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Typography and Motion Graphics The ‘Reading- Image’

Michael Betancourt

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First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

The right of Michael Betancourt to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data [CIP data]

ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 02928- 9 (hbk) ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 02930- 2 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman by Out of House Publishing

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Motion Typography

Formal aesthetic criteria provide only a partial understanding of how movement and typography interact; the present study emerges from the question, “How is typography in motion graphics different from graphic design?” Refl ecting on this ontological question leads to a con- sideration of the role that kinesis (movement on- screen) has for typ- ography and graphic elements as a corollary to their lexical structure. Animated typography creates a profusion of new meanings linked to its semiosis, which the ‘reading- image’ identifi es as a dramatization of the recognition process being visualized on- screen (what has been described as an affect 1 of Schriftfi lme [ textfi lm ] 2 — motion pictures in which text becomes image- in- motion). This excess to lexical meaning complements the familiar role of written language: movement is an enunciative action the audience interprets fl uently based on their past experiences with static and motion typography, and which refl ects their established lexical and interpretive profi ciency with rendering visual perceptions into the categories of graphics, imagery, and typography.

Specifi c to motion graphics, if not a necessary and suffi cient condi- tion of its defi nition, motion typography is a prominent and common feature. 3 Although the formal morphology and structure of static design appears in the various uses and applications of on- screen typo/ graphics, this convergence is a symptom of the challenges it offers for static design. Motion graphics are not just graphic design plus anima- tion. 4 Instead, motion graphics are primarily concerned with the new semiosis that structured time offers to design, arrangement, and pres- entation on- screen. The differences that actual, literal time and motion make for design are, ultimately, conclusive.

Contemporary digital animation software generates a broad spec- trum of animations for typography, including the shape- changing of individual letterforms in animorphs, as well as the visual effects (VFX) compositing of typography within live action footage. 5 Books on the production techniques for motion typography reveal a consistent

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Motion Typography 3

approach to the dynamics offered by animation. The aesthetics and traditions established by earlier technologies remain apparent in the self- similarity of all motion typography, whatever their mode of pro- duction: as the technical restraints on animated typography have gradually vanished with the invention of newer, more precise, and cost- effective technologies, the same processes and interpretive engagements remain, despite the changes. The ‘reading- image’ emerges from this history in three variations that are defi ned by different, discrete roles for kinesis — time and movement within the visual composition of the screen. Understanding motion typography through this set of closely knit theoretical dimensions reveals kinetic action , graphic expression , and chronic progression as distinct modes linked to specifi c engagements with on- screen motion.

Although motion typography appears in advertising fi lms, TV commercials, interactive software, web page designs and brief logo animations, “bumpers” or idents used in broadcasting (in addition to title sequences), all these examples of animated typography are not uni- formly available for critical consideration. The proliferation of kinetic media— computer screens, televisions, billboards, and even e- books— testifi es to the vastly lowered production costs for historically expensive, highly complex, and labor- intensive animation processes; however, even the most expensive animations and compositing are typically ephem- eral, neither designed to be memorable nor much remembered. Unlike other kinds of motion picture, such as feature fi lms, motion graphics tend to disappear as quickly as their topicality and novelty fade: this aspect of motion typography complicates simple research activities— i.e. collection — beyond its familiar appearance in title sequences. Since there are far more instances of motion typography in use than appear in title designs, the examples in this analysis were drawn from a wide range of sources in video art, experimental fi lm, and commercial title sequences— not because of any particular priority, but because the works discussed have remained readily accessible over time. This issue of access coupled with their role as exemplars of “type” justifi es the selections based on their utility for identifying the principles under consideration. Special consideration was given to designs made before digital animation technology was available, thus revealing the independ- ence of the ‘reading- image’ from digital processing and technology. Carefully curating this limited, archival approach gives the resulting analysis a breadth beyond simply a consideration of the “hot” designs of the contemporary moment; thus, the selection refl ects the capacity of each example to demonstrate the historical scope developed from a much broader analysis of the ‘reading- image’ than what is presented herein. This discussion is summative. These selections illustrate how motion graphics in the United States developed in the network of

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Figure 0.1 “The Tyger” from Songs of Experience by William Blake (1794)

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Motion Typography 5

connections between Modernism, motion typography, and the histor- ical abstract fi lm as they became commercial, on- screen design.

Beyond mere accessibility, one of the fundamental conceptual barriers to approaching motion typography is its prosaic nature and banality, as graphic designer and theorist Johanna Drucker noted in “What is a Word’s Body?” Because print and publishing are not considered “Art” by art history, these products of industrial manufac- ture have a long history of rejection by and within the art world, with graphic design and typography fi guring prominently in that ellipsis of critico- theoretical inattention. Being rejected as kitsch makes consider- ations of static and motion typography rare in the critical theories of semiotics and philosophy:

In the twentieth century, mainstream philosophy famously takes what is referred to as “the linguistic turn” […] but shockingly, totally absent from those accounts is any attention to the visual or material properties of language. No matter where one looks in the texts of Frege, Carnap, Wittgenstein, or Saussure, the materi- ality, and in particular the visual quality of written language goes unmentioned. 6

In this essay on the form of words in writing , Drucker observes that typ- ography is an omission, largely absent from semiotics and art history. The approach in graphic design tends towards a formalist taxonomy, creating a misperception of theoretical engagement by confusing the extensive heuristics (‘design theory’) for type arrangement with the- ories about or of arrangement. 7 In semiotic theory, text and typography is commonly assumed as a ‘given,’ accepted and discussed without a careful consideration of its own, peculiar dynamics. Semiotician Roman Jakobson is typical. He has written about poetic language and the problems of its interpretation, and provides extensive formal consider- ations of poet- painters such as William Blake [ Figure 0.1 ]. But in all his careful and detailed analysis, he does not address their visuality— the imagistic dimensions of the compositions, the placement of the text in correspondence to the picture, or the material form of the hand- lettering (failing to even note that it is hand- lettering). 8 Considering the lineage of design in European visual culture presents conceptual problems for art history, precisely ignoring the “visual or material properties of lan- guage.” These refusals of visuality in the semiotics of language and text, like the denial of typography as a domain for consideration, are endemic to serious philosophical and art historical analysis that would otherwise support and might 9 already have proposed the ‘reading- image.’

Typography is under- theorized. The great irony of the critical her- meneutics presented by cinema semiotics, such as the work of Christian

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6 Motion Typography

Metz, is this same lack of consideration for text- on- screen, 10 with no sig- nifi cant engagement with typography or the specifi cs of its use in motion pictures. His study Impersonal Enunciation, or the Place of Film only addresses text- on- screen in terms of its narrative function , as “Written Modes of Address”: text is either a relay of dialogue, what he terms “diagetical,” or is more specifi cally expository, what he calls “explana- tory titles” 11 that offer specifi c methods to address the viewers such as subtitles or intertitles (i.e. a title card stating “Meanwhile”). They act as narration for and within a narrative construct, but the formal and visual dimensions of the typography never make an appearance in this analysis. Metz is typical in understanding cinema only in terms of its narrative function : this approach is a common feature of its historical explica- tion. Terry Ramsaye’s early history of fi lm, A Million and One Nights (1924), offered a specifi c conception tied explicitly to narrative forms. 12 This framework implicitly continued in the French historical account by Maurice Bard è che and Robert Brasillach, The History of Motion Pictures (1938), 13 and American author Lewis Jacobs’s two editions of The Rise of the American Film (1939/ 1948) serve to demonstrate and affi rm the con- sistency of this equation, cinema=narrative , 14 that makes considerations of typography rare and unusual for fi lm history and cinema semiotics.

The ‘reading- image’ is tangential to these narrative and narrational concerns. Instead of being oriented towards the fi ctive presentations on- screen, it concerns the interpretive play and engagement of lexicality that is modeled in the animation- presentation itself. Metz’s concerns, which align textuality with its metaphoric role as a descriptor for imagery as is typical for considerations of text in cinema, or in the interpretive effects of narrative. 15 The ‘reading- image’ describes a trans- lation of thought processes into the presentational dynamics of anima- tion, but with only a few categorical exceptions (most apparent in the title sequences of commercial cinema that function as peritexts— those designs linked to and simultaneously independent of the narrative) motion graphics containing animated type are not generally retained or critically appraised, masking this development from historical identifi cation. Considerations of typography in these terms consti- tute a lacuna in cinema semiotics, comparable to the typical equation cinema=narrative that justifi es ignoring how both avant- garde media and motion graphics employ typography. The ‘reading- image’ has been ignored primarily because motion typography has not received appro- priate critical attention. Metz only notes the role of design for the signi- fi cation of text- on- screen in passing:

We should also take into account how some titles play with typog- raphy, font size, the arrangement of words inside the frame, and so on. These unexpected variations both reinforce and modulate the

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Motion Typography 7

effect of the address insofar as they pointedly attract the gaze and present themselves as enunciative intrusions. 16

His analysis folds these dynamics into his already established narrative concerns as accentuations; the “enunciative intrusion” conceives the text as only an interruption of the narrative progression, a violation of the diegetic space on- screen. There is no consideration of how these dynamics might work beyond narrative function , neither what their organ- ization might resemble, nor the distinctions between static and motion type— which he does not address or even mention. Design as a specifi c enunciation in itself offers an excess to the familiar lexical approaches of written and spoken language, functioning as a contributing element in the presentation of the text, but without the predetermined index of established meanings that enables language to function. 17 Its neglect is logical given the understanding of cinema=narrative which places typ- ography outside the realm of consideration, even if it comprises a major lacuna in existing semiotic theory for motion pictures.

