France it was BUF Compagnie
who got the contract

and I got the chance
to work on the concept boards

which are inspiration boards,

mood boards to inspire everyone
working on the special effects.

The designs were approved.
It was pure design.

So, you had the design
and people tried to reproduce it in 3D.

It was great.

As well as the graphics,

since I'd directed a number of videos
and taken lots of photographs,

I combined all that

and we took the notion of bullet time
one stage further.

To start with it was simple,
it was circular.

Bullet time was discovered
by Pierre Buffin long before The Matrix.

They couldn't collaborate,

so the Americans developed bullet time
on The Matrix 1,

and I was interested in developing it
on Matrix2 and 3 with Pierre.

Since I had experience
of photography and videos,

I suggested moving 360 degrees
around the subjects.

In those days it was very costly
because the films had to be processed,

but Pierre Buffin had already come up
with the idea of creating characters,

modelling them, remapping them,
and creating 360-degree movement.

Artistic developments
call for technological advances.

What's interesting
with a mood board

is that people work
on programming the software

to reproduce the mood board.

Technological advances help
develop the artistic vision, too,

because, when the morphing started,
everyone got inspired

which inspired the creation of images.

So the two go hand in hand.

I was asked by BUF Compagnie
to design logos for Speed Racer.

That was obviously set design.

It was part of the film set.

There were lots of things
on the racing circuit and in the city.

There were cameos,

for instance the names of my daughter
and the supervisor's kids,

so lots of little references.

Next, with the Wachowskis,
I worked on Cloud Atlas

which was co-directed
by Tom Tykwer.

It's a sublime film.

They phoned me way ahead
of the project.

The supervisor contacted me
via Method Studios in Los Angeles.

And we had next to nothing.

It was like for Matrix.
I had ten lines.

Ten lines about the part set in Korea
directed by the Wachowskis.

I bought the book and read it
to find out what it was about.

I didn't know it
and I discovered this language

which he attributes
to future generations in South Korea.

And he phoned me
to work on the neon signs

and lots of other things.

In the end it was quite fulfilling

because you discover another world
and you're inventing and creating things.

I think that was a year and a half
before the shoot.

And that's where the creative force,
the strike force, differs in America.

They have the opportunity
to launch things much more quickly.

They're more open to suggestions.

Nowadays this job
is about anticipation.

You've got the mood boards
for the artistic direction.

I didn't intervene during post-production,
I intervened before the shoot.

And Mathieu Kassovitz
had that intelligence

when we worked together
on Babylon A.D.

We hadn't started shooting,

but he asked me to invent fake adverts
and to imagine things.

It was the same brief.
We had this book.

And we had to invent stuff.
What will the future look like?

In 75 years, in 100 years,
so not too far away.

We could draw and write
and film and create mood boards,

and that was really interesting,
because they used our ideas.

They asked several people
around the world

and brought all these ideas together
to forge something new.

It was a really great job.

I first met Gaspar
through Pierre Buffin.

Pierre Buffin was working
on Enter the Void.

I had worked with him
on Matrix and Speed Racer

and he said,
"We're working on Enter the Void.

"We need a talented graphic designer

"who speaks French, English
and Japanese.

"You're the only one in Paris
who fits the bill."

So there was a humorous note.

Then he said,
"We don't have a big budget.

"L'll give you his phone number,
so you can call him."

So I had Gaspar's number in my pocket
and I thought, "I'll arrange a meeting."

And the first time I met Gaspar
he asked if I wanted a drink.

I said I'd like a fizzy orange drink

and he said, "OK, I'll get it."

And for the next ten minutes
I was left alone at reception.

I thought, "He's gone back to work
and forgotten about me."

And after ten minutes Gaspar came back
with bags of provisions

for his whole crew
containing drinks and snacks.

And I thought, "This is a director
who takes care of people."

It aroused my curiosity.

We went on to watch a cut
lasting 2 hours 36 minutes.

He showed me his film
and when we went into the room,

there were posters up,

A4-sized ones.

Gaspar is a fan of film posters.

