A Brief History of Title Sequence Design
A Brief History of Title Sequence Design
Table of
Contents
The Silent
The Classic Era |
Film Era | 1
7
The Saul
Bass Age | 13
The Modern Title | 19
The Television Title | 27
Le Voyage dans la Lune Georges Méliès, 1902
The
Silent Film
Era
1860 –1927 It has taken a long time to build up title sequence design from its origins on simple introductory title cards to where it is today. This study splits the time line of film title sequences into four eras: the early development of film titles, the classical era, the post war era, and contemporary film titles. The division is based upon historical and technological developments that have significantly influenced film title design. Even though the history of film credits has been broken into specific time periods, the actual history is not so linear. In this respect, this division is only meant to be a guide, as there are many overlaps between different time periods. Film was born in the late nineteenth century during the revolution and development of science and technology. It pushed the envelope of peoples’ imagination and was regarded as the marvel that opened a new era of visual expression and narrative communication. 1
Born as an idol of human culture, film has been largely enjoying the benefits of our civilization. The main function of film titles is to display the movie’s title and to credit the director, the producer, the actors and other artists and technicians that have worked on a film. But more importantly the titles must prepare the viewer for the viewing of the film. The history of film titles goes back as far as vaudeville theaters, where main titles were originally produced by the magic-lantern or the first projector, which was invented in the 1650s, by prominent Dutch scientist, Christiaan Huygens. By the end of the nineteenth century, magic-lanterns were prevalent public entertainment. The lantern projected colored slides on a full-sized screen. Joseph Boggs Beale, was America’s first great lantern artist, who as a young man in the 1850’s attended several “Christmas” magic-lantern shows in Philadelphia church halls. Later on, he created a repertoire of 250 illustrated stories, songs, history lessons, and rituals as part of his publisher’s effort to make great literature available on screen to the public at large. The slides, which were often animated had a narrative that were unusually written on cards that would be predecessors to today’s film titles. With the advent of “nickelodeon” theaters around 1905 that showed thrillers like The Great Train Robbery, the magic-lantern soon disappeared and the age of silent movies began. The earliest titles, for silent films, were presented on title cards. These were cards with printed material on them that were photographed and worked into the film. Type played an enormous role in films of the silent era. Film titles made their appearance in the earliest silent films, along with letter cards, which provided context.
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In addition to hiring lettering artists, the prominent film studios began to employ typesetters for the production of title cards. Lettering artist collaborated with the scriptwriter and director to create narrative continuity so that audiences could follow what they were seeing. J. Stuart Blackton who directed Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) created one of the first animated opening title. The role of graphic design in the earlier movies, until 1960s, was restricted to lettering artists’ composition of a typeface and some minimum decorative patterns if anything at all. At times, some title designers were daring with the design of their typeface, such as Albin Grau’s titles for the classic German movie Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens, in 1922, which was quite innovative and modern with respect to its handwritten art-nouveau typeface. The font was created by German typesetter Heinz Hoffman in 1904. There have also been from time to time some strokes of genius in creation of titles. For example, the stunning composition of typeface in the title for Der blaue Engel, directed by Josef von Sternberg, in 1930; was such an instance. However, such innovations were few and far between. Neale stated that “...styles of entertainment and art contributed to advancements in visual representations that were necessary for the development of film.” As early as the 1900s, modern design became an innovative
motif in the European film industry. The German film industry, for example, is known for its “German Expressionism” in the filmmaking movement from the 1900s to the 1920s, featured by symbolism and “mise en scenè”, an expression used in the theatre to describe the design aspects of a film. Besides the dazzling art styles, dramatic cinematographic technologies helped secure film’s miraculous power. For example, the film cutting technique known as “montage” enhanced film’s narrative ability. In a montage, “... a film scene is spliced, glued together from different parts.” Montage speaks a very similar visual language with its cousin, surrealistic painting, giving films the power of demonstrating an unreal space-time reality that never existed structurally; it is regarded as an art. “Montage means joining together shots of situations that occur at different times and in different places.” Even though film itself had been well developed during this time period, there was a blank in title sequence design history. There were no title sequences at all in the earliest days of cinema. The credit cards and inter-titles which were acknowledged by their usages for title sequences later on were not initially used for title sequences but for conveying dialogue throughout the movie, setting the time, place and action for the scenes. Such entire ignorance of title sequences did not last for long, though. As major studios started to maneuver some of their energy from the main part of the movie to the opening sequences in the 1920s, by putting a series
The title cards were one of the few examples of creative design with typographic choices as noted in examples such as left: The Great Train Robbery, City Lights, and the modern silent film, The Artist.