A History of Formalist Approaches

Typography is of great concern to graphic design, which has exten- sively discussed and considered formal issues of arrangement such as size, leading, or tracking/ kerning that inform the higher- level, yet still formal, concerns of legibility and the impacts of layout and placement on the static page. Technical issues of typesetting that inform the visual hierarchy in design are not the same as theoretical and critical appraisals leading to general principles. The most common approach to these formal questions of placement and the capacity of text to support lexical engagement is precisely the Modernist heritage that leads histor- ical graphic design to invisibly prioritize formalist concerns, a dimen- sion more readily and easily grasped and addressed in ‘design theory’ than the abstract and philosophical dimensions which inform semiosis, leading to a confusion of formal protocols with semiotic theory. This formalist bias defi nes the parameters of design theory for typography; the graphic designers themselves resist theorizing typography, refl ecting this confusion of heuristic and hermeneutic theory. 18 Their refusal demonstrates what semiotician Umberto Eco identifi ed in A Theory of Semiotics as indicative of “ text- oriented culture” (a procedure reifi ed in formalist approaches to design) that employs specifi c ‘models’ to emu- late, rather than developing a general set of theoretical protocols:

There are cultures governed by a system of rules and there are cultures governed by a repertoire of texts imposing models of behavior. In the former category texts are generated by

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8 Motion Typography

combinations of discrete units and are judged correct or incorrect according to their conformity to the combinational rules; in the latter category society directly generates texts, these constituting macro- units from which rules could eventually be inferred, but that fi rst and foremost propose models to be followed and imitated. 19

The distinction or difference between grammar- oriented and text- oriented cultures Eco describes is recognizable in the role of ‘model texts’ for design. This same lack of theoretical discussion about typ- ography also applies to Eco’s work, which en passant leaves the role of design and typography to be a part of his theory only by extending its implications beyond the organization and structure of semiotic protocols he proposes. In neither proposing nor including issues of typ- ography in his analysis, Eco leaves these dimensions of his theorization as nebulous zones of implied order, but without discrete explaOBtion. It is a refusal that leaves the questions of typography to the specifi cation of models to emulate— what Eco terms a “ text- oriented culture.” The disengagement with theory in graphic design is a refl ection of a refusal of general, theoretical principles. Seeking to apply theory instead of engaging its analytic leaves only formalist frameworks to determine the range of allowable outcomes. In place of an identifi cation of com-binatory rules, the “repertoire of texts” collected and presented act as a descriptive collection of elements, but without a corresponding set of generative guides that articulate the reasons for that selection. This approach appears in fi lm design theorist Peter von Arx’s study Film Design (published in 1983). 20 His analysis established a critical engage-ment with the visuality of motion compositions via a taxonomy of visual forms and structures that links static and motion typography but retains a specifi cally formalist approach, cataloging perceptual dynamics without a hermeneutic critical framework— a taxonomy of material arrangements of text and type on- screen in relation to graphics and photography. The impacts of the avant- garde ‘structural fi lm’ are apparent throughout von Arx’s project connecting visual music, later avant- garde fi lms, and commercial design. This cinematic heritage is a self- evident element of motion graphics, but is commonly downplayed or even ignored in the consideration of motion typography in studies of static typography that also address movement.

The formal identifi cation of exemplary designs is common in graphic design, apparent in the variPVT books edited by Gy ö rgy Kepes during the 1950s and 1960s that catalog important developments and visual examples. The lack of general theorization in an anthology might not be surprising, but it is also absent in his own text Language of Vision (published in 1959). The descriptive approach common to all his books matches that of von Arx: it entails a listing of elements and

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Motion Typography 9

components drawn from models. His anthologies consider then- current and popular topics in design, but without ever addressing either static or motion typography; this absence of analysis is especially evident in Sign Image Symbol (published in 1966). Failure to recognize ‘motion graphics’ as it emerged is a signifi cant omission in these studies. The collection and presentation of exemplars that then become models for other designers is an explicit result of these books’ infl uence. They do not propose general principles for design, instead focusing on the role of cultural signifi ers as features that improve the quality of the designs shown; there is no consideration of what the particular rules or guidelines are for these works, instead presenting them as sui generis iterations of quality work.

In contrast to the topicality of Kepes, the discussion of typography by Robin Kinross in Modern Typography is historical. The analysis of technological and aesthetic innovations from Gutenberg’s press to the present day describes the evolution of typography, but does not address the role of motion as a transformation of this historically- conceived description of typographic systems. In tracing the progressive and evo- lutional lineage, Kinross enables an understanding of the present as the outcome of established and immobile processes that denaturalize his- tory, but at the same time render its ‘progress’ as a specifi cally formal derivation of technological innovations.

Other books, such as Typographic Design: Form and Communication by Rob Carter, Sandra Maxa, Mark Sanders, Phillip B. Meggs, and Ben Day (fi rst published in 1986 and periodically updated, with the seventh edition published in 2018), offer similar case studies of work by leading designers and design companies, but not theories of their visual ordering that link their animation with cinematic concerns, instead approaching them through the framework of static design. The limitations of historical graphic design emerge through its lapses in engagement with motion picture media. This same restricted approach informs Moving Type: Designing for Time and Space by Matt Woolman and Jeff Bellantoni (published in 2000), which presents a similar formal system to move letterforms and typography, but is not concerned with theory beyond that needed for the immanent heuristic being presented:

Moving type is more often than not most successful when presented in individual word or phrase sequences because computer and television screens are an inferior medium for reading long and involved text. Just as we have certain expectations from a book— permanence, a contemplative text on which one can review and meditate— animated typographic sequences are best presented in the form of short sentences or phrases designed to ask a question, simply point in a direction, or provide visual “sound” bites. 21

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10 Motion Typography

The approach Woolman and Bellantoni develop is precisely appro- priate for the animated logos and graphics of broadcast design, with its emphasis on attention- catching visuals. Their instructional text does not pause to consider the principles that underlie the approach— such considerations are explicitly beyond the scope of their analysis. These limitations are common for considerations of motion typography, a distinction that separates heuristics from the analytic and considered engagements of hermeneutic, critical theory.

It is normal for studies of typography and design, such as Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller’s Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design , to ignore the signifi cance of movement , instead considering typ- ography as a consistent material whose morphology and structure are stable. 22 The formalist approach to typography is common to graphic design generally, which avoids the consideration of semiotics (whether Piercian, Saussurean, or those of Eco and the post- structuralists), offering instead a collection of model texts to emulate. The propos- ition of ‘reading- image’ accounts for interpretive dynamics absent from formal descriptions; Lupton and Miller’s analysis is typical of this absence. There are only a limited number of studies that attempt a the- oretical description of morphology and structure for kinesis . Christian Leborg’s book Visual Grammar (published in 2006) is notable because it includes a consideration of motion in the section titled “Activities,” considering movement not simply as an implied metaphor, but in terms specifi c to its literal use in motion pictures:

Movement. True movement (without sequences or steps) is only found in the real world. Movement within a visual composition is only a representation of movement. The positioning of an object can suggest forces that have infl uenced it or will infl u- ence it and move it.

Path. An object in constant movement will travel along an imagined line. The line is called a path. The path can be straight or have the form of an arc.

Direction. The direction of a movement can be defi ned by a line that leads from the starting point of the movement to its presumed end point.

Superordinate and Subordinate Movement. An object can rotate, swing, or move forward and backward, while still experiencing a superordinate movement along one path. 23

His highly reductive description is accompanied by elaborate illustrations that inform his discussion, making their relevance for motion pictures explicit. The identifi cation of elements through formalist analyses separates the meaning of model texts and taxonomic classifi cations

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Motion Typography 11

from how this descriptive system creates meaning. The diagrammatic approach employed by Leborg renders his schematic proposal as a series of graphics whose minimal design ensures their clarity of pres- entation. The formalist dimensions of this proposal are an implicit fea- ture of its execution; the conception of motion— including in motion typography— becomes for his proposal simply one more element within the lexicon of graphic design, a subsumption of motion graphics to this familiar, established fi eld.

