Dan Perri

Daniel Richard Perri born August 11 1945 is an American film and television title sequence designer He has worked in film title design since the 1970s and has been responsible for the main titles of several notable films including The Exorcist 1973 Taxi Driver 1976 Star Wars 1977 Raging Bull 1980 Airplane 19801 and Suspiria 2018 Perri made contact with the film graphics designer Saul Bass and began to pester him for work at his studio on Sunset Boulevard Eventually Perri found work with Bass through his illustrator Art Goodman During his service in the US Navy Perri served on the USS Repose and designed an onboard newspaper entitled The Repose Reprise After serving in the Navy Perri went to work with Cinefx alongside Phill Norman Wayne Fitzgerald Don Record and a former school friend Steve Smith After a year both Perri and Smith quit and went on to form their independent design studio Perri Smith The pair worked together from 1969 to 1973 mostly on small lowbudget television features but their credits also included films such as Electra Glide in Blue and several of Gene Cormans blaxploitation films The designers were often exploited and clients sometimes failed to pay and eventually the business folded Perris big break came in 1973 when he was commissioned by Billy Friedkin to produce the main titles for The Exorcist his first solo project With a blockbuster film in his portfolio Perri was now able to attract more work and soon found himself working on highprofile titles For Nashville 1975 Robert Altman commissioned a main title sequence and a logo to be used in marketing Perri produced an unusual kitschy sequence inspired by lowbudget KTel Records television commercials complete with a loud brash voiceover by Johnny Grant In 1976 Martin Scorsese brought Perri in to design the titles for Taxi Driver Perri took second unit footage and colortreated the film through a process of film copying and slitscan resulting in a highly stylized graphic sequence that evoked the underbelly of New York City through lurid colors glowing neon signs distorted nocturnal images and deep black levels accompanied by Bernard Herrmanns jazz soundtrack Possibly Perris bestknown title sequence project came about in 1976 when his friend James Nelson was working on postproduction for a new space fantasy film Star Wars Nelson recommended Perri to director George Lucas who invited Perri to Industrial Light Magic Lucasfilms postproduction operation at Van Nuys California Lucas briefed Perri to take inspiration from old 1930s cinema serials such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers that had inspired Lucas to write much of his Star Wars story After struggling to come up with a concept that Lucas liked Perri eventually developed a concept for presenting a textual introduction based on the opening credits of the 1939 Cecil B DeMille film Union Pacific in which the credits are shown distorted by a sharp perspective and rolling along a railroad track towards a distant vanishing point Lucas approved of the idea and Perri produced sketches and prototype mechanical artwork supported by storyboard artwork drawn by the production artist Alex Tavoularis This gave birth to the nowfamiliar opening crawl sequence that appears in the Star Wars films