"As a lawyer, I've had to learn that people aren't just good or just bad. People are many things."
—Paul Biegler

The opening title sequence of this 1959 crime drama is a classic piece of graphic design – giving the movie a strong, timeless indentity that still inspires filmmakers to this day, says Julien Vallée.

Back at the beginning of silent film, movie titles were only of interest to producers because of the legal and copyright information they contained about the film being shown. They eventually came to be used to present cast and crew member information as well. And it was the role of a lettering artist to design these slates.

Thanks to pioneers like Pablo Ferro, Maurice Binder or Saul Bass, these static informative slates were eventually transformed, giving birth to the discipline of film title sequence in the early 50s. The marriage of graphic design and moving images created this new way of introducing movies, which not only informed the audience of its crew, but also played a primordial role in giving each movie its own unique identity.

In the 1959 movie Anatomy of a Murder, Saul Bass literalised the film title by presenting each member of the crew next to disassembled body parts. He first starts by showing the entire body presenting the director Otto Preminger. Then each piece of the body is disassembled and presented like it is part of a puzzle. Using simple elements like cutouts of paper on a uniform grey background, this intro sequence has traversed decades by keeping its cutting-edge quality. No high technology was needed – only a playground in which a graphic designer could think of a simple idea to introduce the film.

Today, the Anatomy of a Murder sequence still inspires as one of the greatest opening titles of our time, its influence evident in movies like Catch Me If You Can, Monsters, Inc. and even Thank You For Smoking, which introduces you to the subject of the movie right before it starts. These title sequences all have one of the key qualities Bass introduced in his Anatomy of a Murder sequence: they give a strong, distinct identity to the movie.

WRITER: Julien Vallée
This article originally appeared in Computer Arts, April 2012
©2012 Future Publishing Limited. Used with permission.
http://www.computerarts.co.uk

"You're looking at me like, like... I just asked you the fucking square root of something." —Buddy 'Aces' Israel

High-contrast colors and a soulful beat instantly transport the viewer back to films of the ’60s and ’70s to revisit the story they just experienced in this main-on-end title sequence. Hep assassins brandish guns and shoot pool, a cop takes a rending shot to the gut, and a femme fatale calmly looks down the sights of her iron: still images captured as if with a rostrum camera.

Taking inspiration from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and a handful of spaghetti Westerns, VooDooDog pulls the viewer into the debaucherous penthouse suites and grimy basement bars that make up the world of Smokin’ Aces.

Paul Donnellon from creative studio VooDooDog talks to Art of the Title.

Art of the Title: How do you prepare to create a title sequence?

Paul Donnellon: First, I read the shooting script because I think it’s always better not to have any images cluttering up my mind before putting down ideas. Sometimes it’s good not to even see the movie so the idea remains fresh and you don't replicate stuff from the film.

AOTT: What were your initial concepts for Smokin’ Aces?

PD: In the beginning, the idea was to do a 3D CG thing with bullets flying through playing cards – make it quite slick and like a pastiche of live action slow-motion, but in 3D computer graphics. I thought it would be ironic if the credits were etched onto the bullets, like in those gangster movies where they send the victim a bullet with their name on it before they are bumped off. We did a little test of that, which was as far as we got before Joe Carnahan, the director, pointed us away from that. He was looking into ’70s movies for his inspiration and pointed us toward a sort of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid vibe.

3D bullet test (Click to Watch)

AOTT: Is it hard to let go of the original concept and start over or does the clean slate somehow help?

PD: It can be difficult to let go and move on if it’s not quite right. You want to see the idea through, but often the design and directing crews are trying new things out. But once you’ve made a test sequence, you sort of feel like you’ve already completed it and then you can move in another direction. So with one film project you can get to try a few different approaches. Some of them never see the light of day, but it’s good to try them out because it could be useful R&D for a later project.

Original storyboards (10 images)

AOTT: So how did it progress from there?

PD: We asked the production studio if we could have all the on-set photography from the film. I thought we could get better shots using the stills. So they sent over three thousand thumbnails in these books! Myself and Andrew White spent days marking up the photos we wanted and finally getting digital jpegs of each pic we needed.

The idea was to make jerky, pixelated actions from the stills which looked old fashioned, like old school rostrum photography from the ’60s and ’70s. We had to try to think how someone who had some stills and a rostrum camera would have made a credit sequence in the days before computers. The colours were saturated, too, to give a sort of Fuji film stock look to the final grade.