Motion typography poses a signifi cant lacuna in the theoretical ana- lysis of typography. The historical survey Typemotion , edited by Bernd Scheffer, Christine Stenzer, Peter Weibel, and Soenke Zehle (published in 2015), notes that the lengthy history of motion typography is unexam- ined outside of avant- garde media 24 — an argument for an expanded consideration that is overshadowed by the historical presentations and contents of the book. Typemotion is an academic instance of the same compendium approach common to graphic design surveys: offering a selection of well- designed and - animated works that can function as exemplary models for aesthetic consideration. The project originates with the same recognition of absent analysis Drucker notes; however, the resulting catalog, although historically illuminating, is not theoretic- ally robust. Their analyses offer a survey that crosscuts both commercial and avant- garde media, presenting a range of applications and examples in which the degree and technology of animation are as important as the results on- screen. The strength of this formal catalog is its breadth, including examples drawn from a wide range of international media that includes TV commercials alongside both video art and feature title sequences. What is missing is a theoretical consideration of motion typ- ography in all these media productions. The identifi cation of animation processes (2D or 3D, interactive or presentational, the problems of ease- in and ease- out, tweening, etc.) or formal elements of typography are not a substitute for the modal, enunciative, and interpretive functions that render meaning through enculturation. This confusion of formal elements with theoretical analysis is common when confronting typog- raphy. The heuristics of typographic appearance (the formal issues such as legibility) are not the same as the hermeneutic processes that render signifi cation (the domain of semiotic theory).

Legibility

Modernism emphasizes legibility. Motion graphics inherit this formal concern from graphic design— it develops from the early invention of typography and the printing press, which itself entails a transfer of ideation already in existence. 25 As Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan observed: “Typography as the fi rst mechanization of

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Figure 0.2 “Typographus, Der Buchdrucker” (Typographer, The Printer) from Das St ä ndebuch ( The Book of Trades , 1568), illustration by Jost Amman (1539– 91) and text by Hans Sachs (1494– 1576)

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Motion Typography 13

handicraft is itself the perfect instance not of a new knowledge, but of applied knowledge.” 26 As “printing” became a mechanical pro- cess rather than the labor- intensive work of drawing each individual letter, it transformed European society with long- lasting, global impacts: McLuhan’s “applied knowledge” does not undermine or alter the cultural signifi cance being produced. Distinctions between reading, language, and writing familiar from design are codifi ed with Johannes Gutenberg’s adaptation of a wine press into the fi rst European printing press in 1439, an event that marks a process of technical, machinic evo- lution and cultural change. 27 However, this invention— moveable type — was not an ex nihilo development but a changed means of production [ Figure 0.2 ]. It depends GSPN earlier inventions for text, understandings of writing, and conceptions of the ‘book’ to make its appearance coherent. The book remains stable across the transition created by Gutenberg’s invention. Language communicates, the book endures. The use of an existing technical and aesthetic model to direct and manage new pro-duction is precisely the defi nition of a text- oriented culture. Yet even as the meaning of ‘printing’ becomes a technological artifact, the former (manual) activity being renamed ‘calligraphy,’ 28 the distinctions between visuality and legibility increasingly become signifi cant factors of technological mediation and formal organization— coinciding with the rise of Modernism— rather than artistic caprice.

Anxieties about maintaining legibility are a primary element in Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography (1926). 29 His theorization is an early proposal in the fi eld of graphic design, reasserted after World War II by Beatrice Warde’s anthology on design and typography from 1955, The Crystal Goblet. Her analysis, published at the apogee of formalism in the twentieth century, develops the theory of ‘invisible typography’: text whose metaphoric ‘transparency’ means typography seems to vanish into a natural lexical recognition, i.e. is maximally legible . 30 The poten-tial of typography that actually moves is a foreign idea that only appears in metaphoric form. Her concern is with the capacities of printed text to communicate without the design and typography impeding compre-hension, a logical application of the ‘purity’ 31 common to formalist Modernism of the 1950s and 1960s. Written language communicates, thus anything that impedes that process must be minimized. Both Warde and Tschichold argue for a reductive process serving the communica-tive functions of language, but at the same time their use of ‘transpar-ency’ makes the encultured and learned aspects of lexical engagement disappear (apart from the acquisition of semic knowledge of terms and their uses). These concerns with Modernist legibility delayed the development of motion typography, 32 and have a central place in the historical linkage of Modern design and avant- garde cinema 33 with commercial mass media in the 1950s. 34

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14 Motion Typography

At the moment of this purist dominance, the mid- twentieth cen- tury reappraisal of innovations offered by kinesis actually began in the 1940s. Graphic designer and impresario Merle Armitage produced a small number of title sequence designs for MGM in 1947, 35 and then discussed his pioneering work with adapting the static innovations of Modern design to cinema. His article for Print magazine explored the constraints posed by maximal readability for text- on- screen and its impacts on the organization and design of Hollywood title sequences:

A book page is generally taller than it is wide, and a book designer becomes accustomed to working with that shape in various dimensions. But the motion picture camera “frame” is wider than it is high, and that makes a considerable difference in the approach to the problem. Even one of the most successful, experienced, and com- petent men in motion pictures fi rst overlooked the fact that unless the lettering is expanded to the full possible size of the screen frame it will not carry to the comparatively remote sections or balconies in large motion picture theaters, and in some of our fi rst attempts in arranging type on the surface of fi lm were interesting, but at a dis- tance unreadable. The necessity to use type in its largest dimension, or to cover the entire available space with lettering, puts the designer in somewhat the position of the singer who must continuously sing at full voice. When all the factors are considered, there seems but a very limited range at the disposal of anyone who elects to keep motion picture titles simple, dignifi ed, and readable. 36

Being able to read all the credits in “the comparatively remote sections or balconies” restricts the design in predictable ways. The primacy of concern with legible typography and visual designs in Armitage’s title sequences for The Hucksters , Living in a Big Way , or Green Dolphin Street (all 1947) means there is no attempt to use motion typography— they are essentially fi lmed, static designs. Historical deployments of motion typography in titles from the 1930s and 1940s are rare; notable designs by animator Walter Lantz in My Man Godfrey (1936), Hold that Ghost (1941), and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) have the same limited formal concern with legibility that Armitage also employs, but are not Modernist designs. While Lantz’s sequences are signifi cantly more active than the static title cards produced by Armitage, his motion typ- ography in My Man Godfrey is limited to blinking text. Movement only appears briefl y in both designs of the 1940s as animorphs in Hold that Ghost and as short disarrangements of elements in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein ; neither of these animated designs lasts longer than a second because text legibility is the dominant concern in all title sequences made prior to the Designer Period in the 1950s. The visual

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Motion Typography 15

imagery accompanying the text is conceived as a decoration or enhance- ment, secondary to its easy readability in even the most distant corner of the theater.

Broadcast design pioneer William Golden, who was the fi rst Creative Director of Advertising and Sales Promotion at CBS- TV in the 1950s, recognized that the material constraints on the recognition and interpretation of on- screen texts extricate motion typography from static composition, declaring it a negative infl uence on the quality of (Modernist) designs being produced:

Under the twin impacts of the functionalism of the Bauhaus and the practical demands of American business, the designer was beginning [in the 1930s] to use the combination of word and image to communicate more effectively. Under the infl uence of modern painters, he became aware (perhaps too aware) of the textural qual- ities and color values of type as an element of design. 37

Legibility remains a major issue for typography throughout its history. Approaching the historical developments that Golden adapted to the small screen, TV, however, is complicated by the scope of their banality. Because motion graphics share elements of morphology and struc- ture with the static typography of graphic design, the technological constraints that limited the earliest productions create the illusion that the shared foundation is defi nitive. Their dynamic relationship, visuality::legibility, 38 creates a range of interpenetrating, mutually exclusive potentials realized by the opposed forms of interpretation as- image or as- language . While readers fl uently shift between these modes, creating an illusion of similarity and masking their differences, they are utterly distinct engagements relying on independent types of established knowledge and interpretive expertise, one linguistic and lexical, the other perceptual and experiential. Armitage’s Modernist designs respond to this demand; thus they contain traditionally placed arrangements of simple typefaces in the center of the frame with min- imally graphic backgrounds (neutral, with subtle patterns that allowed the typography a maximum of contrast), to ensure a uniform legi- bility. This concern with legibility (familiar from graphic design, and ascendant in Modernism in the fi rst half of the twentieth century) constrains the size, placement, and design of all on- screen text; the abandonment of this demand for maximal legibility throughout the movie theater marks a major shift in the development of title sequences and prepares for the emergence of the ‘reading- image.’