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case study
Metropolis (1927) Filmed in Germany during the Weimar Period, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia, a very bold feat especially for the period of silent films. It was technologically astounding as well as a prime example of the German Expressionist style.
Left: The main title card for Metropolis. Far Left: select scenes and title cards from the film.
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Horror films became another way for filmmakers to express the story, with stylized type such as films Left Frankenstein, The Call of Cthulhu, and Noseratu
of title cards literally at the initial screening of a film, title sequence design appeared. “Title cards” are regarded as the first examples of title sequences. Film studios hired relatively small crews of lettering artists and craftsmen to create those cards. Those hand-written cards were photographed and then incorporated into the movie. They were set out in templates derived from nineteenth century hand lettered signs, white lettering was superimposed over a black background. Sometimes the letters were embellished with decorative outlines, and usually the genre of the film dictated the style. Those scanty title cards functioned on a single responsibility, the “pragmatic communication function,” which is nothing more than serving the “contractual requirement”: to display the movie’s title, the name of the director, establish the hierarchy of actors, identify the studio involved and send the signal when the film started and ended. In the 1930s, large budgets became common for largescale cinematic productions. Movies such as Charles Chaplin’s City Lights (1931), 42nd Street (1933), and
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) all were enjoying great popularity. Introducing of sound in 1927 to film was one of the major evolutions at that time, and it announced the beginning of the “classical period” in cinema. As mentioned earlier, title sequence design was universally dull and conservative in the 1920s. As for the classical period during the 1930s –1940s, according to many articles, the convention almost remained the same. The arrival of sound did little to alter title sequences except to invent a musical prelude to accompany them. “The music over the credits sometimes had the mood of the picture to come, but the graphics themselves were classical lettering on a bland background.” Although the new innovative techniques and special effects continued to be utilized and the new animated type technique “trick photography”— a technique with double exposure of film to create ghostlike images — invented by Georges Méliès, was used in film titles, most film titles remained the convention as a dull motionless piece of artwork for many years.
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The
Classic Era
1927–1960s The style of cinema changed with the innovations of sound, taking away the reliance on title cards to relay information. Now films were becoming longer, telling more intense stories and later in color. As technology developed, so did the number of jobs involved, leading to a more necessary credit system. Unlike the title sequences of today, films from this era usual began with a complete title sequence that credited all persons involved rather than at the end, when the audience is more likely to leave prior to the completion of credits.
To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962
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It was in 1927 that modern graphic design appeared for the first time in the titles of a movie. The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog was the third film of Hitchcock — but was his first to be seen by the public due to studio politics. C. M. Woolf, the chief of Gainsborough studio, was not impressed with the work of Hitchcock, and he found the movie too arty. As a result, Ivor Montagu, a Cambridge educated film editor, was commissioned by the producer Michael Balcon to correct film’s short comings. Montagu reduced the intertitles and Hitchcock reshot segments of the climactic chase scene. But, more importantly, from a graphic design perspective, he contracted E. McKnight Kauffer, an American graphic designer in London, to create the new title art, with text in the Newland typeface, which was inspired by the German Expressionism. Nevertheless, the graphic designs of the 1930-50 period were very conservative and unimaginative. Perhaps the studio bosses, in their attempt to appease the lowest common denominator of the movie going public taste, were fearful of introducing any bold designs. Such a banal tendency was prevailed still during the invention of Technicolor, and even directors such as Michael Curtiz, who apparently was interested in illustrated titles for most of his films, did not strayed far from it. The most bold and innovative of graphic designs of this era were Fantasia of 1940, and Duel in the Sun of 1945. 8
During the 1960s, a preference emerged among the avant garde filmmakers, such as Godard, Fellini, Antonioni, and others to emulate von Sternberg’s white-on-black title lettering of Der blaue Engel. This style became a kind of prestige symbol among all those movie makers around the world who wanted to be a member of this virtual avant garde club. Examples consist of Woody Allen who used this style in almost all of his films including Annie Hall, Tsai Ming Liang, the “Second New Wave” film director of Taiwanese Cinema who used this style with Chinese script in his What Time is it Over There? in 2001 and the celebrated Persian movie maker Bahman Ghobadi in his A Time for Drunken Horses in 2000, as well as many others.
