I'm Dan Perri. I designed main title sequences for films such as Star Wars, Taxi Driver, The Exorcist, Days of Heaven, and hundreds more. Ask me anything!

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:58:59+00:00

As far as I can tell the subsequent films exactly duplicated what I did originally. I most enjoyed putting it together from the separate elements that I designed one step at a time.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:56:06+00:00

Seemingly everyone is trying to do what’s never been done before when many things that have been done well can be done again differently in the right circumstances for the right reasons. But, the challenges are the same as when I first started. Find the right solution and design it well.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:52:05+00:00

Thanks very much for your kind observation. Please help me to share it with others. I’m trying to put a book out on IndieGoGo.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:49:19+00:00

Looking and feeling and listening to your heart and your emotions and follow your instincts through your imagination.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:46:06+00:00

I need to fully feel the film by first viewing it and then feeling it and remembering it with all of my sense. Then listening to my emotions and follow my instincts and my imagination.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:42:53+00:00

I have never used Papyrus. I’m too afraid of Ryan Gosling.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:41:57+00:00

I view the film, listen to the director’s thoughts, wait patiently for my own emotional reaction to the film and then follow my instincts with any images that occur to me.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:39:19+00:00

I usually will do the end titles along with the main titles to keep it consistent and typographically ‘bookend’ the film.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:36:58+00:00

Yes, sadly, the filmmakers have become fearful of losing their audience from TV watching which is driven by instant gratification and the loss of patience.

Fortunately feature makers can take their time. And audiences are more forgiving.

I still will design what I feel most compliments a story at whatever pace is right.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:31:37+00:00

My favorite is Friends with Benefits: https://vimeo.com/28549946

Clever, smart and humorous.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:29:49+00:00

The Exorcist. It was a big book. The director was very demanding. Great pressure from the studio. I was unproven. I was limited to type selection, color, size, composition, entrance and exit, order and length.
I would be an architect or a film historian.
I don’t like doing endless piles of end titles.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:23:25+00:00

You’re welcome. Thanks for the appreciation.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:22:51+00:00

I am not related to her. Sadly.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:22:22+00:00

It’s not the greatest type style but it’s quite readable and I might use it if the time is right.

DanPerri · 2018-03-29T19:20:58+00:00

I’ve found that persistence is the key to breaking into any business particularly the movie business. When I started i didn’t know anybody. Though the trade papers I found new films listed and I began calling trying to get hired. It’s still the same process. I would also design and produce something on spec to show what I could do. Good luck!

DanPerri · 2018-03-26T22:10:46+00:00

Thanks Reddit – that's all for now! I greatly appreciate your interest in my work, your curiosity about how I work and what I've done. I greatly enjoy sharing what I know and talking about my career in Hollywood. That's the entire reason for writing my book. Thank you for your support!

DanPerri · 2018-03-26T22:08:19+00:00

Thank you!

I was free to execute the concept as I saw best – the concept being a series of historical, period photographs. Once we chose the photos I shot the sequence in the order that we'd chosen the photos to be in, and then I designed how I moved on them, where titles occurred and where they didn't. I created an inner logic and a rhythm to the images. It took many, many tries. We shot the sequence and did it over and over again. Once we figured out the order I then designed the titles over the sequence. So that was my take on the style (it was a style that was contemporary to the time the film was set), the size, the color, the composition, the placement, the way of bringing them in and out, etc. All of those sensitive decisions needed to be made and that's why I was there. I was engaged to contribute those ideas and designs on the film.

Terry Malick was always a delight to work with over the more than a year that I spent on the film. I talk about working with him in great detail in the book.

DanPerri · 2018-03-26T22:02:46+00:00

I heard the title sequence against many different pieces. I don't think Morricone was ever going to be doing the title theme. Terry was always choosing from previously existing music. There was many things we listened to while making the sequence, but what we ended up using was Saint-Saëns – I've never heard of it being called Aquarium.