AOTT: Did the director give any direction with regard to the stills?

PD: I had a call with Joe Carnahan about those three thousand stills we got and he said he would be happy for us to use those because the angles were different than the ones from the movie shoot. He decided we should make an end title sequence as well. It would allow us to use plot elements from the movie without spoiling the storyline and then the opening title sequence could be more mysterious.

Unused opening title treatment (Click to Watch)

AOTT: It's definitely bold enough to stand separate from the film. Where did that energy come from?

PD: It had to make a big statement. It’s a brash movie so we wanted the sequence to shake up the viewer – to announce that it was a ballsy action movie. It also couldn’t give anything away plot-wise, so it demanded some punchy iconic images to entice the viewer rather than trying to set up a backstory.

AOTT: You had to make quite a few adjustments throughout this project, right? You originally created both open and end titles, but only the end were used.

PD: Yes, Joe liked the opening credits we did but after their edit they felt it slowed the momentum of the introduction. That seems to be a big concern for filmmakers now – they’re aware of the short attention span of audiences and don't want to delay the story. As a designer, I am not sure I would agree, of course. I think that if credit sequences are good and entertaining, they can hold an audience’s attention.

Finished opening title cards (6 images)

AOTT: Do you think that’s why main-on-end sequences have gotten so popular these days?

PD: Yeah, that might be one of the reasons. The opening of a movie has become sacred ground and filmmakers often want to get straight into their movie. Some filmmakers – like David Fincher with Panic Room for example – are relaxed enough to go for it and have an opening sequence. For directors who don't want to risk messing with their movie they can opt to have an end sequence, which can help provide an atmosphere for reflection or it can trigger word of mouth so it becomes a talking point in itself or make them laugh or hint at a sequel... but it’s mainly so the film is a little more memorable. I don't know, maybe it’s only designers who like end sequences and maybe no filmmakers really want them and it’s just us pushing to do some cool work, haha.

AOTT: You guys are "self-professed film buffs." What are some little-known films that left an impression on you?

• e’Lollipop, an obscure film from South Africa that I saw when I was a kid – very emotional about apartheid.

• Mothra vs. Godzilla. I saw it when I was young and I liked the garish colours and lo-fi-ness of it.

• The Chuck Jones-directed The Phantom Tollbooth. I loved the mixing of live action and animation.

• Richard Williams’ version of A Christmas Carol, for which he won an Oscar in 1971.

• Enter the Void by Gaspar Noé has brilliant opening credits and the movie blew me away – it was so esoteric and nuts, but very emotive too.

• Last Year at Marienbad. This Alain Resnais film has stayed with me too for some odd reason... .

AOTT: VooDooDog has an uncanny knack for tapping into the essence of another era's magic and remixing it into something punchy, like your Emmy-nominated title sequence for The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Following suit, what would be a dream project for you?

PD: It would have been nice to have done the opening titles for the Tintin movie! We could have referenced the 2D Hergé drawings and done something that linked it with the motion capture style of the film, but we didn't get anywhere chasing those up.

It would also be great to do a Tex Avery-style animation someday – maybe a crazy comedy would work. I loved doing the Sellers film as it referenced the Pink Panther opening titles, which inspired me when I was a kid. Something like that would be brilliant.

"This doll had almost been loved to death. You know, love inflicts the most terrible injuries on my small patients." —the Doll Maker

Saul Bass's work always looks effortless and timeless. That's what makes his work so appealing – it can be enjoyed on a basic level. Like a child seeing simple shapes and colors for the first time – a white line on black paper. Maybe there's something soothing about that simplicity next to the visual chaos of the world.

One of the best examples of a simple yet smart Saul Bass idea is the main title sequence for Bunny Lake is Missing. The film is about an emotionally disturbed person involved in the disappearance of a child. To hint at the character's state of mind, a hand tears shapes out of a black screen, each hole revealing another credit. The torn edges are jagged and help to set the mood of the film. It ends with the shape of a girl being torn out of the paper, as if she's missing from the sheet of paper (which is then used again in the poster). It seems like such a simple idea but getting there is difficult. It takes years of experience to have the ability to boil ideas down to this kind of purity and Bass didn't muck it up with anything he didn't need: no color, no jumpy edits, no tricks. Just the raw, naked concept standing on its own. You can see this same approach time and time again in his work: great ideas condensed down to their purest form, then simply executed.