Of course, creating a high quality cutting-edge design is not very easy, and the task gets harder with the appearance of each innovative design. As the low hanging fruits of design are becoming picked up, the creation of a new bold design becomes more challenging, since in addition to a creative talent, it would require a greater depth of understanding of various socio-cultural issues in visual communication, and a more refined artistic skills.
Even after color films were produced, some films still remained stylized in black and white. These films also used typography to set the mood for their stories including Above Some Like it Hot, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon
This is evident from very few innovative title designs that have been created over the 1990–2000 period. But the existence of this burden cannot be regarded as a good excuse for not trying to search for creative talents that can rise to the occasion. In fact, it is interesting to note that Jean Luc Godard himself, who perhaps started the white lettering on a black background style of the 1960s, abandoned it in his 1967 Week End.
This trend was quite unfortunate, as it is clear that an avant garde movie can be enriched further by an imaginative and bold graphic design. The following titles clearly have added to the artistic aura of their respected films, and to the film viewers, in fact, they were powerful signals of It cannot be denied that there were still a lot of films the aesthetic sensitivity of the directors. For example note, at this time that ignored the opening credit sequence how stunningly elegant was the added graphic design elecompletely. For example, Walt Disney’s Fantasia ment to the simple white-on-black lettering in the main (1940), the first sound movie, began with nothing title frame of Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, or how tasteful, more than the movie title and the displaying of the line compositionally powerful, and aesthetically exquisite were “Color by Technicolor.” Yet there were a few exceptions Maurice Binder’s title design of Dr. No, Paper Moon of that started to acknowledge the various possibilities of Peter Bogdanovich, MASH of Robert Altman, or Chatitle sequences, “These (title sequences) were generrade of Stanley Donen. ally studio-created early experiments, used primarily
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designer spotlight
Maurice Binder Maurice Binder was a film title designer best known for his work on 14 James Bond films including the first, Dr. No in 1962. He was born in New York City, but mostly worked in Britain from the 1950s onwards. Maurice created the signature gun barrel sequence for the opening titles of Dr. No. He is also best known for his scenes featuring women performing a variety of activities such as dancing, jumping on a trampoline, or shooting weapons. Both types of scenes are trademarks and staples of the James Bond title sequences. He was succeeded by Daniel Kleinman as the title designer for 1995’s GoldenEye. Other film titles he designed include The Mouse That Roared, The Grass Is Greener, Charade, Fathom, and Billion Dollar Brain.
Above from Top: Binder’s iconic gunbarrel from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, selections of the sequences from Diamonds are Forever and Dr. No.
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as special effects.” In this context, many movie theatres even kept the curtains closed during the credits, revealed only after the film started. Some scholars who hold an opposite view argued this was an inaccurate picture. They said the addition of sound was an indispensable technique for title sequence design, and it had helped title sequences transfer from their initial function of purely introductory to narrative. Scholars such as James Counts said, “As cinema evolved, so did the titles. After the implementation of sound, titles began to function as a transition.” Through the achievement of its narrative function, the title sequence started playing an isolated artistic role in the movie, which was a landmark improvement. It is said that early in the 1930s many motion picture studios took on the challenge of changing their approach in presenting screen credits. The more complete list of credits with a higher quality of artwork appeared on the silver screen. The idea of getting the viewer ready for the coming-attraction film started to occupy the marketplace around this period of time. Prominent artists designed their artwork to “set a mood” and “capture the audience” before the film began. The title sequence for King Kong (1933), for instance, was trendy in that era to present the audience with more than simple text.
The title sequence designers in this era ranged from self-taught sign painters to advertising department staff that knew a great deal about typography, and the development of the typography greatly accelerated. In America, a vernacular visual vocabulary of film titling was developed in major studios in Hollywood. Those Hollywood-vernacular typefaces, which are by the nature of their shape decorative and script-like, were used with slight alterations to accommodate sound, color, and other technological developments to title mainstream American films until the mid 1950s. For instance, opening credits for romances were often written in letters that appear to be fashioned in pink ribbon and those for slapstick humor in “paint-stroke” typefaces that suggest hastiness and incompetent workmanship. These Hollywood-vernacular typefaces were communicative, very expressive.
