“The credit sequence for this movie is pretty spectacular, so if you really want to watch it turn me off, now. If you talk to people who [work in] special effects or people who are really interested in the visuals of movies they’ll have volumes and volumes to talk about but this opening credit sequence, this amazing backward zoom through the Universe that takes you from the ‘too many sounds and too many voices’ of who we are on Earth and into the past where all of our sounds and all of the radio signals that we have emitted finally takes you to the quieter place where none of our high volume squeals and noises actually appear.

But for those of us who are not that interested in visual effects, like myself, it is a very interesting journey in the film, an interesting journey for the characters. You get this idea that you’re in a space ship, let’s say, or some kind of device that is taking you all the way back in time, to a place in the Universe where no Earthling has ever been. And I guess you have to assume that because this is the point of view of the lead character, Ellie Arroway that this is her image, her imagination, her idea of what a journey like this would really be like. So much of the film, as it continues, is pretty much about that same idea.

This is the best part, where [the screen] goes very quiet and, if you’ve ever seen this in a theater, there are a lot of people feeling very uncomfortable because they think the sound just went off in the theater.

This is a view of the Universe that no one has ever had and it really comes out of Carl’s Sagan life’s work. We saw all the little spiral galaxies and all the different types of galaxies and now you go into this array which comes out. And as we zoom out and we zoom out of a little girl’s eye. The ‘ins and outs’ of this is that Jenna Malone, the actor who plays me, doesn’t really have blue eyes, so that’s the very first effect in the movie [proper].”

“The opening title sequence was supposed to be starting inside the fear center of Edward Norton’s brain. The electricity is like photo electrical stimuli that is running through his brain. These are supposed to be impulses, fear-based impulses. We are changing scale the whole time so we’re starting at the size of a dendrite [and] we are pulling back through the frontal lobes, going through this black section where there are particles; we’ve left the brain and are going through the skull casing. This is inside the skull where Arnon’s name appears, inside bone where apparently there is some fluid in, which I did not know. And then we pull out through this clogged pore. The first time we showed this to [Edward] he said, “My face is not that dirty.” And I said that this was all based on actual photographs…of your skin.”

Behind the Scenes featurette on the making of the title sequence with commentary by Visual Effects Supervisors Kevin Tod Haug and Kevin Mack. (From the Two-Disc Collector’s Edition DVD)

“Our destiny is only defined by how we deal with the chance elements to our life. That is the embodiment of the feather; here is this thing that can land anywhere, and it lands at your feet.”

“Part of the picture is about fate. The feather blows in the wind and touches down here or there. Was it planned or was it per chance?”