Kyle Cooper

Last updated

Kyle Cooper
Born
Education University of Massachusetts Amherst
Yale School of Art
Known for Title Sequence Design
Website https://prologue.com/

Kyle Cooper is an American designer known for his main title sequence work. He has produced and directed over 350 visual effects and title sequences for motion pictures and broadcast. [1]

Contents

Early life

Childhood

Cooper was born on a Friday the 13th in Salem, Massachusetts. As a child, Cooper spent his days obsessed with sketching monsters. [2] He was also fascinated by comic books, monster makeup books, and horror movies. Cooper stated in an interview with Revert to Saved that he had always wanted to be a film director, “I’ve always been interested in film and editing—more specifically, the juxtaposition of images in film or on a single page. However, I felt it more comprehensive to tell stories over time. Print design can provide great single moments, but I wanted to work with a sequence that had a beginning, middle and end". [3]

Education

When it came time for Cooper to go to college, he attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, studying interior architecture. While on the brink of failing, he convinced his professor to let him pass by making a promise -- that he would never actually work as an interior designer. [2]

Cooper then went on to earn his Master of Fine Arts in graphic design at Yale University in 1988. [2] He studied independently with renowned American modernist Paul Rand during his time there. Cooper wrote his thesis on director Sergei Eisenstein, and was awarded the Mohawk Paper Traveling Fellowship to complete his thesis research in the then Soviet Union. [1]

Career

Early work

After graduating with his M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art, Cooper went on to work at R/GA (then known as R/Greenberg Associates) from 1988 to 1996, first in New York City and then Los Angeles. During this period, Cooper created the title sequence for the 1995 American crime film Seven , a seminal work which received critical acclaim [4] and is credited for inspiring a number of younger designers for years to come. According to Cooper, at the time he made the title sequence for Seven main title sequences were behind what was happening in print, music videos, and commercials. Cooper has stated he aimed to create main titles that would raise the bar creatively for future title sequences. [5]

Founded companies

In 1996, Cooper founded Imaginary Forces with Peter Frankfurt and Chip Houghton. Imaginary Forces went on to become one of the most successful creative agencies in Hollywood that came out of the West Coast division of R/GA. “We have spent a long time building and refining a brilliant creative and production team… Keeping this group together as our own company is truly exciting,” commented Cooper about the name change. [6] Too involved by the business side of running a design company the size of Imaginary Forces, Cooper decided it was time for him to focus more on his creative work. In 2003, Cooper left Imaginary Forces and founded Prologue, a creative agency in which he works in a small team while concentrating on creating title sequences.

Influences

Cooper has claimed his greatest influence in his choice of profession is Stephen Frankfurt’s opening title sequence for To Kill a Mockingbird . Cooper also pulls inspiration from William Shakespeare – his former production company, Imaginary Forces, takes its name from a line in the prologue of Shakespeare's Henry V . The idea to name the company after this prologue is based on the idea that opening titles often act like a prologue to a film. This of course can also be seen as an influence for his current company, “Prologue”. All that said, Wired Magazine notes Cooper isn’t typically hired due to a signature “style”. He’s hired to "dig under the celluloid and tap into the symbolism of a film". [7] This was a precedent he started with some of his earliest work, notably Seven.

Seven Title Sequence

Cooper's work on David Fincher's film Seven is arguably his most iconic work. The sequence is notable for its use table-top photography and tactile techniques. Industry website Art-of-the-Title describes the process: "The typography itself... was hand-etched into black-surface scratchboard and manipulated during the film transfer process to further smear and jitter it." Rather than uses digital techniques Cooper's team largely assembled the sequence by hand. [8]

Awards and acclaim

Details magazine credits Cooper with “almost single-handedly revitalizing the main title sequence as an art form”. [9] Los Angeles magazine calls him the “Da Vinci of main titles”. [1] He is “one of the top 50 biggest and best creative thinkers from the last 20 years of advertising and consumer culture,” according to Creativity magazine. [1] Wired magazine states, “Not since Saul Bass’ legendary preludes … have credits attracted such attention”. [1]

