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Just a warning: if you haven't yet seen the movie, the article contains significant plot spoilers. Moon is a fantastic movie, so go watch it on Netflix then read all about the typography afterwards.
This is a great film, but I'm not sure why knowing more about the plot or the background to the design would ruin it for you? Do you also worry about spoilers for works of literature or films from the past? What about spoilers for young people on the entirety of human output? I agree everyone should go watch this film, as it was really fascinating and a probably far more realistic take on living in space than most -…
For example, the black-backgrounded GUIs with wide text on them remind me of old DOS-era applications, but they're displayed on modern high-resolution flat-panel displays.
The T-shirt is also painfully '80s, as directly noted. The only music mentioned is an early-'90s song that was hokey the day it came out. The Flowbee and the magazine are other noted '80sisms.
The rescue-crew-manifest with poor-quality black-and-white images on a color screen? That could've been lifted directly from the '80s-era Alien films.
Which really, all makes sense - the '80s were the end of the space race. For space-travel nostalgia, that's where you go for modern Gen X movie fans.
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I've actually used one of these once. Once. If I cared that little about how my hair looks, I'd just get some clippers.
I thought Flowbee was just clippers - the thing I hate most about cutting hair is the hair getting everywhere, especially short clippings. That's exactly the pain point being addressed with vacuum haircutting isn't it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you do consistently find things spoiled by foreknowledge, there is a simple solution - just avoid reading articles or discussions which mention the film before you see it (stop reading at the word Moon!), no need to call out spoilers because every meaningful discussion of this film will be a spoiler in some sense, and many people enjoy discussing films and books online after or before they see them. I'm not sure w…
Like you, I often re-read books or re-watch DVDs. But I find the enjoyment that I gain from this is different the first reading/viewing, and I'd prefer to experience both. Spoilers would detract from this.
I'm not really a font nerd, but I disagree with: " Moon uses an interesting angular typeface for its location-establishing shot... This typeface is OCR-A, which was designed in 1968 for use in optical character recognition systems.... Moreover, it looks like THE FUTURE, and so it makes a perfect choice for on-screen interstitial positioning shots. " OCR-A does not look like THE FUTURE; it looks like the future in 196…
Lots of video games do that for dialog if it's just printed on the screen and there's no voice track.
I'm not really a font nerd, but I disagree with: " Moon uses an interesting angular typeface for its location-establishing shot... This typeface is OCR-A, which was designed in 1968 for use in optical character recognition systems.... Moreover, it looks like THE FUTURE, and so it makes a perfect choice for on-screen interstitial positioning shots. " OCR-A does not look like THE FUTURE; it looks like the future in 196…
It is. I think it's necessary in this case - it's used as a mechanism to distinguish it from the credits, which are being displayed at the same time (e.g. [1] from the next shot). The typing noise and animation causes the audience to pay attention to it, even if they weren't paying attention to the credits.
In most other cases, it's just foley - audiences expect to hear futuristic computer-clicky noises to accompany their space-text, so it feels weirder to leave it out than to leave it in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. Even without plot twists, a movie is often a process of discovery. You explore the character, narration, allusions, themes, and language in the order they're shown in the film. And Moon in particular is such a carefully paced movie. So while I agree that the plot spoilers may not matter much in this case, I think you'd have a much different and likely inferior experience watching Moon after reading this b…
If you do consistently find things spoiled by foreknowledge, there is a simple solution - just avoid reading articles or discussions which mention the film before you see it (stop reading at the word Moon!), no need to call out spoilers because every meaningful discussion of this film will be a spoiler in some sense, and many people enjoy discussing films and books online after or before they see them. I'm not sure w…
That's lovely for you. You are not me. You are basically doing this:
me: "I don't like artichokes."
you: "Oh, that can't be true! You must never have actually eaten artichokes! Surely you are laboring under a tragic and inexplicable delusion! Here, hold still while I stuff artichokes down your throat! You'll thank me later!"
Yes, thank you, I have had artichokes. I have never enjoyed a work of fiction more for having pivotal plot details spoiled, and I have often enjoyed it less. I am quite capable of evaluating my own reactions to things, thank you very much. You are not doing a public service by telling everybody to just be more like you.