And I found myself looking at a wall
covered in different styes of graphics.

He had them all up on the wall
in his edit suite.

There were these two parallel worlds.

That's when I realised he was someone
who liked typography.

We started talking
and he already had an idea

for Enter the Void

which involved working
with lots of different styles

as if lots of different film titles
all collided in the credits.

We were in an edit suite.
It was a normal-sized screen.

A bit bigger than normal, obviously,
because it was an edit suite.

And I had no idea
what I was about to see.

So, I sat down
and the curtains were drawn

and I embarked on a journey
into the unknown.

I knew Gaspar's previous film
which was Irreversible.

I had never seen anything else

or heard anything
about Enter the Void,

so I dived into the opening sequence
of the film with...

There was already this idea
of quickfire sequences at the start.

I think he had even edited the film titles
to make them flash on and off.

We were immediately plunged
into Japan's night life,

which I am familiar with
so I could almost smell the streets,

and then we saw this sister
and her brother

who are in this apartment chatting,
and I started following them.

It's a film you dive into.

To start with, you're with people.

You follow them with a normal camera.

But obviously,
with the death of the brother,

you suddenly get
a different camera angle

and you start travelling around Tokyo,
following this character.

Another thing I found interesting
was his study of time.

It's a long film.

There are lengthy parts,
but they're like safety valves.

You go from one chapter to the next.

There were lengthy passages,
but they were transitions

and Gaspar was still studying them.

The editing happens organically.

He tries out lots of things.

He watches it carefully,

paying attention to everything.

He has a technical and artistic eye
on the framing and lots of other things,

but his storytelling
plunges you into something.

I don't remember which project it was,

but there was an overly long passage.

And I think the whole crew felt it.

And Gaspar said, "lt's deliberate.

"If I cut it short,
this would be an action film.

"L've left it long so you've got time
to reflect on the character's psychology."

In terms of the rhythm,

when you work with Gaspar
on the credits,

his editor plays a very important role.

He hones everything
to do with the timing.

What makes Gaspar's credits
so successful

is the design
but also the rhythm and music.

Here the design
hasn't been done yet.

It's still white.

But the titles are already flashing
and vibrating.

It was a way of testing
the minimum reading speed.

We started with a white typeface

to see if it could be read,
if it had the desired effect.

Then we gradually started adding colour.

But I think this is something I produced.

It convinced us
we were on the right path.

This was my vision of the world

and we gradually cleaned up
all the designs.

There are eight titles a second.

So it was a huge amount of work.

But it's what makes these credits
so successful.

This part doesn't exist anymore
in the final version.

But I had fun
producing all these inter-images.

The inter-images don't overlap.

I intentionally superimposed
two typefaces

to give the impression that they overlap,
but there are shot cuts.

The same here.
"Ed Spear" changed later.

I developed it frame by frame,

but that made it too sophisticated.

Gaspar likes things to be quite crude.

Whenever it got too sophisticated
and too narrative,

for example there were names
which were almost flowering,

those things were cut.

And even though
he gives us carte blanche,

there are things he doesn't use
or doesn't want us to use,

because that's his taste and I get that.

I think he likes to control
the look of his film

and his work in general.

I was interested in the concept of that.

The interleaves are still in print.

The interleaves are pieces of paper

passed through the rotary press
a few times to clean them.

The typefaces
are randomly superimposed

and you get fantastic results.

The idea was
that these superimpositions

were different worlds
and personalities colliding.

It's a good exercise in style.

The basis of this work,

even though we can only see
what remains today,

is that, since Gaspar is a fan
of film posters,

my idea was to present him

with different typefaces,
but not just any.

The typefaces featured here
are ones he likes

because they have already
been used in film posters

or else they evoke a style of film.

The first time I presented him
with my choice of typeface for his film,

I divided them up into decades:

'30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s,

and into film genres:

science fiction,
detective, blaxploitation,

and then musical genres.

Gaspar listens to lots of music,
so all the musical genres.

I like album covers
because I come from that world.