Cooper is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and holds the title of honorary Royal Designer for Industry from the Royal Society of Arts in London. He has seven Emmy nominations and two wins. In 2014, he was also the recipient of the lifetime achievement medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, recognizing him for designing title sequences for film and television with a “bold and unexpected style”. [2]

Selected film, television, and game title sequences

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rodan</span> Godzilla kaiju

Rodan is a fictional monster, or kaiju, which first appeared as the title character in Ishirō Honda's 1956 film Rodan, produced and distributed by Toho. Following its debut standalone appearance, Rodan went on to be featured in numerous entries in the Godzilla franchise, including Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Invasion of Astro-Monster, Destroy All Monsters, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II and Godzilla: Final Wars, as well as in the Legendary Pictures-produced film Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

<i>Seven</i> (1995 film) American film by David Fincher

Seven is a 1995 American crime thriller film directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. It stars Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and John C. McGinley. Set in an unnamed, crime-ridden city, Seven's narrative follows disenchanted, nearly retired detective William Somerset (Freeman) and his newly transferred partner David Mills (Pitt) as they try to stop a serial killer from executing a series of murders based on the seven deadly sins.

A title sequence is the method by which films or television programmes present their title and key production and cast members, utilizing conceptual visuals and sound. It typically includes the text of the opening credits, and helps establish the setting and tone of the program. It may consist of live action, animation, music, still images, and/or graphics. In some films, the title sequence is preceded by a cold open.

<i>Godzilla vs. Destoroyah</i> 1995 film by Takao Okawara

Godzilla vs. Destoroyah is a 1995 Japanese kaiju film directed by Takao Okawara, with special effects by Kōichi Kawakita. Distributed by Toho and produced under their subsidiary Toho Pictures, it is the 22nd installment in the Godzilla franchise, and is the seventh and final film in the franchise's Heisei period. The film features the fictional monster characters Godzilla, Godzilla Junior and Destoroyah, and stars Takuro Tatsumi, Yōko Ishino, Yasufumi Hayashi, Sayaka Osawa, Megumi Odaka, Masahiro Takashima, Momoko Kōchi and Akira Nakao, with Kenpachiro Satsuma as Godzilla, Hurricane Ryu as Godzilla Junior, and Ryo Hariya as Destoroyah.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Adams (comics)</span> American comic book artist

Arthur Adams is an American comic book artist and writer. He first broke into the American comic book industry with the 1985 Marvel Comics miniseries Longshot. His subsequent interior comics work includes a number of Marvel's major books, including The Uncanny X-Men, Excalibur, X-Factor, Fantastic Four, Hulk, and Ultimate Comics: X, as well as books by various other publishers, such as Action Comics, Vampirella, The Rocketeer, and The Authority. Adams has also illustrated books featuring characters for which he has a personal love, such as Godzilla, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Gumby, the latter of which garnered him a 1988 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al Milgrom</span> American comic book writer

Allen L. Milgrom is an American comic book writer, penciller, inker and editor, primarily for Marvel Comics. He is known for his 10-year run as editor of Marvel Fanfare; his long involvement as writer, penciler, and inker on Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man; his four-year tenure as West Coast Avengers penciller; and his long stint as the inker of X-Factor. He often inks Jim Starlin's work. Milgrom is the co-creator of DC superhero Firestorm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howard Mackie</span> American comic book editor and writer (born 1958)

Howard Mackie is an American comic book editor and writer. He has worked almost exclusively for Marvel Comics and is best known as the co-creator of the Danny Ketch version of the Ghost Rider character.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phil Jimenez</span> American comics artist and writer

Phil Jimenez is an American comics artist and writer known for his work as writer/artist on Wonder Woman from 2000 to 2003, as one of the five pencilers of the 2005–2006 miniseries Infinite Crisis, his collaborations with writer Grant Morrison on New X-Men and The Invisibles, and his artistry for his 2021 critically acclaimed partnership with writer Kelly Sue DeConnick on Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons.

Conrad Winchester Hall is an American cinematographer. He is the son of the Oscar-winning cinematographer Conrad Hall.

