MICHAEL RILEY

By Sam Town

Michael Harold Riley

1968- Born in Palo Alto, California, USA Michael is a graduate of Rhode Island

school of design. His first title design was ‘Saturday

Night Live’ in 1975, after this he had a gap of 17 years before being the title designer of Disney film ‘Newsies/The News Boys.

Riley has won numerous awards for is film design work and nominated three times for a Emmy.

Teaser Designer

Riley also does teaser design credited for such films like: I Robot, Signs, Madagascar 2 and most noticeably spider-man.

It seems like his designs are focusing on the main character (in the center) with a important scene in the background (I, Robot- Robots in the background which is a significant scene in the film). This grabs the audiences attention and portrays as being more action style films.

Gattaca

One of Riley’s more famous designs was Gattaca(1997) he had the chance to not only work on the title design, but also the marketing. Andrew Niccol (director) wanted the main title to look like the marketing which Riley says is to ‘to keep it consistent’ and ‘not thinking your going to see a specific genre and being disappointed’. The film wasn’t successful in the box office but Riley’s work is highly credited by critics.

Temple Grandin

Temple Grandin is a animal scientist and professor at Colorado State University who’s ideas on reducing stress in a animal slaughter house influenced many changes in animal cruelty law.

Riley got sketch/ drawings from Temple herself, he used all the drafting drawings to illustrate what she did for animal rights.

Shine Studios

Michael Riley is creative director of Shine Los Angeles. From this he has be apart of many titles that have similar style to them.

Influence

It’s hard to find any influence to his work because he has a vast amount of work which doesn’t have any similar factors to them apart from his animations.

Road, Movie

The credit sequence is very colorful and fast, which would keep audiences watching till the end of the film. From the credits you can get an idea on either the main scenes of the film or a future just after when the film ends.

From the title design we would expect perhaps, a casino style film. The red seems to be a gun shot expanding which could tell us about death/pain within the film.The blue is like a French royal colour perhaps significant to the situation in the film and the gold is shaped like a gun barrel which could indicate fear or power, the colour corresponds with this to indicate wealth and power.

Traitor

Interview With Michael Riley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ef9hpkv5SI&feature=player_embedded#!