I have designed a lot of album covers
for electronic music and other genres.

That gave us a playing field
and some common ground

and then we started exploring colours.

Gaspar always puts the credits,
which are usually at the end of a film,

at the start.

I gathered
from the discussions we had

that it's to pay tribute
to the crew he's been working with

so people can't ignore
the end credits

and walk out of the cinema.

It was a good way to thank his crew.

This is a more advanced version.

Most of the designs are there.

That's the final version of the music, too.

The electrophotography
hasn't been done yet

by Thorsten Fleisch.

He cut the letters out of metal

and put them straight
onto photosensitive paper,

passing a current through them
which generated electric arcs

around the typeface,
and that's what stays with you.

As for the typeface,

I presented him
with fairly typical fonts,

with a series of titles

whose design
evoked something.

I deliberately made them
black and white.

For example, "Broadway" is like
the neon sign for Broadway.

The font for "Barbares" is recognisable
from Conan the Barbarian.

The word "Technicolor"
harks back to the 1950s.

"Electro Games" evokes
the '80s and '70s.

This allowed him to find
the graphic references that spoke to him,

because this was more than graphics,
it was cinema.

Even if it's not the original title,

that's what that font
conjures up for me.

So, I suggested
a number of different typefaces

so he could see what worked.

Even if it wasn't exactly that,

it could suddenly project him
into another world,

and that helped him figure out
the posters, too.

These plates were much bigger.

And eventually we ended up...

...with the same layout.

These are the working plates
that are the start of something.

We used this for Paz de la Huerta

and that's how we started
choosing a typeface for people.

What's important
about this approach,

to explain the deluge
of different typefaces,

is that he attaches
a lot of importance to people.

I think he's someone
who likes working in a team,

who listens to others.

But we chose the typeface,
which is interesting,

according to the people
we were working with.

The typefaces Gaspar and I chose,

as well as conveying different styles

also matched the personality
of the members of the cast and crew.

It was literally a tribute to people.

We'd be looking at a typeface

and Gaspar would say,
"Use that for so-and-so."

When he shot Climax,
I turned up with my camera

and took some photographs on set.

And people who'd known him
much longer than I had said,

"Gaspar is letting you take photos?"
They knew who I was.

After two days they said,
"Have you experienced any problems?"

I said, "No. They're souvenir shots."

"You're lucky because Gaspar
doesn't usually tolerate that."

So after two or three days
I got worried.

I went to see Gaspar and said,
"Do you mind me taking photos?"

He said, "Not at all. Have fun."

I was granted that privilege

and I spent two weeks
taking photos non-stop.

I have thousands of photos.

The same thing happened
for Lux /Eterna.

I heard he was filming.

I asked if I could come on set
and he said, "Feel free."

I turned up with my case
and took photographs.

And after a while,
he's so spontaneous with people

that he said,
"Go and try on a few clothes."

So I got changed.
A costume was approved.

And then he said,
"Do some directing."

He gave me a camera
and said, "That's Camera B.

"Take some shots, whatever you like."

We decided to do things differently
and not to stick to 45 degrees.

I said, "I'll cover
some different camera angles."

And we agreed that I could work
at a bit more than 45 degrees

and take shots of couples
and stalk people.

That was interesting.

I put myself in Gaspar's shoes
and decided to stalk people

level with their shoulders,
behind their heads.

I had fun with it.

And I discovered he'd used these images
to create the split screen.

It's interesting because he talked
about a split screen in Lux /Eterna.

It inspired the poster.

And in Vortex
he took the idea much further.

I love the idea of a split screen,
of different, diverging points of view.

In Vortex they're not diverging,

but you get a sense of seeing
two lives co-existing under one roof.

Lux /Eterna is edited more classically
with shot/reverse shot sequences.

These split screens reminded me
of the little-known photographic work

of David Hockney, a painter
much better known for his watercolours

than for his Polaroids.

And he had this vision
of developing an image

and creating different versions
of the same scene,

taking a Polaroid of them
and sticking them next to one other.

