Art of the Title

Chasing Shakespeare (2013)

Tue, 4 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +1200

“You can never keep lightning from where it wants to go.” — Venus

A contemplative examination of a sublime yet threatening natural beauty, Chasing Shakespeare’s title sequence soars as a tonal overture to the film. The camera whisps through blades of grass with all the tranquility of a dream and incipient raindrops splatter the lens, looking skyward at dark clouds promising more. The typography integrates subtly, lending the credits an organic quality. Suddenly, lightning interrupts this stormy dream, the title comes into view, and there it is: the horse, galloping through the void. It stirs at the far-off thunder.

Eric Kaye’s sparse piano notes punctuate the sounds of the approaching storm, creating a soundscape that is more felt than heard. The dream is at once peaceful and foreboding, with a wordless poeticism akin to the works of Malick.

Audience Award for Excellence in Title Design, 2013 SXSW Film Design Awards

A discussion with MARC CHARTRAND of Lucky21 and SAI SELVARAJAN of Lucky Post.

Give us a little background on yourselves.

Marc: Before I got into motion, I was a photojournalist and then a studio photographer, though I always loved and studied film. Title sequences in particular caught my attention as they seemed to be the culmination of film, music, and graphic design... the three of which I consumed voraciously. I met Sai in college and knew immediately that he was operating on a different wavelength. He came in from another planet! It was both a kick in the ass and…

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A Call for Sponsorship

Tue, 28 May 2013 00:00:00 +1200

“As Criterion is to home video and Cinefex is to visual effects, Art of the Title is to title design.” — Charles de Lauzirika, director of Crave

Art of the Title is growing – and we need your help!

To help us maintain the quality of the site and articles we publish each week, we are opening the site to sponsorship opportunities. We’re looking for individuals and organizations to partner with us as we expand our content and explore some exciting new projects.

HOW MUCH HAVE WE GROWN?
The small blog that began as a labor of love with a team of two in 2008 has grown in size and scope to become the leading film and design resource it is today. Boasting 350,000+ pageviews per month and nearly 40,000 dedicated followers across Twitter and Facebook, Art of the Title has developed a loyal and engaged readership comprised of filmmakers, creative directors, designers, industry professionals, journalists, educators, and cinephiles.

It takes a great deal of time and effort to produce the content we do on a weekly basis. Publishing the interesting, in-depth features on the site requires many hours of research, travel, interviews, writing, editing, and promotion. You may be surprised to learn that our current core staff is comprised of only three editors: Ian Albinson, Lola Landekic, and Will Perkins. We also have an array of…

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Elementary (2012)

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 +1200

“Before you say anything, I'd like to remind you that I'm holding an axe.” — Sherlock Holmes

The opening title sequence for CBS’ updated Sherlock Holmes series Elementary reflects the show’s contemporary take on a classic character. Prologue Creative Director Simon Clowes employs a Rube Goldberg contraption to represent the manic detective’s unorthodox, sometimes convoluted and often aggressive approach to crime solving.

A large, transparent marble finds itself in the elaborate apparatus, setting off a chain reaction of increasingly violent events that culminate in the caging of a helpless figurine. Like the mind of the great detective, the invention works at a dizzying pace, with only parts of it revealed while others remain a mystery. A steadily intensifying score composed by Sean Callery adds a sense of impending danger and urgency to the marble’s iconoclastic course.

Just as one can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, this sequence illustrates that you can’t always catch a criminal without subverting a few idols.

Give us a little background on yourself and your current position at Prologue.

I relocated to Los Angeles from London in 2005 after completing my studies in graphic media design. The sole purpose was to secure a job offer as a designer at Prologue and I have been there ever since! Currently my position is creative director.

And as for Elementary, how did that process begin?

I found out about the project late, but it sounded interesting – especially after watching the pilot episode. There had already been a lot of work done on it pertaining to the brief while…

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OFFF 2013 Cincinnati (2013)

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 +1200

Taking inspiration from the wide array of presenters at this year’s fest, Onur Senturk orchestrates the OFFF 2013 Cincinnati titles in stark and dark textural style. With a nod to the hushed grandeur of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, we float through the strange geometry of an aesthetic world. Among the architectural grids and the tessellation of webs, an unfurling record and a slew of ball bearings, there is always a spark on the edge of the frame – connecting each scene, uniting each part. Speaking the silent language of objects in space, the sequence creates an atmosphere of expectation and gives a sense of the celestial as each name is elevated beyond itself.

A discussion with Creative Director ONUR SENTURK.

Give us a little background on yourself.