The Post- Modern typographic experiments at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, which abandoned legibility in favor of expressive- ness, belong to a questioning of received formal idioms typical of

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Figure 0.3 Promotional fl yer for “A Secret Showing of Underground Films Thurs Midnite The Place Theater,” artist uncredited, San Francisco, c. 1968

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Motion Typography 17

Post- Modernism that started with the so- called ‘psychedelic’ posters of the 1960s [ Figure 0.3 ]. Although the approaches taught by Katherine McCoy at Cranbrook in the 1970s and 1980s focused on reintrodu- cing the visuality rejected by the insistence on legibility in design— embracing an expressive formalism (based in post- structural literary theory, 39 or ‘typography as discourse’)— the established, Modernist paradigms continued to exert an ongoing infl uence on graphic design outside that school. 40 These formal problematics were identifi ed by Gerhard Bachfi scher and Toni Robertson in their discussion “From Movable Type to Moving Type” on the impacts of digital animation:

On the other extreme, immersion in a typographic perform- ance never happens in book space, it is in fact a different sort of reading experience […] on one side non- intrusive typography, the invisible art of designing for legibility; on the other side the experience of typographic form, presented in different layers of meaning creating expressions (movement as one of them). When fi nally the user of a text enters the fi eld, those two sides have to be unifi ed in a holistic approach to reading, in a view that approaches reading as an embedded phenomenon of life, in all its different manifestations. 41

The concept of “typographic performance” is common to discus- sion of type in graphic design: it elides the centrality of the audience (the reader) in understanding the work, creating the impression that

Figure 0.4 Diagram of the two parallel variables in Barbara Brownie’s study of motion typography, Transforming Type

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18 Motion Typography

static type is ‘animated’ rather than ‘presented,’ that the ‘transform- ations’ created by reading a picture are more than just a metaphor. This distinction becomes important when considering the kinesis of motion typography that involves the expressive modulation of actual movement. Bachfi scher and Robertson’s recognition that typographic performance is a construction is also a revelation of the theoret- ical vacuum inside design theory arising from its formalist historical engagement. Approaching this particular issue— the ease of reading the text itself (legibility)— as the central problem organized by the material dimensions of the type— such as the relative width, color, size, and optical arrangement— avoids questions about how this formal order is at the same time a discourse dependent on past experience and established lexical expertise, which the embracing of post- structural theory by the ‘new typography’ (such as at Cranbrook) attempted to develop as a formal, expressive praxis. 42

More recent theorizations of motion and typography take a nuanced approach, recognizing that the addition of motion changes the relation- ship between legibility and lexical form, distinguishing motion typog- raphy from static typography. Barbara Brownie’s study Transforming Type: New Directions in Motion Typography is a notable consider- ation of animated kinesis . Her proposal separates already known and familiar approaches to the organization of typography on the printed page from those on- screen. Brownie’s range of kinesis includes both graphic 2D animation as well as 3D animation— the full scope of histor- ical uses— offering two high- level variables that each contain the same range of lower- level articulations: [a] describing motions of either indi- vidual letterforms or entire words in relation to the background imagery, paralleled by [b] the degree of independence each element or letterform has from the others [ Figure 0.4 ]. Her analysis ably describes the formal orchestration of animated typography to allow it to become a part of the realist ‘space’ shown on- screen; all the various subtypes she proposes are distinguished by the degree to which the type is ‘embedded’ in the apparent space of the background imagery. This illusory insertion into the photographic space is a central concern in her analysis, which argues against the presumptive foundations of typography in graphic design— that letterforms themselves are stable. The emergent and animated aspects of motion typography are fl uid, offering deformations and ambiguity:

There is an assumption that the properties of individual letterforms should remain constant, as they would in print. 43

The changing and unstable nature of typographic materials (letterforms) in motion graphics destabilizes the foundations of graphic design and illuminates the basic difference that kinesis makes for typography: where

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Motion Typography 19

the printed page is static and cannot develop or change its arrangement or legibility, for motion graphics these shifting relationships between familiar letterforms and unfamiliar shapes does not undermine the integrity of the text nor impede its comprehension for the viewer, cre- ating instead unique semantics offered by motion for typography. The Modernist dominance of legibility as an essential criterion is never put into question; theorizations of motion typography and motion graphics generally are hindered by traditional assumptions derived from the sta- bility of the printed page. The established parameters of graphic design do not continue to apply in the same ways or with the familiar results for lexical form when they are translated into the fi eld of motion pictures. These distinctions become apparent through the role that time— the chronology of presentation— has in the articulation and interpretation of motion typography: the ‘reading- image’ develops from the shifting positions, arrangement, and legibility of what appears on- screen. These additional dimensions for lexical forms change the role that audience perceptions have in their understanding. Unlike static graphics and typ- ography, kinesis and the ‘reading- image’ return to aesthetic and concep- tual issues originating in the use of text and typography as vehicles of expression beyond their lexical form in the so- called ‘silent fi lm.’ This early fi lm history is immanent in motion typography, making its analysis in terms of cinema not only appropriate, but a needed corrective to the restrictive, fallacious infl uence of graphic design on its theorization and development.

The Technical Lineage

Technologies do not anticipate their future uses beyond the parameters of their initial construction- development, but they do retain the traces of the earlier technologies that informed their invention. This connection to the past makes the new machine familiar in its relationship to what it supplants and replaces, no matter how different it actually is; the concept of ‘disruptive technology’ describes internalized relationships that apply to both contemporary digital technologies and the histor- ical impacts of new technologies on the traditional arts. 44 Philosopher Bernard Stiegler’s work on technics connects these developments to their cultural- historical foundations:

The technical essence is the identity of the lineage, its family resem- blance, the specifi city of its patrimony, which is the secret of its singular becoming: ‘The technical essence is recognized in the fact that it remains stable through the evolutional lineage, and not only stable, but productive as well of structures and functions by internal development and progressive saturation.’ 45

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20 Motion Typography

Stiegler’s process naturalizes innovations created by industrializa- tion, leading to the contemporary ‘hyperindustrial era,’ where human memory and knowledge become part of the productive apparatus (the digital computer) and which the ‘reading- image’ visualizes. 46 Of par- ticular concern to his proposal are media such as sound recording or cinema; the ability to return to and ‘relive’ recorded experiences depends on how these technical apparati convert (externalize) memory as immanent, repeatable experience. 47 He argues that the audience for these recordings can have a new experience of the same memory since “this gives rise to the not- yet ; that the already- heard gives way to the not- yet- heard, echoing a protentional expectation�” 48 "s with relistening to a record played on a gramophone or a digital recording on a cell phone �Uhese experiences depend precisely on the technical ability to replay a recording, the repetition that brings ‘past’ experi- ence into the present. Audience anticipation can then direct interpret- ation in listening to/ playing a recording, so that memory creates a higher- level order for what happens and how it is engaged. Thus the technical capacity— recording sounds and images— expands upon the established capacity of text to externalize abstract information and knowledge; the proposition of ‘reading- image’ mediates between these two varieties of recording and experiential encapsulation to model the recognition– interpretation process back to its audience, externalizing those internal shifts literally on- screen. Not all motion typography always creates this visualization of interpretation; however, the poten- tial is suffi cient to separate the category of motion typography from its relatives in static design.

Understanding the lineage of motion graphics’ development from simple hand- animation into the contemporary digital computer’s auto- mation/ simulation of earlier technologies offers a critical opportunity to acknowledge the role of the apparatus as not only instrumentality but ideology. Technical evolution progressively renders the machinic impacts invisible, as ideological forces make it into the natural order which enables the next series of innovations and refi nements. At the same time, these changes are an exteriorization of remembered experiences as the repeatable (and often repeated) imageosphere of mediation and its digital re/ distribution. The contemporary challenges 49 posed by digital computers (also known as “post- cinema” 50 ) and the material conversion of all moving imagery into a plastically transformable fi eld 51 following the metastable model of animation 52 — based in a new degree of con- trol over the “atomistic” capacity of animation to transform anything appearing on- screen 53 — makes the centrality of this technical lineage for motion graphics into a means to theorize motion typography and the ‘reading- image’.

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Motion Typography 21

TITLE DESIGN IN HOLLYWOOD FILMS 54

Early (Experimental) Period (beginning until ~1915) Silent Period (until ~1927) Studio Period (until ~1955) Designer Period (until ~1977) Logo Period (until ~1995) Contemporary Designer Period (1995 to present)

This periodization of feature fi lm title sequences refl ects shifts in both technology and aesthetics, enabling a consideration separate from the particulars of typography’s narrative and crediting functions . Animation processes emerge in technological as well as aesthetic limitations on the designs possible, but these inventions pose a fundamental challenge for any consideration of the link between aesthetics and motion picture technology, as fi lm historian Raymond Fielding explains:

There is a temptation for fi lm historians in particular to interpret the development of the motion picture teleologically, as if each generation of workers had sketched out the future of the art far in advance of the technology required for its realization. In fact, however, the artistic evolution of the fi lm has always been intim- ately associated with technological change, just as it has, in less noticeable fashion, in the older arts. Just as the painter’s art has changed with the introduction of different media and processes, just as the forms of symphonic music have developed with the appearance of new kinds of instruments, so has the elaboration and refi nement of fi lm style followed from the introduction of more sophisticated machinery. […] If the artistic and historical development of fi lm and television are to be understood, then so must the peculiar marriage of art and technology which prevails in their operation. 55

In considering the historical periods of feature fi lm titles, the role of tech- nology becomes obvious as a determinant and a constant refrain in the aesthetic development these periods identify; however, all innovations are proximate, created for immediate and specifi c problems confronting the fi lmmakers, not out of a desire to create a future aesthetic. Each new method and machinery achieves success and general adoption not because of an aesthetic capacity, but because it enables already known kinds of production to become faster, cheaper, and more precise than other, existing (and competing) technologies: it is a question of cost, since motion pictures are a business, conducted for profi t.