It offers a new way
of interpreting the scene,

a different viewpoint.

It's almost as if you see
the husband and wife separately.

They live together,
but they are separated by the frame,

and I found that extremely interesting.

Gaspar, to my mind,

is someone who cultivates
the mystery of work.

I think he works very hard.

I see him as someone
who thinks a lot about what he does.

Nothing is accidental.

On set, for example,
the way I saw him work...

He obviously leads his crew.

There is no work schedule

like with a traditional shoot
when you know who's doing what when.

He really leads the dance.
You sense he's thought it all through.

He might improvise

or he might ask people
to re-enact what he has in mind.

That's what's so interesting about it,
and it's organic.

A regular crew that isn't used
to working with Gaspar might struggle.

First assistant Claire Corbetta
worked on two films with Gaspar,

Climax and Lux /Eterna,
I don't know if there were others.

I met her as a first assistant director
and producer of commercials.

I think those people have strong nerves

and they let Gaspar do things his way.

It might run a bit late,

but that delay is good because
it gives you time to prepare and reflect,

and what he does is technically complex.

There are crane movements

and lots of other things.

It demands a huge amount
of preparation,

even before the actors come on set,

because you have to rehearse
the camera positions.

For example, for the choreography
for Climax,

and I was only at the shoot,
not at rehearsals,

but there was
some phenomenal crane work.

When you're in the audience,
you're not necessarily aware

of the technical complications,
and so much the better.

Fluid camera movements require
a huge number of rehearsals.

There are crane movements
you're not aware of when you watch,

but they take ages to set up.

What's interesting about Climax
is that he worked without any limitations.

He didn't care what people thought.

Even when we sensed
that he was really torn,

he just went for it and saw it through,
thinking, "Never mind, I'm doing it."

It's about girls and drugs again,
but there are other subjects.

I got to read the synopsis
he sent to funding bodies.

What's interesting is,
condensed onto one sheet of A4,

I saw what motivated him
in this project.

And it was the group reaction.

What happens in a group
when you accuse someone and lash out?

There's a burst of aggression
which triggers a group reaction

which you sense in the film.

And, when I was on the outside,

I didn't realise
directors worked in that way.

I thought they wrote stories
that unfold

with scenes, sequences
and characters.

But for him
that thread is the driving force

and he directs all his actors

to feel that same desire for revenge,

to be aggressive
and to accuse others.

He focuses on the complexity
of human relationships.

It might be a brother and a sister,

a man who is desperate
to get revenge for his wife's rape,

a group of dancers,
one of whom is accused

and no one knows who did it
so they all go mad.

And that's what you find
in Lux /Eterna, too.

There's this director,
played by Beatrice Dalle,

who is very fulfilled in her job,

but then things start
getting complicated

she becomes a victim
of what happens next.

You've got people's reaction
and her reaction.

That tiny thread is the driving force
which he teases out and unravels,

and that's what makes his films
so powerful.

We all relate to it and identify with it,
asking ourselves

how we would react
in the same situation.

For Lux /Eterna,
Gaspar's editor, Jerome Pesnel,

who did the credits for Enter the Void,

did all the RGB work.

All I could see was first names

so Gaspar said,
"Let's make columns."

I love the justification of those columns.

They're a bit too perfect,
in a very aggressive, stroboscopic way.

For people who don't know RGB,

it stands for red, green, blue.

If you flash them up
in quick succession

you get white.

Here he tried to speed up the flashes

until the retina could only see white.

He was disappointed
more people didn't feel sick

at the screening at Cannes,
or so he said.

A few people walked out, but that was it.

But he was disappointed.
He thought more people would feel sick.

What made him laugh,
and he still does this,

was using,
for the producers' names,

a big, elaborate,
Hollywood-style typeface.

In Climax he took it one step further
and used a golden typeface.

Here the white typeface
has been replaced with the first designs.

This isn't the final, golden rendering
you see in the film,

but still, a choice of typeface
has been made.

There are a few effects,
a bit of relief.

Some of the designs inevitably changed
during the process.