What I do includes everything from short films to title sequences, music videos to commercials, graphic design to film posters. Formerly, I was at Prologue for over a year and worked on a range of projects. I collaborated with Kyle Cooper, Danny Yount, and many other good artists, editors, and designers who really taught me a lot. In 2011, I contributed to the exceptional opening sequence of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in terms of concept design, typography, and look development at Blur Studio.

Could…

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The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Wed, 8 May 2013 00:00:00 +1200

“Ohhh! This feels just elegant!” — The Girl

Perhaps more than any other film title sequence, Saul Bass' contribution to Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch marks a turning point in both the relationship of the title sequence to its film and its independent value as a pop culture art form. Previous studio title sequences were often the product of in-house art departments staffed with tradesmen hunched over drafting tables, turning out hand-painted title cards in short order. While elaborate in design and unique unto themselves, these cards nevertheless followed a prescriptive format, usually superimposed via transparency over matte-painted backgrounds.

Hollywood had become self-important and incestuous after World War II, itself just having won its own battle against Broadway for box office rights; television wasn't even on the radar yet. Go Big or Go Home was the new motto, apparent in everything from Ford westerns and Hitchcock psycho-thrillers to Wilder comedies and epic Hawkes period dramas.

It was fertile ground for innovation and new top-billed talent, even while the process of filmmaking itself became an assembly line, streamlined by increased public demand and stone-bleeding studio executives. Title sequences, considered only artful legal filler and often played before the theater curtains were even opened, were little more than cogs…

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Iron Man 3 (2013)

Tue, 7 May 2013 00:00:00 +1200

“I'm gonna offer the choice: do you want an empty life, or a meaningful death?” — The Mandarin

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The Third Man (1949)

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +1200

“You were born to be murdered.” — Major Calloway

Though the modern title sequence would not emerge until several years later, the main titles for Carol Reed’s 1949 film noir The Third Man remain one of the more distinctive pre-Saul Bass examples to come out of either Hollywood or Britain.

Aligned with the plucked strings and ovoid aperture of a zither – a guitar-like instrument common to Eastern Europe – the simple titles fade in and out listing cast and crew, adhering to the rigid formality of most films of the era. The visuals, though an interesting backdrop for this traditionally mundane cinematic obligation, aren’t what makes The Third Man’s titles noteworthy. Likewise, the star of this sequence isn’t impresario Orson Welles, or even contract man Joseph Cotten. It’s not acclaimed novelist-cum-screenwriter Graham Greene, or the film’s Oscar-winning director, Reed. The star is a humble Viennese musician named Anton Karas.

Discovered by Reed at a cocktail party early in the film’s production, Karas’ involvement proved vital to the film. Indeed, it goes without saying that the sequence, like the movie as a whole, would be nothing without the zitherist's contribution. Given the considerable international talent assembled for the movie (Reed, Greene, Welles, Cotten, and a host of others behind…

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Da Vinci's Demons (2013)

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +1200

“Genius cannot be contained.”

After centuries of reflection, the oft studied character of Leonardo da Vinci continues to reign as the genius and archetypal Renaissance Man that we've always known him to be. Yet as familiar as the man may seem, the opening to Da Vinci's Demons illuminates new facets of his feverishly inventive and enigmatic mind. Beginning with Bear McCreary's driving score, the sequence descends from painterly clouds and a Florentine horizon to reveal reams of hand sketched notes – a collection soon recognized as masterworks from da Vinci’s own hand. Paul McDonnell manipulates the hand-drawn illustrations to remind us of da Vinci’s ambidextrously rendered triumphs and musings while suggesting that there's more to the prolific artist and polymath than even he may have known. Da Vinci's demons seem to lurk behind each drop of ink, in each scratch upon the scroll. Amongst birds in flight and the fantastic contraptions that they inspired, Mona Lisa's dispassionate smirk taunts the viewer with a secret she'll never tell: "What did Leonardo da Vinci know that we don't?"

In this, our latest examination of the anatomy of title sequences, Huge Designs assembles a golden ratio of iconic da Vinci sketches and flights of fantasy, brought to real life in a way that only modern day machinations could.

A discussion with Creative Director PAUL MCDONNELL of Huge Designs.

Give us a little background on yourself and Huge.

We are a small design studio based in London, consisting of three directors-slash-designers: Hugo Moss, Tamsin McGee, and myself. I joined a little over two years ago, but the company itself has been around for just over 20 years, primarily designing broadcast titles.

And as for Da Vinci's Demons: what was the first meeting like?

We initially had a Skype meeting with the creator of the series, David Goyer, and one of the producers, Lee Morris, who we had worked with…

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Skyfall (2012)

Tue, 9 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +1200

“Life clung to me like a disease.” — Raoul Silva

In the last interview before his passing in 1991, longtime Bond titles director Maurice Binder observed that Bond sequences were the likely precursors to the modern day music video, in that they blended experimental filmmaking and pop culture into a format perfectly suited for pop music. From the '60s onwards, the Bond theme song, and its title sequence by proxy, have become synonymous with rock n' roll's biggest (or sometimes, trendiest) acts, and in doing so lent credibility to the MTV-led music video explosion of the early-to-mid-'80s.