Above Pink Panther, To Kill A Mockingbird, Fantasia, and Peter Pan
However, the texts and images of these credits were not woven tightly at this time. The words were usually printed in black or white, sometimes drop-shadowed, to be apart from the background. The film titles of Annie Oakley (1935) were in this style with the credits on still images. Other movies that also used this approach included Woman Wanted (1935), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) and so forth. Although there are different interpretations regarding 11
The
Saul Bass Age
1958–1990s film titles, which make it a challenge to overview and to make generalizations to the situation about this time period, one thing is for certain: title sequence design truly started to attract attention during this time. It would be impossible to discuss the evolution of title sequence design without mentioning the name Saul Bass (1920–1996), who is considered by many to be the father of modern film title sequence design. He is regarded as the one who has the deepest and widest influence over North American mainstream films. “He is legendary for innovative title sequences, Saul Bass’ film title graphics were a part of the film’s identity.” Taylor said, “Bass’ impact in credits design remains virtually unparalleled, even to this day.” It was known that the credit designs of many other title designers after Saul Bass were inspired by the phase pioneered by him. More or less, their works reflect Bass’s design philosophy and methodology about title sequences. Bass’ contributions towards title sequence design can be summarized as Vertigo, 1958
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follows: First he moved titles beyond their pragmatic communication function, the responsibility of displaying the movie’s title and the name of the director, into a higher level narrative function – setting the tone, establishing the mood and visual character of the film. Bass once stated that “my initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set a mood and the prime underlying core of the film’s story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.” Another contribution by Bass was to design animated motion picture title sequences. It was a natural step for Bass to create identities for production firms. Bass designed the first animated film identity, a rose depicted within an animated flame, for the movie Carmen Jones (1954). He continued to employ the animation techniques in making title sequences for many of his other iconic films. Additionally, Bass turned title sequence design
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into an art form that was able to stand on its own. With great influences of these modern design styles, Bass’ graphics reflected a unique characteristic of being distinct from realistic images and relying on basic colors to create mood. Bass’ symbolic images and jagged typefaces were seen early as he became attached to film as a commercial artist specializing in film advertising. His work eventually captured the attention of Hollywood’s film director Otto Preminger, who asked him to design the title sequences for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), a film about overcoming drug addiction. This memorable title sequence did not show the face of any leading actor of the movie, which was a very commonly seen way to introduce a movie in the 1950s. It totally ignored the fact that famous names were always close company with a film’s success. Bass employed an animated black paper cutout of an addict’s arm depicted in the German Expressionist style. This was a powerful image of heroin addiction. Martin Scorsese called this image of the arm “a
case study
Vertigo (1958)
Graphic designer Saul Bass extracted Hitchcock’s spiral motif as an image that appears during the film to convey, what the documentary Obsessed with Vertigo labels, “Vertigo’s psychological vortex”. The images features in the title sequence and on the poster.
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designer spotlight
Pablo Ferro Pablo Ferro is a graphic designer and film titles designer from Antilla, Cuba. Pablo taught himself animation using a book by Preston Blair, a former animator at Walt Disney Productions and the MGM animation department. He began freelancing in the mid-’50s in the New York animation industry for Academy Pictures and Elektra Studios. In 1961, he was one of the partners to form Ferro, Mogubgub, and Schwartz, but in 1964 he moved on to form his own company, Pablo Ferro Films. Since then, and for over 40 years, Pablo has been putting his stamp on the moving image through works such as the opening of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and the revolutionary split-screen montage of 1963’s The Thomas Crown Affair. He has also created the opening titles for Being There (1979) and To Die For (1995). He has been recognized widely for his contributions to film and design, receiving the Chrysler Design Award, the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame Award, and the AIGA Medal.
Ferro work includes Above: A Clockwork Orange, The Thomas Crowne Affair, and Dr. Strangelove
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The greatest feeling in the world is when something has been created that no one has ever seen before. And you’re the one who is seeing it for the first time.
malignant force reaching down into the world and the lives of the characters.” Because of this distinctive visual expression, The Man with the Golden Arm title sequences were regarded as a breakthrough in title design history.
Ferro’s eventual shift from TV to film, he used the quick-cut technique employing as many as 125 separate images in a minute to convey both the dark humor and the political immediacy of the film.
