AS Media
Progress tracker of AS Media project by Matthew Facer
Candidate Number: 7547
Title Sequence Designer Research
Kyle Cooper is an American title sequence designer born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1962. He's done a lot of work on films, games and even TV shows. Most notably in the gaming industry, he produced the design for the titles of the Metal Gear Solid series whereas in the television side of things he's done a lot of work for American Horror Story and Homicide: Life on the Street. In terms of filmography, he's created titles for such films like Se7en, Home Alone, Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) and many many more.
He studied at University of Massachusetts Amherst initially where he obtained a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts degree) in interior architecture. He then went on to attend Yale University where he studied under Paul Rand in Graphic Design, a subject in which he then obtained an MFA (Master of Fine Arts degree) in 1988. Very early on in his career, he became a creative director at the R/GA offices in New York and LA. It was here that he then created the title sequence for the 1995 film, Se7en which is arguably his biggest achievement. It led to Cooper insipiring a lot of younger students. Move on through the years and in 1996, Cooper was one of the co-founders behind the creative agency Imaginary Forces alongside Peter Frankfurt and Chris Houghton. Imaginary Forces went on to become one of the most successful creative agencies to come out of Hollywood from the R/GA West Coast division. In 2001, he also directed his own feature film, called New Port South although this wasn't quite as successful as his many title sequence films.
In 2003, he decided he had reached his creative limit with Imaginary Forces so he left and founded Prologue Films which was another creative agency located in Malibu initially but then moving to Venice Beach, California in 2008. With Prologue, he established himself even further by working on select projects such as Home Alone and The Bonfire of the Vanities which were hugely successful films. In 2008, he was a finalist in the National Design Awards and he's been nominated for 5 Emmy awards as well as receiving an Academy Award in 2008. He holds the title of Honorary Royal Designer for Industry from the Royal Arts Academy of London and, most recently, in 2014 he received an AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Art) medal.
His most renowned work on Se7en had some very noticeable title features. Cooper is very good at making his title sequences reflect what the film is about and he portrays the genres very well. The idea behind Se7en was that the Helvitica font would merge with typography to hint at the killer from the film being hte one writing the credits himself. Cooper said that, "it was from the mind of the killer" and he wanted it, "to be like the killer did the film opticals himself". Doing it this way adds an air of mystery and chills to the audience and really puts across the idea of what the film is that they're about to watch. This particular sequence has inspired a whole host of other crime genre films to copy its style and the IFC actually ended up ranking Se7en's title sequence as the third greatest title sequence of all time in 2011! (trailing behind Saul Bass' Vertigo sequence and Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night sequence)
Another title sequence Cooper is known best for is his 1996 sequence for Mission Impossible. This took inspiration from the 1960's TV show which always began with a fuse being lit leading into an explosion of action and titles. The titles have slightly less meaning for this film but the explosive action obviously depicts the genre straight away. A point that can be noticed is the scenes from the film that pop up between credits which represents the urgency that the protagonist will come against during the film but besides that, there's not too much representation. In terms of how the titles appear on screen, there's a very bold white font on a black background which makes the text and film titles stand out a lot to the audience.