In only a few years' time, music videos had Bond title sequences beat at their own game, with the popularity of the format attracting first-string talent, new ideas and technologies. Fierce competition between record labels, increasingly eccentric musical acts and unprecedented album sales afforded directors heavy creative license and control over their product. Acknowledging the format's reach, Bond's production company EoN joined the circus, commissioning videos for their theme songs independent of the film's title sequence, often loaded with scenes from the film itself, thus doubling as trailers.

Ironically, their first such venture was a title sequence itself: For Your Eyes Only in 1981, directed by Binder, featuring Sheena Easton performing her theme song from within Bond's world. EoN’s first proper music video was Rita Coolidge's All Time High, the theme song for Octopussy (1983), beginning a trend that would become a cornerstone of the franchise's marketing campaign.

It was on Binder's final Bond film, License to Kill (1989) that EoN commissioned Daniel Kleinman to direct the video for Gladys Knight's theme song of the same name. A veteran music video director with over a hundred videos under his belt, Kleinman's experimental techniques and affection for technology seemed a perfect match for the job, and while he never met Binder while working on the video, his influence was very apparent, employing several telltale 007 title sequence tropes including window mattes, scale-independent compositions and sultry femme fatales.

License to Kill’s theme song was a hit in the UK, and Kleinman’s video saw heavy rotation on MTV and elsewhere. Perhaps more importantly, it gave EoN a glimpse of what a post-Binder Bond sequence could look like; in 1995, Kleinman was nominated as the new Bond title director, beginning with the Brosnan-fronted franchise reboot Goldeneye.

Kleinman upheld the tradition of the Bond sequence as set down by Binder and Robert Brownjohn (1963's From Russia with Love and 1964's Goldfinger), but his background in shortform direction and modern post-production introduced the format to an entirely new bag of tricks. While only six years had lapsed between Binder's last and Kleinman's first sequences, it was a millennia in digital years; the tech revolution had overgrown Hollywood, leading to a steady flow of visual effects-heavy blockbusters inching ever further into Bond's turf. By fate or design, however, the hiatus proved an ideal time for the franchise to reinvent itself for the post-Cold War digital age, and Kleinman's fresh eye on the titles would further EoN’s cause.

As Bond titles are as much a product of their time as they are a visual statement about the film, Kleinman's Goldeneye sequence was very much aligned with the new direction of the franchise: modern, relevant, big. It was by all accounts a more ambitious effort than past sequences, taking full advantage of new production tools and adding a third dimension to the template, giving Binder's trademark scale differences a spatial relationship though parallax. Kleinman’s successive titles further evolved the format, trading chemicals for pixels as new technologies allowed.

Unlike the sequences of Binder and Brownjohn, which were largely founded in craft and euphemism, Kleinman's additionally incorporated a narrative element, albeit as abstract as their visual compositions. As such, his sequences often address the emotional currents of the film more directly and reflect its danger more literally. His settings are darker, his use of weapons largely stripped of their innuendos and presented as instruments of actual danger. Also unlike his predecessors, his sequences are increasingly framed by Bond's own conflicts and psyche, first apparent in his torturing in Die Another Day (2002), and again in Casino Royale (2005), in which gambling becomes a direct parallel to 007's trajectory as a freshman MI6 Agent.

In Skyfall, Kleinman's sixth outing with the franchise, the viewer is completely immersed within the mind of Bond as he sinks to the bottom of a riverbed after being shot by friendly fire during the film's climactic cold opening. Set in the depths and ruins of his own private thoughts and memories, the sequence is a combination of many analogies: his past and current emotional state, his uncertain future, his many indistinguishable misdeeds and duties flashing before his eyes. It is the first Bond sequence, and the first Bond film, to dig into 007's psychological past, both using his childhood home as an emotional safehouse and a prison, giving his character greater depth and a vulnerability more in step with creator Ian Fleming's incarnation of the gallant, yet flawed, superspy.

While the content and construction of the Skyfall titles are novel, darkening the tone significantly from past sequences and employing a Z-oriented digital camera without brakes, it is nevertheless an apt continuation of the Bond title tradition, apparent both in the patience of its delivery and use of familiar visual tropes and typography. Kleinman even reintroduces the female form, missing for the first time ever in his previous sequence, Casino Royale. Adele's Academy Award / Golden Globe / BRIT Award-winning theme song channels early Bond crooners like Shirley Bassey and Nancy Sinatra, giving the sequence a dreamlike quality, acting both as a counterpoint to the abrasive subject matter and a complement to its murky underwater tones.