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22 Motion Typography

Although most familiar from the feature fi lm title sequence, the his- tory of animated typography as it emerged in motion pictures is com- plex. New technologies have not added new aesthetic potentials for the ‘reading- image’; there have been no new types of kinetic action , graphic expression , and chronic progression to accompany the introduction of new, digital tools. Instead, new technologies have enabled the develop- ment of greater complexity and ease of production for what were for- merly diffi cult processes, making them accessible and common. These technical and aesthetic sources for motion typography are apparent in how avant- garde fi lm was transformed into a commercial, banal product by its audiences in the advertising industry. 56

Motion typography aligns with the historical periods of feature fi lm title design, but remains separate, a parallel trajectory whose technical and stylistic lineage also appears in title sequences. Although the ani- mation and integration of typography with background photography has always been a technical possibility since the earliest motion pictures, the use and organization of complex, highly animated text- on- screen remained a relative rarity prior to the development of digital computers. Stiegler observed that the technical object maintains a family resem- blance where each successive generation provides a “natural technical evolution” that involves the synthesis of earlier machineries— whether the book, printing press, motion picture, or digital computer— into a new instrumentality. Motion graphics are defi ned by this historical lin- eage of animation techniques merged with typographic conventions. Despite technological changes, improvements, and revolutions, only four approaches to on- screen design with motion typography have emerged over its century of development: [a] as fi lmed, static design; [b] as type overlay composited with photography; [c] as a simultaneous orchestration of type and photography to create a unitary design; [d] type in/ as animation integrated with background imagery. The ‘reading- image’ may appear in any of these technical approaches since it defi nes not the formal arrangement of materials, but a particular way of using them to model the progression of interpretive thought and the lexical recognition of on- screen text.

Fielding concluded the fourth edition of his extensive study The Technique of Special Effects Cinematography (published in 1984) with a brief discussion anticipating the future: the potential impacts of digital technology. The optical printer’s capacity to reconstruct, reshape, and selectively reproduce parts of the already sampled motions of kinematography was an invention with far- reaching impacts. This ability to transform the recorded motions of a fi lm defi nitively removed it from the realm of a diffi cult- to- alter ‘document’ created by a machine, to a plastic and fl uidly alterable construction familiar from more traditional art. His prescient discussion makes the connection between historical

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Motion Typography 23

technologies and contemporary digital systems explicit, revealing it as a foundational part of their technical design:

There is no question that the introduction and perfection of an electronic optical printer could theoretically revolutionize the pro- cess of composite cinematography and optical printing. In addition to all of the capabilities of a modern optical printer, such a system could be able to enhance photographic images, minimize grain, add color to black- and- white images or alter colors radically, multiply image elements to whatever extent desired, correct over- and under- exposure, and remove scratches or wires from within the picture area. It is even theoretically possible that such a device could sep- arate designated foreground details out of the background without the need for blue- screen backings, and that computer software could be designed to accomplish this, more- or- less automatically, with a minimum of human instruction. With such a system, the images of expensive miniatures, set pieces, props, crowds, water and sky scenes, and the like might be ‘stockpiled’ and retrieved at will for use in new fi lms! In theory, at least, all things are possible with such a system. 57

Fielding’s “electronic optical printer” matches the capacities of contem- porary digital compositing software precisely. 58 Historically specialized photographic and rephotographic processes are the common progenitor of both motion graphics and visual effects— the ability to alter, combine, and manipulate multiple images into a singular, seamless unit. This tech- nical development is a refi nement of earlier processes which it displaced. While optical printing was more expensive than the superimposition process of ‘B- roll,’ introduced by photographer Fred Archer while he was Director of Art Titles at Universal Pictures between 1919 and 1925, it offered a greater range of options for beginning the fi lm, making its dominance in motion graphics entirely predictable. The transform- ation and automation of optical printing with computer technology is a change and refi nement of technology, not a revolution in aesthetics. These relations become apparent in how digital tools are transforma- tive for motion typography. By enabling the automation of the tedious, mechanical parts of animation, the digital computer has proved espe- cially capable of animating typography and design on- screen; the four design approaches to kinesis remain constant as high- level orderings that are independent of the methods of their production. Technologies used to create moving typography were not invented for that purpose alone— more often it is one capability included with other, more immediately necessary ones, as was the case with the optical printer. This precision animation camera, designed for direct rephotography of motion picture

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24 Motion Typography

fi lm by cinematographer Linwood Dunn in 1929, was initially employed for the production of visual effects; that the same technology of masks and rephotography could also be employed for creating dynamic title sequences was simply a bonus that quickly found application in title sequences, compositing typography over live action footage.

Animation has been a central part of the title sequence’s produc- tion throughout its history, a link between visual form and typography that creates motion graphics as a fi eld. 59 However, the changing material constraints on the extent and application of animation’s techniques in title design are revealed by changes between periods for feature fi lm titles in the United States: the shift from short fi lms to features in 1915, as the Silent Period began, was both a technological change as well as an aesthetic expansion; the embracing of synchronized sound, starting in 1927, and optical printing two years later (in 1929) marks the start of the Studio Period; the challenges posed by television in the 1950s led to the beginning of the Designer Period; the eventual embracing of TV and video in the 1970s led to the emergence of the Logo Period in the 1980s; and digital production produced a convergence of fi lm and TV titling in the Contemporary Period. The introduction of electronic and digital tools for television in the 1980s, including but not limited to broadcast- ready technologies such as the Quantel Paintbox and much cheaper consumer technologies (what were termed ‘prosumer’) such as the Fairlight CVI or NewTek Video Toaster , both employed the same conceptions of generative text- on- screen as the earlier on- fi lm technolo- gies they emulated. These systems are the ancestors to the “electronic optical printer” that Fielding described in his conclusion: the simulation of optical printing on the digital computer in software such as Adobe AfterEffects combines the discrete technologies of on- fi lm production and the compositing, processing, and generating of the television studio in a hybrid system that has replaced its progenitors. In each case new technology offers not only different methods of production, but also radical reductions in costs that eliminate earlier restrictions limiting use. The four approaches to design do not change; only the frequency and extent of their use in motion graphics varies.

Arranging the four design approaches in chronological order of emer- gence attests to their linked foundations and evolutional lineage. The earliest approach is also the simplest: using type as a graphic element by fi lming text or a design with both pictures and text using an anima- tion stand. It is the closest that motion graphics ever comes to being ‘fi lmed graphic design.’ This essential historical basis in animation— the sequential photographing of individual elements— expands through combination with photography to create the more familiar composited (or simply superimposed) fi gure– ground relationship where text and image coexist in parallel on- screen. Type overlay— whether produced

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Motion Typography 25

using Archer’s B- roll superimposition process or with an optical printer or digital computer— remains essentially the same: the three modes of understanding text– image composites emerge alongside the fi rst such composites produced in the 1920s. The fi gure– ground mode, calligram mode, and rebus mode that link the interpretations of text and image remain constant over time. In the titles for The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936) [ Figure 0.5 ] optical printing creates the calligrams that intro- duce each actor— their name appears below their portrait. The coord- ination of photography and typography is a specifi c development that initially complicates the superimposition of text over a background image, but is also a logical development of it: coordinating both text and photography, apparent in Steven Frankfurt’s title sequence for To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), unifi es the live action events of the photography with changes in crediting, and its infl uence evolves into the use of visual effects techniques to apparently embed the text within the live action

Figure 0.5 All the title cards in the title sequence for The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936)

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26 Motion Typography

background, allowing the type to respond to and interact with it. Digital technology enabled this convergence of live action and animation with the parallel use of text in/ as animation. The transformation of typog- raphy, where the letterforms become graphics in themselves, privileges the visual over the lexical and is common to designs as diverse and other- wise utterly different as the art titles in F. A. A. Dahme’s Dance Macabre (192�) and Terry Gilliam’s animations for Life of Brian (1979). These integrations of titling into imagery serve to anticipate the digital embed-ding of text with the pictorial environment; the digital convergence of live action and animation makes these types of fusion not only common but inexpensive. However, this combination also means that these ‘new’ applications and integrations were pioneered decades earlier, minim-izing their genuine novelty. The continuity between physical technical approaches and the generation of titles and graphics with a digital com-puter makes this technical lineage especially important for understanding motion typography. The continuity of the ‘reading- image’ throughout this history validates the importance of considering ‘antique’ rather than contemporary works.