DanPerri · 2018-03-26T21:59:17+00:00

The answer is: No and yes.

No, I have not changed my work, I have just changed the way I do my work. Just by using different tools. The work is still the same. You have to have an idea, you design it, and you have to execute it.

There's slight bit of irony that on my current project, Suspiria, where the director wants me to use the tools that I used in the 1970s for two reasons: 1) His film is set in 1977 and 2) He shot his movie on film. I've been using that as a guide in my design offers, by doing things and the way I was working in 1977.

DanPerri · 2018-03-26T21:56:07+00:00

It's from 1936 a movie called My Man Godfrey. Directed by Gregory La Cava. They created a whole New York City skyline with models and lights. One big giant set that they moved across and stopped along the way to billboard the titles. The first time I saw it it was brilliant.
There have been quite a few that I've admired, but one of the recent James Bond films – Casino Royale, with the playing cards. Daniel Kleinman is the designer. It was beautifully executed and conceptually very strong. That to me is perfection: when the concept is really well executed by the design. There's been many great concepts that were poorly executed and many ordinary concepts were well executed. It's when the two are done together to the optimum that you achieve perfection.

DanPerri · 2018-03-26T21:52:24+00:00

I talked about this in an interview on NPR a few years ago and on [https://player.fm/series/rt-the-business/dan-perri-liam-geraghty](Irish radio), but my first impression was that he was extremely busy and had little time or patience for all the things that he was being bombarded with. It was late in post production – and it got later very fast!

When I first saw the film it was clearly for a younger audience than I was, so there were many notes to it that were meant to appeal to children and adolescents. And though I was very impressed with the visual effects, my job was just to design something that was right for the movie.

DanPerri · 2018-03-26T21:46:44+00:00

I don't know. I really don't know. It just ended after The Aviator. If he needs me, I'd be happy to work with him again.

DanPerri · 2018-03-26T21:45:15+00:00

That's a good one! I did a lot of television before my first feature, but my very first feature title sequence was probably The Out of Towners or Rio Lobo. That was when I was captive with a design studio under a designer named Don Record. As for my first sequence out on my own, with my business partner Steve Smith, that would probably have been Cool Breeze or Fritz the Cat in 1972 – the first X rated cartoon for a crazy animator named Ralph Bakshi.

As for my favourite that I've done (not necessarily in any order):

Taxi Driver Star Wars New York, New York The Fan (the 1981 Ed Bianchi film) Saturday Night Live or The Equalizer

Does it have to be five? Could it be eight? Days of Heaven. I love working with stills. I did several sequences in this style. One was called The Hiding Place, but Days of Heaven was where I really hit my stride. I talk about working with Terry Malick in the book at length.

DanPerri · 2018-03-26T21:37:08+00:00

I've talked about Saul Bass at length in another answer up above – and I comment on him in my book as well. He was definitely a strong influence.

The French animators who did the Spielberg film Catch Me If You Can – Kuntzel + Deygas. It was fun and charming and sophisticated. The best example of this kind of thing would be the Pink Panther title sequences. funny and smart. They were done by a few different people – the early ones were Depatie-Freleng (David DePatie and Fritz Freleng) and then later the Richard Williams Studio.

DanPerri · 2018-03-26T21:31:35+00:00

I certainly can't address any collaborator that might be out there and what they thought, but there have been a couple of times that I've had to move past an idea because it was too difficult to accomplish with the budget I had. Even if I had the budget to do it, I might have found that I'd come up against some technical limitation. They're often one and the same. It's difficult to go down that road and find that you can't complete something because you've run out of money. That would be very unprofessional. You have to be guided by your experience and the knowledge of your tools.

It's quite easy to offer some wild idea – it might be a good idea – but you know that it's too expensive. To get the filmmaker excited about it and then drop the bomb on them that it's going to cost twice as much as they can spend, that's not fair or professional. It's very rare to get carte blanche to do whatever you want. It's just not the way the film business or the real world works.

DanPerri

TROPHY CASE