It is a persistent irony that Bond titles are expected to be both new and classic at once – a creative corner into which Binder and Brownjohn voluntarily painted themselves and, by extension, their successors. But this apparent double standard also fuels the core of the tradition, pairing artistry with technology through the unique spectrum of 007. If Binder and Brownjohn's contributions were the format itself and its general contents, then it has become Kleinman's corner to challenge their model from within, redefining its boundaries in keeping with the times, his own creative direction and Bond's ever-evolving on and off-screen persona. Skyfall is a deliberate and graceful balance of all the above, both indisputably Bond yet somehow not, just as it should be.

A discussion with Main Title Designer DANIEL KLEINMAN of Rattling Stick.

Bond title sequences obviously carry a huge legacy and they often present the themes and settings of the film they precede. What’s the starting point for a new Bond sequence? The script? A cut of the film?

The starting point for me is always the script; I am usually brought into the process before the film has started shooting or at least in very early stages of production. I read the script and get a sense of the main themes of the movie, perhaps start to have a few…

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The Evil Dead Trilogy (1981)

Tue, 2 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +1300

“Groovy.” — Ash

A glance at director Sam Raimi's 36-year Hollywood career produces a resume that reads like every 14-year-old boy's dream job: superheroes and villains, the undead, fantasy worlds, the supernatural and the paranormal, as applied to everything from indie slashers to top-shelf summer blockbusters. In Freudspeak, if the films of Bergman and Kubrick are the superego of cinema, deliberate and anticipatory, then Raimi's are the id, governed -- or seemingly dis-governed -- by visual chaos and a primal, voyeuristic urge to want more.

More what? More more. Put Raimi in a room with five actors and a chainsaw, and by the fourth reel it’s a guarantee that there will be only one (or part of one) left. He doesn't settle for a single demonic spirit when there could be an army, or a river of blood when there could be a lake, or an ocean, or the next biggest thing after an ocean.

Raimi's cinema is proletariat; his films are a direct line to the nerd-heart of any adult child who ever tossed watermelons off a roof or duct-taped M-80s to a can of hairspray just to see what would happen. It peels two-dimensional characters from the pages of comic books…

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Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989)

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +1300

“I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest.” — Hercule Poirot

A blue fog dances underneath a curious collection of shapes. A plumb-bob and the moon framed in white? What does it mean? The distinctive profile (and moustache) of Agatha Christie’s famed detective Hercule Poirot is soon added to the mix, helping viewers to crack the case of this sparsely adorned dust jacket. The mystery is a mystery. As the book folds open, the formerly silhouetted Poirot emerges from the page, the bow-tied Belgian smiling from behind a puzzling cascade of geometry.

The showering shapes arrange themselves, replacing Poirot with signs of his interbellum times: biplanes and speeding locomotives – Art Deco iconography in flight. (In a fleeting reference to Poirot’s most famous case, Murder on the Orient Express, the smirking sleuth is glimpsed aboard the passing train that spells out his name.) Neat, tidy, and streamlined, the sequence evokes the ideals of the age and expose the fastidiously styled (and notoriously detail oriented) Poirot as very much a product of the era.

Title Designer Pat Gavin puts order and method (and his little grey cells) to work for ITV’s Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

Title Designer PAT GAVIN revisits his work on the opening titles and discusses their creation.

PG: The Poirot titles were the last ones I made for London Weekend Television, in 1988. However, they were the first titles that I conceived and designed on a Quantel Paintbox* and then put together on the system that became Animo.

It was my job to set the tone for the show. The idea for the titles was a portrait of a man and his time. The late Mike Oxley – or “OXO” as we called him – was the production designer and we put…

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SXSW 2013 Wrap Up

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +1300

For the fourth consecutive year, Art of the Title served on the jury for the SXSW Design Awards “Excellence in Title Design” competition.

This year Design Awards organizer David Horridge brought together myself (Ian Albinson, Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Art of the Title), Paul Babb, President/CEO of MAXON Computer, Inc., makers of the 3D software Cinema 4D, and Art Director/Designer Kurt Volk of Troublemaker Studios (another returning juror).

The Monday evening screening of the nominated title sequences kicked off with a 45-minute discussion between myself and last year's winner for Les Bleus de Ramville, Designer/Director Jay Bond of Oily Film Company. Bond detailed his approach to the title design process, working with live-action and motion graphics, Oily’s previous Design Awards win and the changes that brought, his inspirations, and finally his own favorite sequences.

The discussion was followed by a viewing of this year’s 19 finalists.

As with previous years, the jurors deliberated in the Hilton bar next to the conference center after the screening, spending hours narrowing down the selections to a single winner. The quality of work this year was just outstanding and contained an incredible range of styles, elements, and production methods.