But it allowed us to see
which were similar,

whether they could be read,
what impact they had.

This is a first draft
of the credits for the crew.

Here I've got a pictogram,
a first treatment.

This isn't the final typeface
for these people.

These are close,
but certain things were changed.

All the names were displayed
in a really clean way

apart from his
which is shown in tarnished gold.

I think what it provoked...

...wasn't what Gaspar intended.

There were some doubts
around this project.

With this type of detail
we can see that Gaspar...

...wasn't sure, I think,
how the film would be received.

So he threw himself
into the lions' den.

Here, for example, we see

the producers' names
in clean gold letters.

And he was also a producer,
a co-producer,

but he tarnished his own name

because he didn't want
to put himself on a par with them.

This has been developed.

For example, the credit for the gaffer
was much simpler before,

but here I've added a special effect

to move it on a stage.

And when you look at the credits again,

you can see how they've changed.

You can see at the end of the credits,
after all the heads of department,

Gaspar's name appear
alongside this fluffy icon.

I think that's part of the mystery
of Gaspar's creation.

He came up with the idea.

I think his idea was
to have a little demon next to his name.

He introduced me
to this Icelandic artist

who creates installations
based on soft toys,

and she created this smiley,

but we went through
lots of different types of effect.

For instance, this demonic smiley.

But it didn't fit
so in the end he decided

to contact this contemporary artist
to purchase the rights for this demon.

And once again, I think it shows
how Gaspar sees his work.

There's always something provocative,

but here there's something "cute", too,
in inverted commas.

At every screening
of the credits and the film,

people react to this last credit.

You hear people laughing
in the cinema and reacting.

I think it shows he's someone
who knows how to play with emotions

during the production of his films.

It's a real roller-coaster.

He builds tension, provides relief,
makes people laugh, brings them down.

He's really quite skilled at that.

That's pure Gaspar.

That's his style of graphics.

That's his choice of typeface.

That's what he wants to say,
presented in a way...

BEING IS A FLEETING ILLUSION

...that is his own.

That's where his vision resembles
that of a poster designer.

It's very direct.

Sometimes he's in favour
of scaling back,

but he's more in favour of things
that are quite solid, stable,

and constructed.

You can't see the detail here,

but a graphic designer
will compare the spaces

between the lines and the words,

and he gets the spacing
between letters right by eye

rather than mechanically.

He pays a lot of attention to that.

There are details you notice.

Some details are visible and staged.

For example, when Psyche puts
the LSD drops on her bed

you see book covers
which we redid completely

to make the word "LSD" more of a visual
so it would be visible on screen.

We touched up lots of things,
now that I look at it.

Those are all fakes. It's crazy.

Look. That wasn't even filmed.
That's a photo we took.

Then I modified the titles.

You can see us in the picture.

We did an installation.

Gaspar wanted to show...

...the start of the film
in a TV set.

What does dance mean to you?

It means everything to me.

Dance means everything to me.

It's all I have.

Nothing is left to chance.

When you look at all the book titles,

they were all brought by Gaspar.

The videos, too.

Gary Numan was one of the artists
on the original soundtrack.

We had two sacks full of them.

Gaspar manages the post-production
as well as the shoot.

Demands are made

and things are filmed,

and there's always a gap.

After the editing,
there's a real surplus value.

What's extraordinary
about talking to Gaspar

is that you suddenly realise
that behind all his work

is someone who thinks a lot.

He's very cultured.

He has mastered the art
of provocation.

He's very aware of what he's making
and doing and saying.

He very self-protective.

So it's really interesting
to get to spend that time with him

and it's a real privilege

to be able to see him
behaving in a more natural way.

When I say I know Gaspar well,

that can provoke a strange reaction
in people.

They wonder how we can get along.

And I think it's because
we respect one another's work.

And when we discuss typefaces,
we see eye to eye.

That forges a relationship.

And my conversations with Gaspar

are always interesting.

He introduces me to things,

to a culture that I don't know,

and I gain a lot from knowing him.

I'm glad I met Gaspar.