It proves that basic shapes, colors, and compositions in the hands of an experienced artist can become something magical. You could compare him to Matisse, who spent his entire career as an artist refining his style over 50 working years and ended up cutting simple shapes out of painted paper in his later years. He made some of his best work at the very end of his life. But all those years of experience were necessary for him to cut those shapes just right. Saul Bass was at that same level in the design world. Look at the title sequence to Psycho. Matisse would have loved it – Bass did it all with just rectangles.

GUEST WRITER: Steve Fuller (www.stevefuller.tv)
© Art of the Title, 2012

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."
—Arthur C. Clarke

Riot police patrol the streets. An infection spreads. Unrest reigns. The malformed offspring of a broken generation roam in gangs.

Mischa Rozema and Si Scott’s nightmarish vision of the future gives the audience glimpses of contextual information to tie together a loose narrative. Simultaneously, the sequence challenges the viewer to unearth the credits of the festival's participants embedded throughout: on a cassette ejected from an exploding vehicle, sitting atop a dinette, even tattooed under the fingernails of a torture victim.

The power of concealment is evident as repeated viewings are rewarded with startling new details, showcasing unique ways of presenting information in director Mischa Rozema and writer Si Scott’s dystopian titles for the 2011 OFFF festival.

Art of the Title: Tell us about the conceptual stage. Did you have tons of ideas you wanted to work through? How did you whittle them down?

Mischa Rozema: The project started out as a collaboration between myself and Si Scott. Right from the start, we decided that it should be the darkest thing we could make. I think it just felt natural to the both of us; if we had to nail the future, it would not be a nice place. To get started, we made a collection of 50 ideas that would scare me and Si and the list just kept on growing! Sometimes the ideas were completely worked out and sometimes they were starting points for a scene or micro-story. The main underlying idea was: what would happen if the future landed on our doorstep today? Let's take mankind, add perhaps 100 years and then let them show up on our doorstep today. The future would pretty much devour the present. Probably in a matter of, let's say, seven days… so that's what we're looking at. But every ending also means a new beginning, hence Year Zero.

So we had the long list of ideas to work with and the desired props but I also wanted to leave plenty of room for improvisation – working with people, situations, or locations we bumped into.

Concept drawings (3 images)

Art of the Title: What were some of your inspirations? There are scenes reminiscent of The War of the Worlds, Dark Days, Requiem for a Dream, etc.

Mischa Rozema: Inspiration was darkness – total darkness. This idea evolved into a clash of times inspired by the late Arthur C. Clarke. He wrote about different historical civilizations meeting in a single point in time. And Kubrick of course – he's always lurking somewhere.

Art of the Title: How did you create the main character?

Mischa Rozema: I actually made up his role on the plane going to Prague. So there was very little time to produce his storyline. I had this idea of starting out in a kind of documentary style – following an average guy home and then bit by bit his environment gets stranger and more uncomfortable to watch. The background takes over and the piece changes into an urban nightmare. And like a nightmare, the story/edit doesn't always make sense but it makes you feel really uncomfortable. I wanted the viewer to experience the nightmare.

Art of the Title: Can you describe the process from there?

Ania Markham: Once Mischa and Si came up with the initial ideas for the film, we spoke to our production partners, Savage, who are based in Prague. We knew that with their help we could achieve the impossible: shooting with no budget. They helped us enormously with sorting out locations, casting, and supplying the crew and equipment. The vast majority of the filming was done in Prague with only a few macro bits done in-studio here at PostPanic in Amsterdam.

Location scouting (4 images)

Whilst all this was going on, the rest of the PostPanic team back in Amsterdam got started on the post work – both from a design and motion graphics standpoint (like designing all the names) – and also prepping the CG and VFX work. We’re lucky that PostPanic has its own post team in-house, including seven permanent staff and usually three interns and freelancers, so we were able to work on these titles in between our paid commercial projects. We also pulled in some friends, suppliers, and freelancers we had for other projects to do extra work on the OFFF titles in the evenings and weekends as there were so many CG elements and effects that we wanted to include.

Ship design, modeling and rendering (5 images)

Billboard 3D models (3 images)

Art of the Title: What were some of the obstacles in filming and animating the sequence? Did you have to sort out permissions to film in certain public places?