The following evening, I had the pleasure…

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Hard Rock Medical (2013)

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +1300

“Myths, Mishaps & Medicine”

Moving fluidly from waterfalls to faucets, curricula to cumulonimbi, Jay Bond and Oily Film Company’s latest work, the opening titles to Canadian television series Hard Rock Medical, is a gorgeous example of sharp editing and deft association. The music, at once precise and warm, conducts us through the rhizomatic gestures of the piece, gliding among the macro and micro. The sequence captures the grandeur and majesty of the series’ northern landscapes while remaining rooted in the intimate details of small-town medicine, a feat sure to maintain Oily’s position as one of the best titles houses in Canada and beyond.

A discussion with Creative Director JAY BOND at Oily Film Company.

What have you been up to since we last talked, for Les Bleus de Ramville?

For the most part, I’ve been holed up in my edit suite drinking mass quantities of coffee and cutting two drama series simultaneously. But with regards to title design, shortly after the Ramville titles launched, my partner James Ransom and I heard about Hard Rock Medical, another series by the same producers that was moving towards pre-production.

Tell us about that first meeting for Hard Rock Medical.

Having worked with the client before, the…

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SXSW 2013 Film Awards: Title Design Finalists

Wed, 6 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +1300

We're happy to announce that next week, Art of the Title returns to Austin, TX for the 2013 SXSW Film Design Awards. Editor-in-Chief Ian Albinson will again be a juror, and joining him this year will be Paul Babb, President/CEO of MAXON Computer, Inc., and Designer Kurt Volk (also a returing juror) from the Austin-based Troublemaker Studios.

The title design screening will take place Monday, March 11th, at 9:30pm in the Vimeo Theater and will showcase this year's 19 finalists (also viewable below). In addition, Ian will be hosting a conversation with Title Designer Jay Bond of Oily Film Company, whose work on the Les Bleus de Ramville titles took the top prize at the 2012 awards.

Please join us if you're attending the festival this year and say hello!

RSS & Email Subscribers: Check out the full SXSW 2013 Film Awards: Title Design Finalists article at Art of the Title.

Kroll Show (2013)

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +1300

“Show a little more very much respect to this beautiful creature here.” — Bobby Bottleservice

A rapid-fire postmodernist piss-take, the brief but striking main titles for Kroll Show are as much a mission statement for actor Nick Kroll’s sketch comedy show as they are a checklist of pop cultural touchstones. In dozens of dubstepping blasts, TGIF broadcasting, famous landmarks, reality television, blockbuster cinema, advertising, junk food, and corporate America are all roasted in a pithy cavalcade of Kroll-ified logos, brands, and signage. Full of fine print easter eggs for pause-pressers, the sequence strobes at the audience and ends before they know what hit them.

Jonathan Krisel, Kroll Show series director and executive producer, describes the process behind the sequence:

I am a big fan of title design and wanted to create something that was short and sweet – and in no way resembled a television show's titles. We use a lot of title sequences within the show, so to do another intro for the show itself seemed redundant. I just wanted a blast of energy to launch it. I had recently watched Enter the Void and of course was blown away by the titles. Apparently a lot of people were, because I found pretty quickly that Kanye and numerous others had aped the exact look…

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ParaNorman (2012)

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +1300

“There's nothing wrong with being scared, Norman, so long as you don't let it change who you are.” — Grandma

An OUTCAST BOY who can commune with the DEAD... A TOWN obsessed with the past, UNWILLING to accept him! BULLIES! ZOMBIES! GHOSTS! WITCHES! A FILM as SPOOKY as it is HEARTWARMING... CHILLING as it is ENDEARING! LAIKA’s 3D stop-motion TRIUMPH ParaNorman has SCARES and LAUGHS aplenty... AND a BEWITCHING main-on-end title sequence worth writing home to mother about!

The tale of young Norman Babcock comes to a close to the tune of the White Stripes’ “Little Ghost” as the slightly skewed citizens of New England’s Blithe Hollow transition from their stop-motion reality into beautifully rendered motion paintings. Each character gets a moment to shine, their goofy, freeze-frame poses and accompanying credit recalling the events of the film and a more innocent era of title design. With ghoulish typefaces and delightfully old-fashioned screen transitions, the sequence pays homage to the Saturday night horror flicks that inspired Norman’s spine-chilling adventure. Just a few of the many small touches present in ParaNorman sure to bring out the kid in anyone.

Art of the Title speaks to LAIKA/house artist and illustrator AARON SORENSON about the gleefully spooky and charmingly realized main-on-end titles of ParaNorman.

How did the first meeting about this sequence go?

