"In my research of the time period of the film I discovered through design books and museum catalogs that the 'deco' style was very popular in architecture, product design, and general decorative ornamentation. When I visited the set filming at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood I noticed the entire lobby was decorated with deco images and decorative design styling. It was entirely encrusted in gold and silver and looked very rich, powerful and elegant. I photographed the entire frieze on the upper walls of the lobby and drew off of it as a basis for a large, wall mural of bas-relief images depicting moments from the film's story.
I developed two sample images with a sculptor. One was the deco 'diamond' logo used in a trade ad I designed for The Hollywood Reporter announcing the completion of production photography, and used on the front of the film as the main title. The second image was a medium shot of Leonardo Deception as Howard Hughes in the cockpit of one of his airplanes. I presented these bas relief pieces and a digital test showing how the sculptures would be used in a sequence to director Martin Scorsese and he was extremely impressed and excited at how this concept could set off the film and set the tone for the movie.
I wrestled with the titles production budget and finally determined that it was too expensive to create a real, three-dimensional sculpture and film it live. It was at this time that I developed the concept as a digital, three dimensional sequence and, with Mechnology - who were enormously supportive and contributive to the idea - we finally arrived at a very good looking, low resolution, working digital background sequence with sample titles. As we neared the delivery dates Mr. Scorsese determined that he wanted the titles at the end of the film and, further, his last shot was so emotionally wrenching that he couldn't conceive of a design sequence following the last image.
I finally created deco inspired type elements that looked as if they were sculpted of gold as the titles and with Mechnology, composited them over an empty, black background. It looked quite elegant and completed the film with a very tasteful, minimalist solution."