Mischa Rozema: The biggest obstacles were time and money. There was no budget, so we had to be clever with time, working outside of our paid projects to make this piece. We had some locations worked out and some we shot without permission. Doing that was easy because we were a very small team, shooting with two Canon 5Ds – one for Jirka, the DP, and one I carried around – so most of the time people weren't even aware that they were walking into a film set!

Props designs (2 images)

Location shooting (4 images)

Animation and post were a blessing even though it was a lot of work. There was no client involved, so a lot of the frustration was kept out of the process. All there was left was a lot of enthusiasm and love from the crew involved! We had a good time making this.

Art of the Title: How much shooting did you do in Prague?

Mischa Rozema: I think we had three to five days. We also had some bad news. Due to his back problems Si Scott had to abandon the project and couldn't join the shoot.

Prague location shooting (2 images)

Art of the Title: How did Si having to drop out affect your schedule and process?

Mischa Rozema: Si is irreplaceable. He has a very unique sense of typography and design. Creatively, it was tough. We had been looking forward to working together on this for ages. So when he had to step out it felt very sad. I was looking forward to his mad typefaces and designs. But from a production point of view, it wasn't disastrous. I started out as a graphic designer many years ago and in a sense I still am. So together with some really talented designers at PostPanic, it was a challenge we could overcome.

Art of the Title: How long did the post work in Amsterdam take?

Mischa Rozema: In between commercial projects, about three months.

Art of the Title: And all in all, from concept to finished piece?

Mischa Rozema: We started thinking about it in September, finalised the concept in January, filmed in March, and delivered in June. So, about 10 months in all.

Art of the Title: How was the car explosion scene created?

Ivor Goldberg: First and foremost, we shot the live-action plate with the abandoned car. Extra plates were shot of whatever car parts we could find with the idea that we could then embed these into the shot, although in the end most were reconstructed in CG. The lighting and environment were captured and recreated in the scene to light and integrate all the CG layers that were created, such as the flying objects, the smoke, and the fire.

Car explosion process shots (4 images)

The shot was then tracked, the geometry matching the car was built, and piece by piece all the elements were rendered and forced together in compositing using any cheats, fudging, and faking that we could get away with.

Art of the Title: Can you describe the process for embedding text into the scenes?

Mischa Rozema: We wanted the titles to be completely embedded into the texture of the piece. So we had to find a lot of clever solutions to display them without losing the viewer’s attention. It was fun to think of these concepts because they're all so different and surprising when you watch them – that was our aim, anyway. We had close to 70 names to deal with so we grouped them quite randomly. Sometimes it was the meaning of a name that decided its place in the film. And sometimes it was just the length of it.

Logo graphics (Click to Enlarge)

Final title integrations (27 images)

Art of the Title: How did you choose the actors?

Mischa Rozema: I wanted real people, so that's who we cast. I was looking for faces with a lot of background, faces you would find in wartime portrait photography. I wanted the main character to live with his parents and have two identities: a tough exterior one and a weak one when he would be home with his family. That's what we ended up doing. I planned out little routes the lead actor should walk through – not knowing where he would end up most of the time – and told him to act natural, like himself. He felt like an action hero and it was exactly what I needed: a Russian mobster living with his mom!

Lead actor on location (4 images)

As for some others, the producer called a girlfriend in to act as his sister and then she arranged an elderly couple on the spot to act as the parents. Not too long after that, we all showed up at the old couple's apartment. Nobody knew what the hell we were planning on shooting. And in no time these poor old people had a riot cop in their kitchen, a sibling fight, and guns on every coffee table while we filmed them doing their crossword puzzles. Business as usual! They were truly the sweetest people I have ever met.

Shooting the actors (3 images)

Art of the Title: What about the children involved in the shoot?

Mischa Rozema: I was looking for contrast. Children are the epitome of innocence, so to place them in violent surroundings emphasizes the violence or distorts our perception of the child. The child becomes a powerful entity. The kids in the film aren't victims – they're fully in control of their situation. To me that was very important.

Location shoot with kids (2 images)

Art of the Title: Can you talk about the sound design a little?