Arianne Sutner, one of the co-producers, spearheaded the process. She contacted me and asked, "Are you interested in directing our title sequence?" Of course, I said yes.

We then had the initial meeting where Chris Butler and Sam Fell, the film’s co-directors, laid out their vision for the titles, which was inspired by old Hollywood horror posters – specifically old B movies artwork with slightly garish qualities. They…

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Run Lola Run (1998)

Tue, 5 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +1300

“What happened to you? Did you run here?” — Manni

Tick, tick, tick. The opening sequence of Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run is an experiment in choice, in allowing editing and style to speak: gritty, brisk, and bold. It plays out in four acts: horror, thriller, cartoon, and crime.

First, we encounter time itself. A grimacing pendulum that sweeps credits into and out of sight – relentless, staring – until, mercifully, we are swallowed up and transported into a crowd. Wandering, faceless, lost among our questions and lead by the narrator through the multitude, we encounter a security guard, who neatly parallels life, and the film, with a game of soccer. The ball is round. We’re booted above the throng and, at the vertex of our ascent, presented with a view of the film’s title, LOLA RENNT, composed entirely of extras. Next, we encounter Lola. She’s a cartoon, being gulped down by monsters, punching her way through credits, racing tirelessly against the clock, until she is caught in a whirlpool and flushed into the next act. The shutter goes off, and Lola is reified in a mugshot, identified along with her co-stars, the sounds of prison doors punctuating each name. With a long zoom, we exit into the film, heading…

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Young and Wild (2012)

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +1300

“Bible, Bible, Bible. Sex, sex, sex.” — Daniela

Editor’s Note: This article has been marked “Not Safe For Work” due to elements which contain nudity and sexual situations.

In the beginning, the Internet was formless and empty. But soon there was Geocities, and Livejournal, and Fotolog – precursors of digital expression, fonts of potential. Here, the blog acts as backbone to young Daniela’s spirited and saucy narrative. Swathed in a soft rose, we scroll ever downward through the teasing end credits of Marialy Rivas’ Joven y Alocada (Young and Wild). We are gently pulled along and tempted into participating with flashes of animated sensuality: a breast here, a flaming crotch there, and all the while, this dreamy electro-pop ballad lulls us into delighted submission. So we watch, hoping for more, chunks of Courier New adorning the less rousing portions, when finally, there it is – one last, ejaculatory hurrah.

Creative Director PABLO GONZÁLEZ of Smog details the creation of their stimulating and distinctive end credits to Joven y Alocada.

How did the first meeting about this sequence go?

Marialy, the director, called us. We had worked together before on her short film Blokes, making both the titles and the poster. The titles were a really no-frills sequence but we found that we worked fantastically well together. Also, she was like the hottest advertising director at the time, shooting several commercials a week, so we also worked on her commercials from time to time.

We met in a restaurant near…

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Murder by Death (1976)

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +1300

“No pulse, no heartbeat. If condition does not change, this man is dead.” — Sidney Wang

Wayne Fitzgerald’s opening titles for Murder by Death produce more questions than answers, but that is the MO of any mystery worth its salt. As the titles “Murder” and “Death” hover ominously, it takes the audience a moment to register that the illustrated cutouts aren’t the familiar Addams Family characters from the New Yorker, but rather a new set of characters drawn by Charles Addams acting out a scene of miniature malice. And then *bum BUM* the kettle drum confirms the viewer’s suspicion that this is no ordinary mystery… this is murder.

The drum beats again and the plot thickens: A corpse lies on the floor, eleven knives bristling from his back. Eleven knives, eleven suspects! The camera tracks right and left scanning each artfully rendered face, but the expressions of all these would-be murders remain static – save for their suspicious, shifty little eyes. It's impossible to read their dubious gazes, but whether or not we can deduce the culprit makes no matter because, in the end, the titles only promised us a mystery… and nothing more.

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An Education (2009)

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +1300

“If you never do anything, you never become anyone.” — Jenny Mellor

Jenny’s bright eyes yearn for romance, the exotic – independence. She’ll find all of this and more, but first there’s innocence and naïve bookishness, the cajoling camaraderie of lessons and grammar school games. The simple line drawings and diagrams, folding, dancing, and multiplying over each other, pinpoint her purity, her play, and her longing to reach out and take hold of the world in all its sophisticated glory. Couched in the jovial notes of Floyd Cramer’s “On The Rebound,” Momoco’s titles to Lone Scherfig’s An Education poignantly capture Jenny’s potential and position – right at the cusp.

A discussion with Creative Director NIC BENNS of Momoco.

Tell us a little about Momoco.

