Last week we completed some DVD menu design work for Riverbend Entertainment's upcoming release, "Made-Up" (starring Tony Shalhoub and Brooke Adams).

The main menu

The main menu was a motion menu. Because we had a beautiful video montage with which to work, this was perhaps the easiest part of the project. Our job here was simply to create the "buttons" and selector graphics.

Copyright 2005 Riverbend Entertainment, LLP

Doing our work in Combustion, first we masked out an area with which to work -- the edges, and a lower-thirds area. Then we added a gaussian blur, a glow effect, a bit of desaturation, and played with the histogram a bit. We also added a touch of blur and glow to the overall image.

This way the text pops against the diffused background, while we still get a nice clear view of the action in the center of the frame.

Scene selections menus

Here are two of the six menus we did for the chapter/scene selections.

Copyright 2005 Riverbend Entertainment, LLP

This first one is actually the last menu for the chapter selections. It proved to be a bit of a challenge because we had five chapter selections instead of the four offered on each of the other chapter menus -- this in addition to the menu selections listed down the left side of the screen.

Copyright 2005 Riverbend Entertainment, LLP

I liked this one mainly because of the background photo. The approach we undertook for this entire project was to use the production value in the film itself. In "Made-Up," this meant using the actors themselves. The film really has a wonderful amiable atmosphere, and we tried to capture that in the stills we used for the menus.

On all the chapter selections menus, we de-emphasized the background by using a combination of glows and desaturation. This allowed the smaller stills representing the chapters themselves to pop out.

The extras menu

Since Tony Shalhoub directed "Made-Up," we thought it made obvious sense to use a shot of him while doing some "directing work" ... like standing at a video tap monitor.

Copyright 2005 Riverbend Entertainment, LLP

Initially we had tried a bit of a "zip zoom" effect on this shot, to make it look like we were zooming rapidly in on him, but the effect was too distracting so we abandoned it. Instead we opted for a bit of a diffuse glow, radial blur and some burning of the background where it threatened to compete with the text.

The subtitles menu

Copyright 2005 Riverbend Entertainment, LLP

This was one of my favorite stills from the entire movie. We used this one for the subtitles menu because the photo itself seemed to ask, What are they saying? Since the composition seemed to fit the text layout so well, we opted not to step on the photo so much.

It's always fun to work on good material

Over the years, I've worked on some real cinematic dogs. Producing a quality trailer or one-sheet for a stinker of a movie can be like trying to draw blood from a stone. Ironically it can be the most difficult and painful with an independent movie that strives to break out of the mold, but simply does not work. Then, if you worked on the picture, your heart aches over the missed opportunities; if you're doing the marketing, you're often left puzzled as to how to position the film. On the other hand, the easiest jobs can be the genre pieces. There it's clear what the movie needs, and it's downright obvious how to sell it. However, there's only so much genre you can take. (There's a good reason why the big action pictures need real "stars" -- the stars make the forumula watchable, maybe even enjoyable.)

"Made-Up" breaks all the conventions, and is all the more delightful for it. Having been able to work on this project -- even in such a tangential way as doing design work for the DVD menus -- has put a nice gloss on the first major project for this start-up company.

This was a last-minute job that we undertook on short notice when Riverbend, unhappy with the menu designs they were getting from the graphic designer they had retained, turned to us. Unfortunately for us, our work will go uncredited as the "DVD credits" roll already had been produced.

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