Mischa Rozema: The sound design and music was made by Hecq and it added a lot to the feel and scale of the film. It clearly divides the three acts. The first act is up to execution, the second moves from there, and the third is the final shot. It makes completely different ideas and scenes feel coherent. It also emphasizes the dynamics of the film and brings the much needed pacing at the end. It's been great working with him – we've been surfing the same wavelength throughout the project.

Art of the Title: And what software did you use to animate, edit, render, composite, etc?

Mischa Rozema: The usual suspects: After Effects, Nuke, 3D Max, Maya, Illustrator, and Photoshop.

Camera tracking tests (Click to Watch)

Art of the Title: The sequence got us thinking about creation as a hopeful act; however, the darkness of the piece seems to counteract that. Can you speak to this seeming contradiction between the tone and the message?

Mischa Rozema: The way we saw it was: art doesn't prosper in a Utopian environment. I think the best art, film, or music out there is inspired or driven by the darker aspects of life, be they poverty, war, politics, bad relationships – you name it. Creativity has a deep connection with suffering on many levels. Art is not Disney, Hollywood, or happy endings. Art is real, inspiring, provoking, raw, and even in darkness, hopeful.

PostPanic OFFF Barcelona 2011 main titles - making of (Click to Watch)

WRITER: Jonathan Dube
INTERVIEW: Ian Albinson, Lola Landekic
© Art of the Title, 2012

"There's only one thing you love, Danny: that's danger. Cliffhanging. You could never love a woman like you love danger." —Beatrice Ocean

Let us not forget that Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven is a remake of Lewis Milestone's 1960 original, and let us also not forget that the original had a very different tone. While they do share similar story arcs, the original was a much less serious affair – essentially, it followed the Rat Pack doing their thing in Vegas, with a little plot thrown in for extra credit. As such, Saul Bass' sequence – while seemingly over-playful when dismembered from the film, and more so against Nelson Riddle's goofy big-band score – is an appropriate introduction to this Rat Pack caper: loud, jaunty, and, of course, classic Vegas. Bass was inspired by the electricity of Sin City itself, employing a simple dot motif for the type and border elements, evoking the colorful chasing-lights and other signage found on the Strip.

The title sequence is split into two distinct sections, with the first showcasing the names of the eleven key players, set against scoreboard-style numerals blended into one another through accumulative animation. The second half is more freestyle, with animated dots forming graphics and the remaining credits.

As a film, Ocean's Eleven was a modest blockbuster, fetching $5.5 million at the box office, inching it into 1960’s top studio releases. And while Bass' titles weren't his most memorable in the public eye (and no doubt overshadowed by his work on Psycho, which was released that same year), they do remain a favorite amongst designers and motion graphic artists for their modernist sensibilities, attention to typography, and technical execution.

(Keep an eye out for the slot machine graphic that looks suspiciously like Bass' iconic Bell logo, which he designed for AT&T almost a decade later)

WRITER: Ben Radatz
© Art of the Title, 2011

“There are a couple of ways to avoid death. One of them is to be magnificent, and this is my favorite way.” —Ian Dury

The viewer is greeted by an eerily empty theatre – dark, desolate and silent. Suddenly, a shuffling of feet, a startled pigeon, and our main man hobbles into the spotlight, sparking an explosion of sound. As ringleader Ian Dury, Andy Serkis is obscenely hypnotizing, his eyes rolling about as he hunches over the microphone, satirical and lyrical in that “Mockney” accent. The starry backdrop melds into pop-art animation and Peter Blake’s hand-written typography trembles as the scene oscillates between the raucous stage show, band practice, and a birth. Buffeted between public and private, the sequence is at once disorienting and cohesive, ultimately underlining Dury’s unofficial modus operandi of boldly turning life into art.

For the third consecutive year Art of the Title served as a member of the jury for SXSW's Excellence in Title Design competition. The opportunity allowed us to share the stage with a terrific group of designers and filmmakers.

Design Awards organizer David Horridge brought together Kurt Volk (Troublemaker Studios), Gareth Smith & Jenny Lee (Smith & Lee Design), Ben Radatz (MK12) and myself (Ian Albinson) for a screening event on March 12th at the Vimeo theater.

The evening began with a highlight reel of the jurors' work that I assembled (see: above), which then led into an informal 40-minute discussion with the designers, moderated by yours truly, where they talked about the design process, their own designer/director relationships, some of the legal limitations encountered when designing title sequences, and finally their favorite projects.

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