Miki and I met at CalArts, formed Momoco in '99, and have been producing title sequences for 12 years now. We've been fortunate to collaborate with great directors and win the main titles Emmy in 2012. Our creative approach is very different and we pitch hard. People describe the studio's aesthetic as textural and organic, often quite dark. An Education is so unlike that.

Talk about your initial concepts and discussions with Director Lone Scherfig.

In 2007, we saw a rough cut of the feature…

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Signs (2002)

Tue, 8 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +1300

“Swing away Merrill. Merrill... swing away.” — Graham Hess

A sibilant breath is slowly drawn across catgut: in and out, up and down the strings of a violin. Matching the sighing notes of the unseen fiddler, a light diffuses out of the shadows before dissolving again – a malfunctioning flashlight in a darkened farmer’s field? Whistled by winds and bleated by horns, a frantic three-note motif replaces the calm respiration. Something is out there in the blackness. Bold words are glimpsed fleetingly in the flickering light, like names shouted into the empty night.

Employing only text, light, and shadow – along with James Newton Howard’s alarming and Hermannesque main theme – the title sequence for M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs relentlessly increases the tension before anything remotely suspenseful has even happened. Though it finishes on a name now synonymous with cinematic twists, Picture Mill’s main titles have a gleefully old fashioned tone that lays the groundwork for Shyamalan’s surprisingly twist-free scary movie opus.

Creative Director WILLIAM LEBEDA revisits his work on the opening titles and discusses their creation at Picture Mill.

WL: I got a call from Night and the editor Barbara Tulliver asking if I could take a look at the titles for Signs. I had done the titles for The Sixth Sense and he was looking for some fresh ideas for his new movie.

They had a temporary credit sequence mocked up with the music, but they just weren’t feeling it. He sent me – on a VHS, I think! – the temp sequence and the amazing James Newton Howard score.…

RSS & Email Subscribers: Check out the full Signs article at Art of the Title.

2012: The Year in Review

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +1300

It’s the end of 2012 and with a year like the one we just had, we felt it would be fitting to look back over some of the highlights.

Business as usual...

We hit the ground running with a feature on Imaginary Forces’ panopticon title sequence for AMC’s short-lived TV series Rubicon, followed closely by our first video game feature: an in-depth look at Goldtooth Creative’s innovative mixed media main titles for Eidos Montreal’s dystopian cyberpunk adventure Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Then, of course, came our comprehensive breakdown of Blur Studios’ meticulously crafted main titles for David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Featuring interviews with Fincher, Blur creative director Tim Miller, and designer Neil Kellerhouse, the Dragon Tattoo feature was an article that we were all particularly proud of, and one that fulfilled the original vision of the site.

In between the larger articles, we continued with our extended examinations of the work of design legend Saul Bass, and tackled everything from small town hockey in Les Bleus De Ramville, The Inner Workings – a look at title sequences that featured microscopic visions of the mechanical and organic, PostPanic’s sci-fi infused titles for the 2011 OFFF festival, and…

RSS & Email Subscribers: Check out the full 2012: The Year in Review article at Art of the Title.

James Bond: 50 Years of Main Title Design

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +1300

“Shocking! Positively shocking!” — James Bond

After 50 years and 23 films, the James Bond franchise is inarguably the most successful and steadfast in film history. Based on a canon of novels by journalist and WWII intelligence officer Ian Fleming, Bond was already a household name in the United Kingdom a decade before reaching the silver screen. But it was Sean Connery's performance as a souped-up version of Fleming's iconic superspy that turned 007 into one of the UK's largest cultural exports, on par with Doctor Who and The Beatles.

In his literary form, Bond was a much-welcomed boost of national pride for a country which had only begun to stabilize after the War; on film, he became an icon for a postwar boom generation with aspirations and disposable income, with Connery leading the charge as the world's most famous playboy on and off the job. Bond films became style forecasts, dictating everything from fashion and gadgetry in the pages of Playboy and Esquire, interior design courtesy of visionary set designer Ken Adam, to car, drink, and firearm preferences around the world.

The mission began in 1962 with Dr. No, Fleming’s sixth Bond novel. Since then, the franchise has cycled through six leading actors, eleven directors and two generations of producers, but it has always followed the blueprint of Fleming’s original works – if more in spirit than in literal adaptation – despite having exhausted most of his material by the late ’80s. And while its reasons for success are as numerous as its fans, every Bond film carries in it the same root DNA – a cocktail* of simple ingredients, in varying quantities: international conspiracy and espionage, high-tech gadgetry, supervillains, nine-life action scenes with explosions disproportionate to their cause, exotic locations, sultry associates and cheeky one-liners – all summarized in a simple phrase known the world over:

Bond, James Bond.

