THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR has long been a favorite of mine.
(You’ll probably hear me say that about a
I’ve also never been a fan of anachronistic packaging. So for
instance, if the film was made in 1955 then the packaging or marketing
materials should look as if they were made around that same time, with a 1955 approach
to the art style. After all, the cover is meant to represent the product inside.
(
So in representing a romantic action fantasy film from 1993, the requisite I set for myself was to create a cover piece that prominently featured the two famous leads, hints at their interaction and teases the action element, while setting the tone and atmosphere in a bold visual style befitting a film from that era.
Many currently popular art styles, commonly represented in the awesome work of Mondo, reinterpret the visual tone of old films with modern graphic art styles. As if to say, “What if John Carpenter’s THE THING were made TODAY? How would it marketed to a younger generation? What if it looked more like the cover of a graphic novel?” I considered this, but ultimately felt old school was the proper way to go to represent it respectfully. Plus I’m kinda old school myself (or maybe just old), so it was just more natural for me to go that way. Who knows.
This was another Hong Kong film that didn't have a "designed" font for the English title. Just a boring sans-serif ARIAL. So I created a distressed jagged logo with flowing strands of the word BRIDE literally turning white. Set against a blood red swath of watercolor. The billowing snow and hair, and the cracking whip give it some movement, even if the characters are static in their poses. Much like the start/stop feel of the film's action. You can almost hear the image. Leslie Cheung protects the magical rose (as it blooms in his heart) with his broken sword.For the disc art I went with a simpler more graphic style approach. I had less than a hour to do something so I did a simple image (emphasizing Lin's flowing locks) that would hopefully reproduce well when printed on a plastic disc. (I was fairly new to this UK client and wasn't sure of the image quality of their on-disc printing.) I live in the US and their products are not commonly found on shelves here. Heck, blu-rays are getting harder to find in stores in general, much less 30 year-old Hong Kong films re-released by UK companies in Region B.
It's curious how one thing leads to another. I don't think I would've been approached by the German company to do the art for THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR, if I had not ALREADY done the same thing for the UK company. But this stereotyping as a "Brigitte Lin Artist" would not last long, as I was soon off to illustrate JACKIE CHAN, SAMMO HUNG, and YUEN BIAO in three exciting adventures.