By design, she gives credit where it’s due

Nina Saxon

Main title and title designer for feature films and television. She also designs company logos.

Company: Nina Saxon Film Design

Current projects: “Man of the Year,” “The Departed” and the upcoming “Deck the Halls”

Other credits: “Forrest Gump,” “Romancing the Stone,” “Snakes on a Plane.”

Legal eagles: “I work with the director, the editor, the producer, and I also work with the post-supervisor from the studio and the legal department of the studio because every title of the main credits has contractual issues about their sizes. So it’s actually quite a complicated process. It is not just design, it’s also interfacing and making sure all of the names are sized according to the contract, which relate directly to the size of the main title.”

Playing the percentages: “A main title is considered 100% size; an actor can be 100% or maybe 75%. We have to adhere to certain standards and we -- my company -- have to go to the legal department and post-supervisor, present what we want our titles to look like, and sometimes that involves the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild signing off on what is called a waiver. Let’s say we want everybody to be 50% because it serves the design better, and we want the main title to be very large. It may be that the writer has to be 75% and the director has to be 75% and they may be willing to waive it [to 50%] individually, but it still has to go through the guild to get approved.

“Generally, we are able to get the waivers that we need and / or I know going in -- because I have been doing it 25 years -- what I am up against. I know what the legal standards are.”

The process: “Every job takes on a life of its own. You can have six months or three weeks [to do the title]. It’s always different, whether it is white type over black, which I did for Martin Scorsese, who is a master. It may seem simple, but he’s going to look at everything down to the comma because he is such an incredibly precise director. Or if I do an entirely animated opening, then I am dealing not just with the animation but what do the names do, how do they move, how long are they on the screen? Does everybody have parity? Am I cheating anybody, because everybody should feel they have the same amount of screen time.”

‘Deck the Halls’: “The other thing that I do is animated motion graphic logos. In addition to the main and end titles, we are also going to animate the New Regency logo, which precedes the main titles. We are going to turn the R into a candy cane and we are going to have snow coming down and make it all kind of Christmasy. So it will get the audience in the right mood.”

Collaboration: “On ‘The Departed,’ Mr. Scorsese knew he wanted white type on black, and it fit the picture to be very stark and simple. Sometimes, a director has no idea what he wants. What I do is that I always see the film if I possibly can in a screening room or an editing room and read the script as well. And if someone doesn’t know what they want but the movie starts with action, but it’s a comedy and they want the audience to know it’s a comedy, perhaps the director will say to me, ‘I really need a comedic opening because the movie doesn’t start funny. So I need a two-minute opening with all the credits on it that tells the audience it’s OK to laugh.’ Then I will work with my company and do storyboards and come up with a few different concepts and show them to the director and the editor and the producer, and that will start the collaboration.

“It is sort of like working with a composer when you are writing music. You don’t necessarily hit it with the first concept, but you may be in the arena and develop that.”

Problem solving: “The problems always are schedule, finances and what happens when you are working to temp music and cutting to all the beats and they take a departure and the score changes. You have to make that adjustment. So it isn’t uncommon to go through seven to 10 different motion tests for people, especially in television, where the money is tight, the schedule is tight ...”

Beginnings: “I was born in Minneapolis but grew up in the San Fernando Valley. I went to UCLA, and I was going to be a psychologist. Everyone in my family is pretty much in medicine, so it was sort of a natural kind of path. But I took animation as an elective, and I loved it. I got my B.A. with that being my specialty and essentially completing a psychology minor at the same time, which really comes into play with all of this because a lot of what I do is creative, but a lot of it is service and being there for people.”

Breaking in: “I started at the bottom. I came out of college and I got a job doing what is called rotoscoping [an animation technique] and I worked for a company called Modern Film Effects and I worked on the ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. I did all the laser bullets. That taught me the process because I was working with how to finish things and what was involved and the mistakes you can make.

“From there I worked on commercials, and then my mentor, an editor called Donn Cambern, took me under his wing and asked me to learn about title design by studying it with him.”

Resides: Santa Monica

Union or guild: None

Age: 53

-- Susan King