MovieChat Forums > Into the Night (1985) Discussion > A typograhical question about the title ...

A typograhical question about the title on the front of the DVD case

posted 18 years ago by Paynebyname
8 replies | jump to latest

I work for a small firm of graphic designers and we noted with interest how on the front of the dvd case the title of the film is written in white but the 'g' of night is a cream colour and slanted at an angle.

We were wondering what the reason might be for this. Could it be to represent Michelle Pfieffer 'shaking up' Jeff's life or it coming off the rails hence the erratic g or is the angled g to represent jeff lying down to sleep.

This is only a light hearted question and not something to lose sleep over but if anyone else has any theories we'd be interested to hear them.

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[–] jmdeur 18 years ago

It would be interesting to look up some of the original theatre material (posters, etc.) to see if the crooked "g" was part of the original marketing - if it's just the dvd cover, I'm not sure it means much since that's pretty downstream of the original work involving the director, producer, etc. of the film and they probably didn't have much input. It's certainly not part of the titles shown in the movie - they're all in script lettering. Unless it was just done to make the dvd cover more eyecatching, I would suspect it's referring to Ed's life beginning to fall apart...

[–] chris-rogers2 18 years ago

I have the original soundtrack LP (vinyl) from first release and one of the first VHS editions, both of which accurately reflect the original poster; having Googled the current DVD, the answer is simple - the latter does not use the same font used in the original publicity material, which was a pseudo-handwriting style. I have no idea why, except that the original was designed for wider, landscape-style material than DVD boxes. It's a shame, but there you go...

[–] Paynebyname 18 years ago

Thanks for your responses guys. I happened to bring it in the office and we were just curious as to the reasoning behind it.

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[–] Professional_Appreciator 18 years ago

By the way, the dvd cover (and the font) is very unatractive...It seems very retro in comparission with other dvd from old movies wich are "actualized"
(sorry of the bad english spelling)

[–] Mattaphysics 17 years ago

On a similar topic, I have always liked the original theatrical poster for this film. Every time i would see the old VHS in a video store, I would pick it up and examine it for a minute or two. Don't ask me why, I was just attracted to it for some reason. It probally has to do with the city skyline background.

Please visit: http://www.dobermanfilm.com/

[–] cdimdb 17 years ago

You bring up a really interesting point. I've yet to see this particular typographical device anywhere else in the movie at all, and in fact it's odd that they didn't just use the scrawly script title from the film.

Which makes one wonder why they didn't. Maybe by the time the produced the DVD, they couldn't get a sufficiently high-resolution copy of that text, and couldn't be bothered to recreate it from scratch, but I wonder…

This is fundamentally a sort-of comedy, with a happy ending and all. Though it has some very tough and extremely gory moments, the underlying thread is an offbeat romance drama. If you look at the cover and ignore the text, the impression is pretty dark and tense. Seems to me that the canted (broken?) 'g' is intended to suggest a little kookiness, and lighten the impression, just a touch.

It's so subtle that it's hard to know if it works as intended. I'd not even noticed it. People's subconscious minds do pick such things up, though, and it wouldn't surprise me if the paying public got a better idea of what they were going to see from this title, than if they'd used the messy script version.

Nicely spotted - thanks!

CD

[–] chris-rogers2 17 years ago

Just checking my old comments and saw this... I think you'd nailed it; having seen the film when it came out, I recall that many critics were unhappy at the mix of (slapstick) comedy and violence, and were thus confused about its tone - though one could argue Landis had form in this area (American Werewolf). So yes, I think you're right. Still a shame though!

[–] Paynebyname 16 years ago

I agree that it probably is to explain the rather 'kooky' nature of the film. Considering that they have used it on both types of DVD cover even though the fonts are slightly different, I guess they are trying to make some kind of point and that's probably it.

Continuing the typograhical thing, has anyone noticed that on the black cover the dot above the i in 'night' is more of a crescent moon. That could of course be down to a dodgy scan in!

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