The Ivy Film Festival is the largest student-run film festival in the world. Every year, they receive hundreds of film and screenplay submissions from undergraduate and graduate students from around the world. The Festival has also featured prominent and acclaimed speakers such as Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Adrian Brody, and Oliver Stone.
In 2009 and my senior year of college, I was contacted by the festival and asked if I would do them the honor of imagining a visual theme that year’s festival. Given the popularity of festival as well as my own interest in cinema, I graciously accepted.
After learning that the keynote event to be about the difference between current Hollywood and Hollywood during the golden years, I wanted to pick a theme that could represent both eras. Keeping in mind that the marketing should also be hip, trendy, and attract a college-aged crowd, I decided on a visual campaign inspired by Saul Bass.
Saul Bass is a graphic designer stemming from the fifties who made an influential mark on the visual identity of Hollywood – particularly film title sequences. His style was very minimal yet raw and humorous. Some of his major works include title sequences for Vertigo(1958) and Man with the Golden Arm(1955), yet his work continues into the present day for films like Goodfellas(1991) and Casino(1995). Undoubtedly, his long and consistence presence in Hollywood has inspired many other film visuals such as those for Catch Me If You Can(2002) and Burn After Reading(2008).
I intensely studied Saul Bass’ use of color, typography, and minimalism in order to recreate the feel of his title sequences while creating my designs from scratch. Another interesting concept I tried in some of the posters was to capture the motion of title-sequences in a single shot (see the posters for “Getting it Written” and “Student Film Screenings”).
I met regularly with the festival director and publicity team to make sure they were satisfied with my work. There were definitely times when my design sense would conflict with what they wanted, but we woud also discuss through our problems and pick the solution that would create the most effective advertisement campaign. After weeks of strenuous sketching, designing, and meetings (also in midst of writing my senior thesis), I created a set of 4 posters, a festival t-shirt, and other publicity items for the Ivy Film Festival. I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment when everyone in the festival told me how excited they were with my work and, especially, when I received a personal complement from the CEO of Paramount.