Typography and Titling

The historical development of ‘on- screen text’ in early cinema established the parameters for the development of motion typography in the title sequence, a framework that continues to structure its interpretive modes in motion graphics. Typography rapidly assumed standardized roles, easily identifi ed and understood by viewers. The functions and import- ance of art titles for narrative cinema during the 1910s and 1920s, prior to the commercial success of synchronized sound recording, were not merely a feature of the use of decorative backgrounds, but an articula- tion of cadence and suggestions of delivery made through the styliza- tion and appearance of the letterforms themselves.

The historical sources of contemporary motion typography inform its complexity and enunciative form: �familiar expressive functions are apparent in the use of Expressionist title cards in Robert Weine’s fi lm The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) that anticipates later developments, both in type design and in their integration with the narrative as a presenta- tion of character subjectivity. 60 The infl uence of this fi lm is pervasive, if not always apparent; it is paradigmatic, neither irrelevant nor ignorable in the later evolutional lineage of on- screen typography. Considering its dynamics is therefore warranted given its direct infl uence in the United States. Author and critic Gilbert Seldes’s discussion of American avant- garde fi lms in The New Republic in March 1929 identifi ed the importance of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as a reference point in the consideration of fi lm productions and the initial proposition of ‘fi lm art’:

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Motion Typography 27

“ The Last Moment ,” by Dr. Paul Fejos, also lay outside the profes- sional fi eld and, although it seemed to me a silly and ineffective pas- tiche of all the superfi cial mannerisms of all the art- fi lms of America and Germany, it achieved a similar success [to Robert Florey’s fi lm The Life and Death of 9413 ] for its director. Finally J. S. Watson and Melville Weber have produced “ The Fall of the House of Usher. ” According to the magazine Movie Makers , the January [1929] issue of which should be read by all interested in the subject, Mr. Wilton Barrett, secretary of the National Board of Review, has said that this picture represents “the greatest advance made in the progress of the motion picture as an independent art since that epochal fi lm, ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.’ ” […] The amateurs simplify when they do not discard story- content (Dr. Watson says “the amateur can use [a story] if it helps him think”); they are opposed to natur- alism; they have no stars; they are over- infl uenced by “ Caligari ”— the commercial directors are still under- infl uenced by the same fi lm— they want to give their complete picture without the aid of any medium except the camera and projector. 61

What Seldes calls “amateur” is based on the economics of production, rather than aesthetics— the resources and technical capacities of a com- mercial movie studio are greater than what the “amateur” has available for their more modest productions. However, his comments do illustrate the centrality of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to the aesthetic consider- ations of ‘fi lm art.’ Its Expressionist morphology and progression are the salient features for consideration: the manipulation and transform- ation of visible reality in the narrative to render a subjective interpret- ation rather than a passive rendition of a seemingly familiar realism. The status given to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in the 1920s would wane by the late 1930s, as Harold Leonard, editor of The Film Index compiled by the Museum of Modern Art, states regarding its infl uences on cinema in the United States:

But the American fi lm had made little progress with its critics des- pite these minor gains when The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari arrived from Germany in 1921. Merely the fi rst in a train of bizarre, somber, and tendentious productions from that country, it set up an “arty,” anti- Hollywood orientation in serious fi lm criticism which was to hinder the advance of true standards for almost a decade. 62

His rejection of Expressionism is a reversal of the value given to it by Seldes, but retains the same recognitions of subjectivity presented on- screen: his rejection depends on how The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari deviates from the realist expectations posed by the other narrative fi lms produced

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28 Motion Typography

by the Hollywood fi lm studios. The “true standards” he describes are apparent in the realist use of synchronized sound and naturalistic presentations that became common in the studio productions of the 1930s as typography on- screen became progressively more inessential to narrative. 5IF� OBUVSBMJTUJD� Sealism� PG� TUVEJP� QSPEVDUJPOT is an aesthetic opposed to any Expressionist, clearly fabricated visual style. These mutually exclusive views distinguish the outmost positions in the range of naturalism::stylization that come to defi ne the realist aesthetics employed in Hollywood studio productions, with the relative de/ valuation of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari serving as an immediate means to identify partisanship within this ‘debate’ over the appropriate ways to manage and present the mediation inherent to motion pictures.

Questions about mediation, rather than being extraneous to the role of text- on- screen and the consideration of typography’s expressive dimensions, illuminate the ‘reading- image’ and interpretive signifi cance beyond lexical presentation. 63 The greater debates between an aesthetic realism of surface and familiar appearances, and a realism guided by and presenting a subjective, mental reality meant that more subtle questions were neglected or ignored. The dynamics of text::image, and the consideration of graphic modeling or animated arrangement, were causalities of partisan confl icts over basic aesthetic issues: it is diffi cult to attend to subtleties when the foundations of motion images are in question.

The periodization of motion picture title sequences in the United States provides a framework to identify these aesthetic transformations and how they impact motion typography over the course of the twentieth century. The contemporary distinction between those titles that pro-vide crediting for the actors and production personnel, and the internal titles of narrative enunciation that to contemporary viewers seem abso-lute and unquestionable was not always so distinct. The separation of intertitles from crediting is a TFQBSBUJPO�PG functions that emerged grad-ually; it is an example of the rationalizations of motion picture form— standardization— that accompany the dominance of the Hollywood studio system, where movies are produced as an industrial commodity following the model of the assembly line, with compartmentalized tasks and strictly separated roles and functions in manufacturing.

However, during the Silent Period there was a greater complexity and fl uidity of functions for typography on- screen, giving the role of visuality a prominent position in on- screen typographic aesthetics. The debate for and against the aesthetic value of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari ’s Expressionism 64 did not have the urgency or polarization during this period that it would gain in the 1930s after the commercial success and general adoption of synchronized sound recording. The ‘reading- image’ employs these same graphic and animated dimensions of typography

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Motion Typography 29

for expressive purposes— appropriate for designs infl uenced by German Expressionism 65 — informing the multiplicity of functions that arise in response to the informational, dramatic, and interpretive demands of a cinema made without the assistance of spoken language. Historian Brad Chisholm proposed a series of roles for Silent Period typography in “Reading Intertitles.” He discussed their role prior to a general reduc- tion in and, in many cases, elimination of on- screen text in the decades that followed. His study concerns “expository intertitles”: those texts appearing on- screen that perform narrative functions . The seven cat- egories he proposes mirror similar functions performed in literature, suggesting an understanding of narrative cinema as a type of complex, live action picture book that makes the relevance of lexical structures learned in early childhood appropriate for understanding the dynamics of text- on- screen, such as the calligram mode. 66 Chisholm explains the importance of on- screen typography for the Silent Period as an essential part of these fi lms’ narrative organization:

Most people agree there are two broad categories of intertitles: dia- logue intertitles— those enunciated within the diegesis, set off by quotation marks; and expository intertitles— those enunciated outside the diegesis. […] During the late teens and early 1920s Hollywood fi lmmakers relied more heavily on expository intertitles than on dialogue intertitles. […] The descendants of expository intertitles can still be found in the fi lms of today, and several of the old functions are frequently handled via the printed word. It is common to superimpose the place name or a temporal marker over the fi rst establishing shot in a fi lm or after a major narrative tran- sition. Scrolling expository summaries often opened Hollywood fi lms in the 1930s and 1940s, “Chapter Headings” are sometimes used for purposes of nostalgia, and numerous fi lms weave their opening credits well into the texture of their action. Occasionally a sound- era [Studio Period] fi lm will use a legitimate old- fashioned intertitle. Such an intertitle cannot claim quite the same status as its forbears, however. Now that synchronized sound is the norm, every use of an intertitle functions as a commentary on the discourse. 67

Chisholm’s seven categories of titling are distinguished by their narrative function : [a] identifi cations that serve to credit actors; [b] temporal markers that relay information about time and place; [c] narrative sum- mary that relays backstory; [d] characterization that explains motives or feelings; [e] mediated thoughts/ paraphrased dialogue that reveal internal monologues; and [f] commentary on what is happening in the story or scene being shown; [g] the seventh category (which Chisholm does not consider) is dialogue . The integral nature of intertitles for the silent fi lms

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30 Motion Typography

he considers does not extend to their graphic or visual character. The visuality of the type (and thus the ‘reading- image’) are not factors in his analysis. The sample texts presented in his discussion are all designed for maximal legibility— the text is an essentially undecorated typeface with a slight serif, common and familiar from books and magazines to the point of being almost generic in its impact: the text is ‘transparent’ and offers no explicit additional commentary on the meaning of the words than their presentation to- be- read. This ‘invisible typography’ (described by Warde) is a normative engagement where the audience’s acceptance of enunciations understands the lexical as conveying the entirety of the meaning. However, the ability of different audience members to see the same thing, yet interpret it in radically different ways, demonstrates how audience interpretations grow deeper and more complex through repeated encounters with new examples. 68 Past experi- ence allows viewers to parse their perceptions into coherence, as well as enabling them to anticipate and recognize divergences from established norms. 69 Eco’s theorization of ‘serial form’ makes this ‘transparency’ a product of how past experience is central to audience interpretation: it is the recognition and assignment of meaning to familiar forms, as well as the capacity to adapt to unfamiliar and neologistical arrangements. The body of knowledge an audience already has before their encounter with any particular work delimits the ways viewers will understand and interpret that work to create, for example, the narrative/ dramatic relationships of outcome and consequence that are fundamental to (narrative) comprehension:

What is more interesting is when the quotation is explicit and rec- ognizable, as happens in post- modern literature and art, which bla- tantly and ironically play on the intertextuality […] aware of the quotation, the spectator is brought to elaborate ironically on the nature of such a device and to acknowledge the fact that one has been invited to play upon one’s encyclopedic knowledge. 70

Recognizing quotations is fundamentally an issue of historical know- ledge applied in the immanent encounter. Audiences are active, drawing on their established ‘past experience’ to recognize morphology and struc- ture, actions to separate the text from the other visual material that defi ne ‘fl uency’ and inform its relationships with the other materials on- screen. Chisholm’s analysis of the typographic functions created in these quotational uses is schematic and limited. His denial of the graphic aspects of the text is simultaneously unsurprising and shocking; however, a refusal to acknowledge the graphic expressiveness is to be expected given the focus of his discussion: D. W. Griffi th’s fi lm Broken Blossoms only has very simple, legible text. At the same time the lack of recognition for the

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Motion Typography 31

expressive role of typography in early fi lms, ranging from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Walter Anthony’s text layouts in The Cat and The Canary (1927), ignores how letters dramatize not only the words but their import- ance. This refusal recalls the debates over naturalism::stylization that defi ne the realist presentation of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’ in cinema, and the tendency to focus on narrative functions of cinema to the exclu- sion of all else both enforce the neglect of typography.

Chisholm’s analysis makes the continuity of roles for the ‘reading- image’ in the ‘silent fi lm’ and later sync- sound productions obvious. The shift in function to being a commentary on the discourse happens pre- cisely because of the ways that text becomes an independent feature of the motion picture, rather than an integral part of its narrational pro- gression. This shift refl ects the same distinctions that separate the ‘title sequence’ from the other sequences that follow, a pseudo- independent self- containment defi ned by the centrality of text- on- screen to the credits. Only in rare instances, such as the fi lm Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) directed by Edgar Wright, are typography and graphics a constant and continuous element within the narrative, performing a central role in narrative function . The superfi cially familiar world appearing on- screen is one fi lled with and interpenetrated by texts, along with graphics from video games (the score of “1,000” that appears after “Scott Pilgrim” (played by Michael Cera) defeats the fi rst “Evil Ex” he encounters) and visualizations familiar from comic books (the “SHHHH” and graphics expressing emotion) appear within the diegesis [ Figure 0.6 ]. While the animated sounds are beyond the scope of Chisholm’s taxonomy, the more traditionally presented texts, even when they are drawn from video games, are not. They are “added to the image” 71 in a way that is entirely different than the texts that appear on signs, painted on walls, or else- where in the diegetic ‘space,’ yet they are simultaneously of that space and are understood by the audience in precisely the same ways that those texts physically present during fi lming are, being visibly embedded within the visual space of these characters’ world (diegetic). Thus, while these typo/ graphics function as exposition, at the same time they are features of that visual space, presumably something the characters in the fi lm are aware of and respond to, not merely non- diegetic or extra- diegetic visualizations for the benefi t of the audience.

The narrative is a highly realistic fantasy that only seemingly resembles the familiar world of everyday experience. The ‘rating’ that appears next to (and behind) “Scott Pilgrim” early in the fi lm acts as both an identifi cation of the character as “22 Years Old” and a brief commentary on him as “awesome.” Yet this statement about him has an ambivalent character: it can be read as external (as a statement of fact) or internal (as a self- expression of the character) depending on how this text is understood in relation to the diegesis. Initially there may be

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32 Motion Typography

uncertainty about whether the text/ graphics are features of this world or simply elements shown to the viewer; as this initial scene progresses, it becomes apparent that these visuals are contiguous with the rest of the screen- world, not just artfully presented non- diegetic elements such as subtitles. Their integration collapses the comfortable distinctions between crediting/ titling and photographic imagery to challenge the separation of naturalism::stylization. These transgressions of typical cinematic realism reveal the role of text in narrative cinema is more fl uid than Chisholm’s commentary suggests: the identifi cation performed by this rating can only be accepted as discourse about the narrative if

Figure 0.6 Selected stills from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), showing examples of integrated typography and graphics within the diegesis

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Motion Typography 33

its embedded nature is ignored, since to integrate it with the diegesis suggests that “Scott Pilgrim” is not ‘awesome’ in a positive sense, but rather narcissistic and perhaps self- deluding about his own ‘awesome- ness,’ both points of self- knowledge for this character that defi ne his ‘character arc.’

The Expressionist character of the other texts that serve as illustrations— as with the dramatization of the lyrics “Oh Yeah” or the video game score— includes the onomatopoetic animated sound/ graphics. These elements appear prominently on- screen and are under- stood as integral to the environment, visualizing essential parts of what happens. This narrative function reinforces their integration without the ambivalence of Scott’s rating. Only the category that Chisholm does not develop, dialogue , offers the possibility of accommodating these presentations: they are visual statements that cannot only be attributed to the characters (although there are instances where they are linked to a character as ‘dialogue’). Acting as intrusions into the otherwise familiar realism, each element serves as a dramatization whose shifting relationship to the events is masked by its diegetic linkage illustrating each shot. This role anchors the text in the diegesis, acting as a motion graphic analogue to Drucker’s proposal of ‘navigation’ as a manipu- lation of graphics and compositions at the level of discourse and presentation:

Readings of narrative texts rarely include attention to the graphic devices that structure presentation in print or electronic formats. These devices are rendered invisible by habits of reading. But, I would suggest, these graphic elements do more than structure the conditions in which narration is produced. By their hierarchy, arrangement, organization and other features they contribute to the production of the narrative in substantive ways. 72

The text/ graphics of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World are not just visual decorations: the text stating “Oh Yeah” is more than merely a rendering of the sung lyrics, it also mirrors the dialogue between Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead), visualizing her non- verbal responses as the “Oh Yeah” text— anticipating who the next “Evil Ex” is— and rendering Scott’s “Oh No” directly comical. The set- up of text, dialogue, and visualization creates a dynamic where understanding the joke in this scene depends on the recognition of these words’ duplicity as an enthusiastic agreement and recognition of dread. This text behaves as an Expressionist performance that draws attention to Scott’s realization of imminent disaster. The climactic moment of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [ Figure 0.7 ] employs text in a similar role, not as dialogue but as a diegetic expression or dramatization showing

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34 Motion Typography

the emergent insanity of insane asylum director “Dr. Caligari” (played by Werner Krauss), which the audience understands through the inter- action of performance and texts appearing on- screen as an unreal but immanent part of the diegesis (thus, extra- diegetic). 73 The narration evident in both motion pictures converges in the same articulation of Expressionist visuality where the text has an excess of signifi cation beyond its syntactic meaning— i.e. a ‘reading- image.’ This ‘reading- image’ interaction of narrative context and its on- screen morphology is more than the sum of each element in itself. For The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari the knowledge is tragedy; in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World it is farce. That these dimensions of typo/ graphics are commonly ignored as part of embracing of an idealized, ‘transparent’ lexical engagement responds to the same systemic denials of stylization in favor of natur- alism that elide the importance of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for the complex articulations of motion pictures generally.

The appeal of ‘opacity’ in understanding these developments of typo/ graphics lies with the diffi cult heritage of a dominant Modernist approach that ignores and denies the critical interest of hybrids and

Figure 0.7 Stills stating “DU MUSST CALIGARI WERDEN” (“YOU MUST BECOME CALIGARI”) from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), showing extra- diegetic typography

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Motion Typography 35

intermedia forms, historically resulting in the ‘reading- image’ remaining unacknowledged. In considering it as a vehicle of articulation and thus a model for understanding typography in media, conceiving of motion typography as ‘peripheral’ becomes a serious critical fallacy. The orchestration of text, graphics, images, and sounds in motion graphics offers the capacity to consider those precise relations where typography becomes more than merely lexical— its role in cinema implicitly informs the range of realist forms in commercial media. The ‘reading- image’ invokes interpretive modes ( kinetic action , graphic expression , and chronic progression ), mediating boundaries and expressions created in and by motion pictures to differentiate motion graphics from the static approaches of graphic design through the central role of kinesis .

Notes 1 Schellong, M. “Moving Signs: Playing with Legibility and Aesthetic

Experience” Typemotion ed. Bernd Scheffer, Christine Stenzer, Peter Weibel and Soenke Zehle (Karlsruhe: Hatje Cantz/ ZKM, 2015) pp. 55– 57.

2 Scheffer, B. and Stenzer, C., eds. Schriftfi lme: Schrift als Bild in Bewegung (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2009).