Bass’ credits include nearly sixty films, from Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones (1954) to Martin Scorsese’s Casino (1995). His wellknown titles and identities included Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). Another unforgettable name in this period is Pablo Ferro, one of the most ingenious film title designers. He is mostly noted for his type treatment in motion: both on the TV screen and for movie title sequences.
Additionally, Ferro applied multi-screen effects for the first time in motion pictures, defining the cinematic style of the late 1960s. He used the same type of technique in other parts of the film by editing a key sequence as multiple screens in order to speed up the narrative.
Ferro introduced the quick-cut method of editing, whereby static images including engravings, photographs, and pen and ink drawing, are infused with speed, motion and sound. In the movie Dr. Strangelove (1964), the key to
Bass’ work includes Above: Carmen Jones, North by Northwest, Ocean’s Eleven, and Anatomy of a Murder.
Alongside Bass and Ferro, many other outstanding title designers, associations and works emerged in this era. Putting their names on the screen became a motivation to the designers. Some of these names included Friz Frelend and his opening cartoon for The Pink Panther (1963), Maurice Binder and the 007 films, Stephen Frankfurt, Wayne Fitzgerald, Terry Gillian and Monty Python Group, and .R/GreenBerg Associates.
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The
Modern Title
1980s–current Computers brought a new life to the film industry in the 1970s and offered filmmakers the opportunity to reconcile traditional and modern techniques. During the 1980s, especially after the success of the original Macintosh in 1984, further improvements relating to computer-based digitalization were made. The development was a big help on the playground of territorial expansion for visual designers. Creative experimentation increased immensely. Movies such as E.T. (1982), Max Dugan Returns (1983) and The War of The Roses (1989) are good examples of this time’s best title sequence design.
Skyfall, 2012
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The advent of the computer brought up even a bigger wave of technical revolution in the early 1990s. Curran said, “Before the availability of desktop video and animation packages, most title designers worked with animates and storyboards. The final product was produced with technology available only at optical houses or computer effects companies at a cost that left little margin for changes and creative exploration.� Advanced new software, such as Adobe After Effect released in 1993 and Macromedia Flash in 1997, made it very handy and easy for title designers to try special effects.
Below: Coraline, Avengers, Wall-E, and Almost Famous
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A consequence of this digital era seems to be that modern title design will rely on progressive technologies. Yet, in one of his interviews, Kyle Cooper states that while the power of computer graphics is obvious, he still likes experimenting with live action, because there is something special about the imperfection of making things by hand.
designer spotlight
Kyle Cooper
I feel if a title sequence is done well, it can often serve as the first scene, or as a prologue to the story you are about to see.
Kyle Cooper is a director and designer of film title sequences who holds an MFA in graphic design from the Yale School of Art, where he studied under graphic designer Paul Rand. In 1996, he co-founded and named creative agency Imaginary Forces. He has directed and produced more than 150 film title and VFX sequences, including Se7en, Spider-Man, and The Mummy. In 2001, he directed a feature film, New Port South. He moved on to found Prologue Films in 2003, with which he has created title sequences for The Incredible Hulk, Final Destination 5, and The Walking Dead. In 2008, he was a finalist in the National Design Awards. He has earned five Emmy Award nominations and one win for his work on the 81st Annual Academy Awards. He also holds the title of Honorary Royal Designer for Industry from the Royal Society of Arts in London.
Above (clockwise): Portrait of Cooper, the redesigned Marvel opening logo, the opening title of Se7en, and the opening title of Dawn of the Dead, .
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Above: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Wall-E, Captain America, and Juno.
It could be argued that typography lost importance in this era of title design. The imagery behind the credits received a lot more attention. Still, the interplay of typography and images was by no means ignored. Popular trends of the 1950s were using threedimensional lettering and embedding type in physical artifacts. Most commonly used were embroidery and physical signage. In contrast, Saul Bass often approached the lettering of a main title as he would a logo, making it serve as the core element in marketing campaigns. While the variety of solutions increased considerably, their anchor was always the relationship of on-screen typography to the movie itself. Pre-70s most films relied solely on crediting the entire film cast and crew in the beginning of the film. As special effects and motion graphics became more advanced, the number of crew members multiplied. Films like Star
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Wars were revolutionary not only revolutionary in the special effects departments, but because the sheer site of the production crew lent itself best to a credit sequence at the end and instead placed an icon expositional sequence at the beginning of the film. As early as the outset of the 80s, MTV, pop culture, and increased advertising altered the landscape for motion graphics. The fast editing method and multi-screen techniques pioneered by Pablo Ferro became the vogue for all motion graphics. The film title sequences that were part of this fashion were increasingly edited at a faster pace. Speeding up title sequences made credits hard to read. This suggested the diminishing importance of the information. Designers therefore no longer concentrated on the text among other elements. They paid much more attention to the overall effects that had been amplified. The Internet resources, like www.IMDb.com, made the credits even less important to the viewers.