Patrick Tatopoulos is a Greek-French production designer and director who lives and works in the United States. His designs have appeared in numerous motion pictures, including Pitch Black, Underworld, I, Robot, The Chronicles of Riddick, Independence Day, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Stargate, Spawn, Godzilla, Stuart Little, 300, I Am Legend, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League, 10,000 BC and Live Free or Die Hard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Ramsey</span> American illustrator, storyboard artist, and filmmaker

Peter A. Ramsey is an American illustrator, storyboard artist, and filmmaker. He is best known for directing DreamWorks Animation's Rise of the Guardians (2012), becoming the first African American to direct a major American animated film, and co-directing Sony Pictures Animation's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). For Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, he became the first African American to be nominated for and win an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Every year since its inception, the Japanese Academy has awarded the Japan Academy Film Prize for Outstanding Foreign Language Film. The year that any given film is nominated is not based on the film's domestic release date but rather on the date it is released in Japan. As delays of over four months are not uncommon, many films are nominated in Japan the following year after their release to the Japanese market. In fact, not one of the five films nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for Best Picture had been released in Japan by February 15, 2008, the date of the Japan Academy Prize Ceremony.

Martin Elliot Isenberg is an American animation writer. He is best known for his role as co-story editor on Beast Machines and Transformers: Animated, and for his work on the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. He also wrote or co-wrote scripts for Ben 10, Danny Phantom, Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, Action Man, Beetlejuice, The Mask, G.I. Joe: Renegades, X-Men: The Animated Series and Spider-Man: The Animated Series. From 1991–2003, he frequently collaborated with Robert N. Skir.

Michael J. Austin is a fine artist who lives and works in the UK. Initially a comic book artist and illustrator, his painterly style led to him leaving this genre and concentrating on fine art in 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert N. Skir</span> American animator

Robert N. Skir is a writer best known for his work in television animation on shows including X-Men, Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, and Spider-Man. He co-created and served as Story Editor on programs including Transformers: Beast Machines, Extreme Ghostbusters, Godzilla: The Series, and DinoSquad, and co-developed the series X-Men: Evolution. From 1991 to 2003, he frequently collaborated with Marty Isenberg.

Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc. (ADI) is an American special effects company specializing in animatronics and prosthetic make-up, headquartered in Chatsworth, California. It was founded in 1988 by Stan Winston alumni Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis who hails from Phoenix, Arizona. Notable work includes Death Becomes Her, for which they won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, Starship Troopers, which was also nominated for an Oscar, and the practical creature effects seen in the Alien franchise from Alien 3 onward. Woodruff also portrays creatures in the films ADI works on, such as the Alien.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Allen Booth</span> British baronet

Sir Douglas Allen Booth, 3rd Baronet, is an Anglo-American aristocratic screen writer and television producer.

Ashley Livingston Thorp is an illustrator, graphic designer, and creative director for feature films, commercial marketing, and print.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Kyle Cooper". IMDb. Retrieved May 8, 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Kyle Cooper". AIGA. Archived from the original on July 5, 2014. Retrieved May 3, 2014.
  3. "From the archives: an interview with Kyle Cooper". Revert to Saved. Retrieved May 8, 2017.
  4. Solana, Gemma; Antonio Boneu (2008). Uncredited – Graphic Design and Opening Titles in Movies (2nd ed.). Barcelona: Index Book. ISBN   978-84-96309-52-4 . Retrieved March 28, 2010.
  5. Wolting, Femke; Remco Vlaanderen (February 12, 2010). "Stars Aligned for Se7en's Main Title". SubmarineChannel. Retrieved March 25, 2010.
  6. Weiner, Rex (December 2, 1996). "Title card change: RGA/LA becomes Imaginary Forces". Variety.
  7. Gibson, Jon M. "The Dark Genius of Kyle Cooper". WIRED. Retrieved May 8, 2017.
  8. Radatz, Ben (July 10, 2012). "Se7en". Art of the Title . Retrieved August 22, 2023.
  9. "Kyle Cooper - FITC". FITC. Retrieved May 8, 2017.
  10. "Sierra Entertainment Partners With Hollywood's Prologue Films For Scarface: The World Is Yours Intro Title Sequence". GamesIndustry.biz. October 4, 2006. Retrieved October 25, 2021.