3 Halas, J. Graphics in Motion: From the Special Effects Film to Holographics (New York: Van Norstrand Reinhold Co., 1984).

4 Brown, D. “The AIGA Medalist 1981: Saul Bass” AIGA Graphic Design USA:3 The Annual of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (New York: Watson- Guptill Publications, 1981) pp. 13– 44.

5 Shaw, A. Design for Motion (New York: Focal Press, 2016). 6 Drucker, J. “What is a Word’s Body?” What is? Nine Epistemological Essays

(Victoria: Cuneform Press, 2013) p. 38. 7 Wainer, H. “Preface to the 2010 edition of the English Translation”

Semiology of Graphics trans. William J. Berg (Redlands: Esri Press, 2010) pp. xi– xii.

8 Jakobson, R. “On the Verbal Art of William Blake and other Poet- Painters” Linguistic Inquiry vol. 1, no. 1. (January, 1970) pp. 3– 23.

9 Might have proposed, but didn’t: the ‘reading image’ in Vision, Image, Record: A Cultivation of the Visual Field (Antony Fredriksson, Å bo Akademi University Press, 2014) is entirely different, based in narrative concerns; see pp. 149– 153.

10 Betancourt, M. Title Sequences as Paratexts: Narrative Anticipation and Recapitulation (New York: Routledge Focus, 2018).

11 Metz, C. Impersonal Enunciation, or the Place of Film trans. Corman Deane (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015) pp. 46– 51.

12 Ramsaye, T. A Million and One Nights (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1924). 13 Bard è che, M. and Brasillach, R. The History of Motion Pictures (New York:

Norton, 1938). 14 Jacobs, L. The Rise of the American Film (New York: Harcourt, Brace and

Company, 1939/ 1948).

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15 Betancourt, M. Semiotics and Title Sequences: Text– Image Composites in Motion Graphics (New York: Routledge Focus, 2017).

16 Metz, C. Impersonal Enunciation, or the Place of Film trans. Corman Deane (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015) p. 51.

17 Drucker, J. “Graphic Devices: Narration and Navigation” Narrative vol. 16, no. 2. (May, 2008) pp. 121– 125.

18 Drucker, J. “Graphic Devices: Narration and Navigation” Narrative vol. 16, no. 2. (May, 2008) pp. 121– 125.

19 Eco, U. A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979) pp. 137– 138.

20 von Arx, P. Film Design (Bern; Stuttgart: Haupt, 1983). 21 Woolman, M. and Bellantoni, J. Moving Type: Designing for Time and

Space (East Sussex: RotoVision, 2000) p. 17. 22 Lupton, E. and Miller, A. Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic

Design (New York: Phaidon, 1996) p. 14. 23 Leborg, C. Visual Grammar (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,

2006) pp. 48– 49. 24 Weibel, P. “Preface” Typemotion ed. Bernd Scheffer, Christine Stenzer, Peter

Weibel and Soenke Zehle (Karlsruhe: Hatje Cantz/ ZKM, 2015) pp. 8– 11. 25 McLuhan, M. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man

(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962). 26 McLuhan, M. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man

(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962) p. 184. 27 Eisenstein, E. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press: 1980). 28 B ü hler, C. The Fifteenth Century Book: the Scribes, the Printers, the

Decorators (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960) pp. 24– 28. 29 Tschichold, J. The New Typography trans. Ruari McLean (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1998). 30 Warde, B. The Crystal Goblet, Sixteen Essays on Typography (London: Sylvan

Press, 1955). 31 Greenberg, C. “Modernist Painting” Clement Greenberg: The Collected

Essays and Criticism, Volume 4 ed. John O’Brian (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) p. 86.

32 Helfand, J. Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001) pp. 105– 110.

33 Betancourt, M. “Experimental Animation and Motion Graphics” Experimental Animation: From Analogue to Digital ed. Miriam Harris, Lilly Husbands and Paul Taberham (New York: Routledge, 2018).

34 Spigel, L. TV by Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

35 Dawson, M. “Edward Wesson and Merle Armitage” LA’s Early Moderns: Art, Architecture, Photography ed. Victoria Dailey, Natalie Shivers and Michael Dawson (Los Angeles: Balcony Press, 2003) pp. 253– 257.

36 Armitage, M. “Movie Titles” Print vol. 5, no. 2. (February 1, 1947) p. 45. 37 Golden, W. The Visual Craft of William Golden (New York: George

Braziller, 1962) p. 21.

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38 The double colon / ::/ designates positions of mutual exclusion that defi ne the scope of a dynamic range, which includes hybrid intermediaries and exhibits a contingent, metastable fl ux within that range.

39 McCoy, K. “American Graphic design Expression” Design Quarterly no. 148 (1990) pp. 4– 22.

40 Aldersey- Williams, H. The New Cranbrook Design Discourse (New York: Rizzoli, 1990).

41 Bachfi scher, G. and Robertson, T. “From Movable Type to Moving Type— Evolution in Technological Mediated Typography” (paper presented at the Apple University Consortium Conference , 2005) p. 9.

42 Lupton, E. “The Academy of Deconstructed Design” Eye vol. 1, no. 3. (Winter 1991) pp. 44– 52.

43 Brownie, B. Transforming Type: New Directions in Motion Typography (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015) p. 15.

44 Betancourt, M. “Disruptive Technology: The Avant– Gardness of Avant– Garde Art” Article: a107, CTheory (May 1, 2002).

45 Stiegler, B. Technics and Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998) p. 77.

46 Stiegler, B. “Anamnesis and Hypomnesis: The Memories of Desire” Technics ed. Arthur Bradley and Louis Armand (Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2006) pp. 15– 41.

47 Stiegler, B. Technics and Time 3: Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011) pp. 37– 40.

48 Stiegler, B. Technics and Time 3: Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011) p. 19.

49 Hagener, M., Hediger V. and Strohmaier, A. The State of Post- Cinema (London: Palgrave, 2016) p. 3.

50 Shaviro, S. Post Cinematic Affect (Washington: Zero Books, 2010) p. 2. 51 Berry, D. and Dieter, M. “Thinking Postdigital Aesthetics: Art,

Computation, Design” The State of Post- Cinema ed. Berry, D. and Dieter, M. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) pp. 2– 3.

52 Gaudreault, A. and Marion, P. Kinematic Turn: Film in the Digital Era and Its Ten Problems trans. Timothy Barnard (Montreal: Caboose Books, 2012) p. 40.

53 Gaudreault, A. and Marion, P. Kinematic Turn: Film in the Digital Era and Its Ten Problems trans. Timothy Barnard (Montreal: Caboose Books, 2012) p. 39.

54 Betancourt, M. The History of Motion Graphics: From Avant- Garde to Industry in the United States (Holicong: Wildside Press, 2013).

55 Fielding, R. A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) np.

56 Vogel, A. Film as a Subversive Art (New York: D.A.P., 1974). 57 Fielding, R. The Technique of Special Effects Cinematography

(New York: Focal Press, 1984) pp. 405– 406. 58 Manovich, L. “Understanding Meta- Media” CTheory (October 26, 2005). 59 Betancourt, M. “Experimental Animation and Motion Graphics”

Experimental Animation: From Analogue to Digital ed. Miriam Harris, Lilly Husbands and Paul Taberham (New York: Routledge, 2018).

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60 Betancourt, M. The History of Motion Graphics: From Avant- Garde to Industry in the United States (Holicong: Wildside Press, 2013) pp. 32– 34.

61 Seldes, G. “Some Amateur Movies” The New Republic (March 6, 1929). pp. 71– 72.

62 Leonard, H. The Film Index: Volume 1 The Film as Art (Arno Press, 1966) p. xxix.

63 Metz, C. Impersonal Enunciation, or the Place of Film trans. Corman Deane (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015) pp. 46– 51.

64 Leonard, H. The Film Index: Volume 1 The Film as Art (Arno Press, 1966) p. xxix.

65 Bard è che, M. and Brasillach, R. The History of Motion Pictures trans. Isis Barry (New York: Norton, 1938) pp. 238.

66 Foucault, M. This is not a Pipe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) p. 21.

67 Chisholm, B. “Reading Intertitles” Journal of Popular Film and Television vol. 15, no. 3. (1988) pp. 137– 142.

68 Eco, U. “Interpreting Serials” The Limits of Interpretation (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1994) pp. 86– 87.

69 Eco, U. “Interpreting Serials” The Limits of Interpretation (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1994) pp. 91– 93.

70 Eco, U. “Interpreting Serials” The Limits of Interpretation (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1994) pp. 88– 99.

71 Metz, C. Impersonal Enunciation, or the Place of Film trans. Corman Deane (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015) pp. 46– 51.

72 Drucker, J. “Graphic Devices: Narration and Navigation” Narrative vol. 16, no. 2. (May 2008) p. 121.

73 Betancourt, M. The History of Motion Graphics: From Avant- Garde to Industry in the United States (Holicong: Wildside Press, 2013). pp. 32– 34.

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