But there are also two famous visual Bond hallmarks not of Fleming origin: the “Bond Barrel” sequence, in which white dots animate in stop-frame fashion across the screen to become a gun barrel aimed at 007, and the main title sequence: a sovereign piece of graphic real estate nestled into every Bond film, usually around 15 minutes into the first act, at the conclusion of the traditional pre-title action sequence.

As with the films themselves, most Bond titles draw from a self-governed set of themes, but they are also liberal in their application of them. Female forms, stylized violence, implied danger, guns, imaginative photography, motion graphics, and academic typography are paired with a billboard anthem and presented through the thematic lens of the film itself – as in the underwater ballad of the Thunderball titles or the cosmic backdrops of Moonraker.

In spite of the tropes, the Bond titles are not formulaic – they have become a genre unto themselves, and as such they hold a certain immunity from criticisms aimed at its format. To criticize a Bond title for featuring silhouettes is to criticize a Tolkien novel for featuring hobbits. If it isn't your thing, you'll move on; if it is – and generally speaking, it is – you'll come back, expecting more and better.

In broad terms, Bond sequences can be defined as a strong visual statement accompanied by a high-profile pop ballad, both bordering on excess. Technology for art's sake has also played an important role over the years. In some cases it’s evidenced in their construction, from optical film compositing, in-camera effects, and stop-frame animation in the ’60s to experimental CGI and digital compositing, motion capture, and motion control in recent years (and likely an untold number of late-night innovations throughout). But technology has also found its way to the foreground as an aesthetic: lasers, projections, science-grade high-speed and closeup photography, and an array of optical tricks have all made prominent cameos over the years.

It has been the role of the sequences’ four directors – Maurice Binder, Robert Brownjohn, design studio MK12, and Daniel Kleinman – to balance these concerns with their own interpretation of the film and the Bond legacy, and to shepherd the tradition intact through successive eras.

Just as the Bond films have had a significant impact on culture at large over the years, so too have their title sequences affected the landscape of graphic and title design in the latter half of the century and onwards, due in equal measure to the creative and technical contributions of its directors and a savvy and supportive production backbone willing to take box office risks to protect their integrity.

BEN RADATZ, partner and creative director at design studio MK12, details the history of the James Bond title sequence from Maurice Binder to Robert Brownjohn to MK12 and finally DANIEL KLEINMAN, here interviewed about his involvement with the franchise.

Famed British writer Roald Dahl recalls a meeting he once held with original Bond producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, who had called him up about writing the screenplay for You Only Live Twice:
"You can come up with anything you like so far as the story goes," they told me, "but there are two things that you mustn't mess around…

RSS & Email Subscribers: Check out the full James Bond: 50 Years of Main Title Design article at Art of the Title.

Billion Dollar Brain (1967)

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +1300

“Some games are more dangerous than others.” — Harry Palmer

An inhuman voice stutters orders at Harry Palmer.

“Yes, but who is this, eh? And how did you pick on me?”

A billion dollar brain – a supercomputer – is calling, and it has chosen the bespectacled British spy for a mission to Helsinki. With the frantic blast of horns, the “how” of that selection is revealed to be the whirling of magnetic tapes and shuffling of punch cards. PALMER. PALMER. PALMER. Infallible decision-making courtesy of the best tech of the era.

This mechanical spymaster is a vacuum tube Skynet, its sinister string-pulling and cold calculation are aided by the deft button presses of feminine fingers that seem to match the rhythm of that languid piano score. Like us, the brain has been watching Palmer for some time. Through compound eyes it has followed those thick turtleshell rims one byte at a time, from IPCRESS to Berlin, into the arms of women, and through the barrel of a gun. Over and over, it analyzes, organizes, and compiles a symphony of numbers, colors and data, playing and replaying what it knows about the mod Palmer in a series of abstract tableaux, seemingly unable to decipher this cool spook.

RSS & Email Subscribers: Check out the full Billion Dollar Brain article at Art of the Title.

Dreamcatcher (2003)

Tue, 4 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +1300

“Come with me, Owen... I'll show you things you'll wish you'd never seen.” — Colonel Curtis

The groaning static of an echo long lost ushers in Kyle Cooper and Imaginary Forces' gracefully gelid title sequence to Lawrence Kasdan's 2003 flop, Dreamcatcher. And while the film itself might be shambolic, baffling – alright, downright crummy – one thing is clear: this sequence is about tone. As we descend into a steely, ticking beat and a constellation of synthesizer notes tinkles along, elaborate webs of sinew, frosted feathers, and snow-capped mountain ranges fuse and tessellate, finally resolving into unswerving emptiness, into tundra. Chilled to the marrow by this expertly crafted farrago of natural wonders, we are nowhere near prepared to experience Morgan Freeman call every man in sight “Bucko.”

RSS & Email Subscribers: Check out the full Dreamcatcher article at Art of the Title.