If one would really like to know who worked on a specific aspect of the film, she or he could always easily find the needed information online. It is now very common to see opening title sequences without a full list of credits, since most people do not have the patience to sit through the entire list of people involved. This, however, results in the development of closing sequences. Many filmmakers eliminated the opening credits in favor of starting the action immediately and continuing it without any interruptions and moved the majority of the credits as well as putting strong visual graphics to the end of a movie. Batman Begins (2005) and The Mummy Returns (2001) are examples that have elaborate closing sequences that one used to seeing at the beginning of a film. Still, there are some other films that feature both opening and closing credits, such as Van Helsing (2004) and Spider-Man (2002, 2004, 2005). While the discipline of designing film title
sequences has become more popular and commonly used, there is still little recognition from the general public. In 1999, the Best Title Design Award was proposed to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but was rejected. Since 1990, there has been the category for Outstanding Main Title Design within the Emmy Awards. Also in 2010, the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and festival started to feature the Film Design Awards, for poster and film title design.
Above: Skyfall, It Might Get Loud, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocal, Up in the Air.
Contemporary film titles are not only crafted by individuals but also by groups. One of the world’s largest multidisciplinary entertainment and design agencies, Imaginary Forces, founded in Los Angeles by Kyle Cooper, Chip Houghton, and Peter Frankfurt, has been creating stunning amounts of works each year. Its award-winning works of film titles and films include: The Mummy, Gattacam Clockstoppers, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Men in Black, and Signs. Imaginary Forces also
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produced a lot of fabulous commercials on TV. Additionally, Deborah Ross Film Design, yU + co, Big Film Design, The Picture Mill, and Computer CafÊ all rank at the top of the list. Although typographic design has remained a general staple of the excellence of title sequence design, great strides have been made in incorporating animation or animated aspects to the title sequence. The usage of computers and visual effects has grown as the technology has, evolving to create more visually appealing sequences that often help the story in an abstract or artistic means that is improbable for a live action sequence in films such as David Fincher’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or adds differences to animated films by creating an alternative or correlating style such as the animated Pixar feature, Wall-E. While opening credits may help set the pace and tone of the film, end credits often ease the audience out of the world created by filmmakers. Companies like Marvel use the end sequences of their films to intersperse extra materials
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Others incorporate the titles into the live action sequences, allowing the credits to remain as a sub level but not distracting from the story or the ongoing scene as seen in films like Serenity. No matter what method used to present a title, modern titles have the capability and technology to help present a story in whatever light or medium appropriate for helping to tell the story.
case study
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) The beat sidles in: a throbbing arrhythmia peppered by desperate, howling vocals, and then that ooze. That viscid, black ooze that seeps into everything, penetrating crevices, dribbling into lips and eyes, suffocating and sensual and silent. Each ebony form is made osmotic — surging and melding, torn apart and punctured, ensnared, set ablaze — thrashing in the deep. Through flashes of embers and murk, sticky vines creep, hands grapple, foul petals unfurl, and sable fists inflict their fury. In this elegantly violent title sequence, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Karen O’s version of “Immigrant Song” swells when coupled with Blur Studio’s monstrous fantasy in David Fincher’s newest offering, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Above: Shots of the final sequence. Below: Storyboards and abstracts planning the sequence
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The
Television Title
1990s–current In general, a television title sequence will at some point badge the show with a typographic logo. Around this key element can be incorporated shots of highlights from earlier episodes or shows and key presenters’ or cast members’ names. Musical accompaniment can be either instrumental or a song and aided by the visual treatment of the images helps to convey the tone and mood of the program.
