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By
BOB
ALLEN
SAUL BASS designed the main and credit titles for ‘‘Mad World.”
BILL MELENDEZ of Playhouse Pictures, Hollywood, developed the animation style, based on Saul Bass' storyboard.
ALLEN CHILDS, animation cameraman for Playhouse Pictures, photographed the final artwork resulting from Saul Bass's design and Bill Melendez’s animation planning.
Designing And Producing The Credit Titles For "It s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"
HHhe critique was in. The rough draft of the pencil drawing test for the animated title of “It’s a Mad. Mad, Mad, Mad World" had passed the first hurdle.
Saul Bass, the creator and designer of the main titles of the picture, was pleased with the progress of this “prob¬ lem child.” So were Bill Melendez, of Playhouse Pictures, the producer of the first Cinerama wide-screen title in color and animation, and Ernest Gold, the musical director, who would write the musical accompaniment.
“We’re in good shape,” said Melen¬ dez, after conferring with designer
Bass. “Now it’s just a matter of hard work.”
Designing this wide-screen animated color title was a problem solved by Bass. Producing the title was now the problem of Playhouse Pictures. From the drawing board to the final snip by film editor Hugh Kelley there would be plenty of hard work to do.
Working with a broader field of vi¬ sion makes wide film production ob¬ viously more critical. Generally, it takes 10 to 12 weeks to produce an animated motion picture title because of the countless number of drawings required of the animators.
For “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” it meant approximately 5,000 separate drawings had to be created before Playhouse Pictures was ready for the final filming. Each drawing had to be hand-transferred by the inkand-paint department to elongated wide screen cells.
Thus, in working with this first in wide-screen animation, an extra 30 days was necessary for production ex¬ perimentation and solving the many complex problems that arose.
After viewing the first rough pencil test, Bass outlined the changes brought about because of the change of per
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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER, DECEMBER, 1963