letterpressing film titles

Titles are among my favorite parts of the filmmaking process. I have a huge fetish for them, be they Woody Allen's elegant white Windsor on black or the opulent animated sequences featured on Forget the Film, Watch the Titles. The choice of typeface and the construction of the sequence can stamp the film and subtly affect the experience of the entire work.

But beyond that, type is fun.

Because type is fun, this semester, I'm taking a letterpress class. This means I have access to a printing press and wood type. Naturally I had to take advantage of this and handprint the titles for Make Me Stronger.

Each of these letters were handset, and all the indentations and scratches exist in the original letters - markers of decades of use. Not that long ago wood type was the standard media for fast-printed posters and other such ephemera. I enjoy how making the titles for my film - what ultimately will be an ephemeral thing - results in ink-stained hands and tired muscles.

(Side note: printing used to be such a violent laborious act. Metal lead type, for instance, was created by shooting hot molten lead into molds. Letterpress is hardcore!)

I will not be printing all the titles like this. (Maybe in an alternate reality where I have a week to set aside to handset all the letters. Letterpress unfortunately takes time, especially when learning. The slow, meditative process is part of its charm. But one can dream.) However, I will be letterpressing the poster - and there may possibly be other secret items.

More information in the future.