Boardwalk Empire, 2010
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Television specials, especially of classic works, sometimes contain unusual opening credit sequences. In the title sequence of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker, for example, we see close ups, slow-motion shots of Baryshnikov and female lead Gelsey Kirkland “warming up” for the ballet. When the actual title appears on the screen we see Baryshnikov in his nutcracker costume and mask leaping into the air in slow motion and freeze frame.
elaborate and more expansive in their reach to the viewer to reflect the difference between film and television, and designed to convey a sense of gravitas. In the 1960s graphic designers, such as Saul Bass, began to become involved in film title sequences as the potential for title sequences to be seen as an opportunity for creating very graphics-led visual language in film and television. HBO has in recent years procured some impressive and innovative title sequences for many of its series.
In serials, because a title sequence is produced before a series airs, it will usually include scenes from early episodes already shot when the sequence was prepared. Short clips of the key characters often climax in a freeze frame as the featured cast member’s name is superimposed. In and around such elements will be other footage depicting the locale in which the series is set and therefore its era. A title sequence might also be used to explain the premise of a series, traditionally utilizing clips from its pilot episode.
Although a title sequence may be modified during a series to update cast changes or incorporate new “highlight” shots from later episodes, it will tend to remain largely the same for an entire season. Such is the strength of a title sequence in expressing the concept of a show, it will sometimes be the key element a producer will target in order to revamp a show between seasons. Some shows have enjoyed several different title sequences and theme music throughout their runs, while in contrast some ever-popular shows have retained their original title sequences for decades with only minor alterations. Conversely, retaining a series’ original title sequence can allow a producer to change many key elements within a program itself, without losing the show’s onscreen identity.
The invention of TV forced film production companies to reappraise the important of the title sequences in an increasingly competitive market place for audience viewing numbers. Film title sequences became longer, more 28
case study
Game of Thrones (2011) You have 90 seconds with the title sequence...so why not do something that the show can’t do? Angus Wall A fiery astrolabe orbits high above a world not our own; its massive Cardanic structure sinuously coursing around a burning center, vividly recounting an unfamiliar history through a series of heraldic tableaus emblazoned upon it. An intricate map is brought into focus, as if viewed through some colossal looking glass by an unseen custodian. Cities and towns rise from the terrain, their mechanical growth driven by the gears of politics and the cogs of war. Above: sketches and drawings of the process, exploring the mechanics of the expanding map of Westeros in the beginning title sequence. Below: a shot of the main title from the final sequence.
From the spires of King's Landing and the godswood of Winterfell, to the frozen heights of The Wall and windy plains across the Narrow Sea, Elastic's thunderous cartographic flight through the Seven Kingdoms offers the uninitiated a sweeping education in all things Game of Thrones.
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case study
Boardwalk Empire (2010) The roaring Atlantic City surf breaks to the beat of an anachronistic slide guitar, rolling in and out to reveal names in the soaking sand. An immaculately dressed Enoch “Nucky” Thompson steps towards the shoreline, gazing out at the horizon as he flips a lit cigarette between his well-manicured fingers. The future of this crooked town is carried on the tide, crashing in, submerging Nucky’s unsullied shoes in a wave of vice. Thousands of liquor bottles, like an armada of messages from so many drunken castaways, wash up before the boardwalk. The water recedes and his shoes remain dry. The hooch keeps multiplying and those waves keep rolling on in Imaginary Forces’ title sequence for HBO’s Prohibition-era epic Boardwalk Empire. Above: storyboards and behind the scenes shots of the opening titles Below: shots of the main title from the final sequence.
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Other variations include changing only the theme music whilst keeping the visuals or vice versa. In contemporary television news a title sequence can be changed every day by including footage of that day’s news with a presenter’s voice “teasing” the items. This not only ensures that the title sequence appears fresh but also still identifies the news program by its music and visual style. Some television series title sequences offer subtle changes and alterations to their opening sequences based off cast members, the story line, or other themes within the show. Take for example the series,
Doctor Who, which has changed from its original black and white opening to feature the current lead as well as to utilize the current technology, moving from black and white to color and incorporating computer generated graphics in the later series.
Above: Mad Men, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2013), and True Blood
In 2010, TV Guide published a list of TV’s top 10 credits sequences, as selected by readers. The series were: The Simpsons, Get Smart, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, True Blood, Hawaii Five-O, The Big Bang Theory, Dexter, The Brady Bunch, Mad Men, and The Sopranos.
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