Having an opportunity to harvest the marrow a bit more on the crafting of the opening to HBO’s “The Pacific,” Art of the Title was able to speak with both Steve Fuller formerly of Imaginary Force’s New York office and Ahmet Ahmet of Imaginary Force’s Los Angeles office to round out the creative history of the piece.

Baptismal and greasy war-streaked faces of mothers’ sons were rendered by Steve Fuller -then in his eighth year at Imaginary Forces, this his final project- and continued by Ahmet Ahmet, using charcoal on tracing paper then scanned and overlaid back into the provided original footage. Hans Zimmer’s score plays with a dignity that is on par with To Kill A Mockingbird (and it’s own legendary opening).

The visuals, profound; the sky-soiling blood sun, a singular helmet strap that seems to drain from the man, from his horrors, the variations of charcoal dust analogical to the volcanic sand of the Pacific islands -all blending and fueling the notion that life runs from our sons and the sons of our enemies then as now.

Watery cobblestone logos and longitudinal linotype layer, lace and lash Prologue Films’ opening and end credit work for Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes.”

The sequence creative director Danny Yount, a self-taught Emmy-winning designer/director produced main titles for Six Feet Under and The Grid while at Digital Kitchen. He currently resides at Prologue Films and has created titles for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man and RockNRolla.

Art of the Title: How did you initially become involved with “The Incredible Hulk”?

Kyle Cooper: Well, I hadn’t worked with director Louis Leterrier before, but I have worked with Marvel quite a bit. I designed the Marvel logo comic animation with Avi Arad, and I designed all three Spider-Man titles. Our company, Prologue, also created titles and VFX for Iron Man. In addition, I knew Gale Anne Hurd, who was a producer on both Hulk films, so they called me in at the outset. We met with Marvel and discussed the challenges. Louis had shot several different openings. In one alternative for example, Edward Norton was up on a mountaintop, consumed with guilt for having hurt Betty Ross, and planning to shoot himself in order to keep others safe.

The initial idea for the opening was to create a prologue that included Banner’s backstory. It was an idea that I liked quite a bit. In fact, one of the two reasons I called my second company Prologue is that 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. Studios quite often are having test screenings and realizing that a prologue is needed and calling us. I took the names of both my companies, Imaginary Forces, and Prologue, from the prologue of Henry V. So the idea of laying the groundwork for the story which is about to follow is something that I have always been interested in. In literature as well as film. The title sequence can create an introduction, or relay the back story of a film, the idea of condensing the films themes and the characters obsessions is an interesting challenge.

For the Hulk, the primary goal was to tell the origin story in a prologue, rather than spending time on the expository during the film as Ang Lee had done. We approached the problem in various ways. We tried creating a prologue, and having the credit sequence at the end. We tried having some credits mixed with the prologue, and the rest at the end. Ultimately, I proposed integrating the credits fully into an opening that would serve as the main title as well as encapsulating Banner’s story.

I know it was a lot to ask. Often times if a director puts the credits at the end of a film, then he will just have a simple presenter card with the main title at the front. But for Hulk, we needed another element – a separate sequence to set up the story. In the past, test screening audiences have sometimes indicated that they were not clear on certain aspects of a film that could have been explained in a prologue. And yet, most of the time integrating or inter-cutting the credits with a prologue is not considered. It is often assumed that this approach would end up trying to convey too much information – that reading the credits demands a certain amount of time, and that trying to tell a story while this is happening would generate confusion. But I always say, “Let us try.” And I did that here. So I directed a second shoot with soldiers kicking lab doors down, looking for Bruce Banner, searching for clues, and discovering experiments left behind in old motel rooms long since abandoned. We generated a lot of great footage from the shoot which ultimately enabled us to tell the story in a concise and engaging way.

ATS: So how much of the production footage was already shot and brought to you and how much did you create?

KC: We did use some footage provided by Marvel, but they didn’t just bring it to us and say, “Here use this.” Normally I ask for what I want to use. I ask a client what they have. I go through all the out-takes and dailies. Then I request the footage I am interested in working with and start to edit with that. Sometimes we can do a second unit shoot to fill in where the sequence is lacking, but often times this is not possible due to budget concerns. It just depends on the project. For the Hulk, we were lucky enough to have both.

In the final sequence, there are shots of General Ross looking at the maps and smoking a cigar. There are shots that were turned into surveillance footage, as well as a wall of photographs and information being studied by General Ross. It’s all about the hunt. Where he’s been. What he’s done. In many ways the sequence follows the path of the Hulk’s destruction around the globe from Ross’s perspective. Banner becomes the Hulk, hurts Betty, and the hunt is on with Ross following close behind.

So the wall we built essentially became the documentation of that hunt. The central element was a large map where Ross had tracked all the sightings of the Hulk, and stemming out from these locations were all the materials collected from that location. We spent a lot of time on research for this section, looking for images of destruction, rage, fear; looking for and creating images that would suggest the presence of something that was no longer there. We wanted to create the feeling that you had always just missed the moment – that you were always one step behind, one moment too late; leaving you with nothing but the aftermath. A destroyed pick-up truck, a blurry image from a CCTV camera, the dusty remains of a homemade laboratory. We created all kinds of medical reports and police records. We generated a full background report on each of the Hulk’s known associates, then linked them together on the wall, showing how all the connection’s were interwoven.

We didn’t just want to create the illusion of large-scale wall with endless amounts of data and images. We could have done that by generating small-scale setups for each shot. But we wanted it to be real, so we built it full scale. And in fact, we had to rebuild it several times over the course of the project, photographing it extensively during the development of the sequence, and then doing the final build on set for the shoot.

The scene in the hospital, on the other hand, was shot by the director, but it wasn’t put together as a sequence, it was just raw footage. A lot of what I wind up doing is editing and figuring out how to simplify. Initially, they had shot an origin piece, which they had cut a number of different ways, but it was long and the story wasn’t clear enough. It did prove to be a good foundation, however, so we essentially began with that and developed the story from there.

In fact, the television show with Bill Bixby also had an origin story in the opening credits and I think Louis felt that the approach was an interesting one. Although I don’t want to speak for him, I think some of what they shot tipped its cap to that original opening, and nicely so: Banner being in the chair, doing experiments, Betty looking through the glass, and, of course, the transformation. But they didn’t want to reveal too much of him in that scene, just as we hadn’t wanted to show him clearly in the images of the hunt. They didn’t want to give him away before the movie even started. So we had to come up with ways of getting around that – ways of showing the Hulk without revealing too much. We filmed high-speed close-ups of shirts ripping and seams coming apart. We used the camera to shoot close-ups of teeth, to follow veins down an arm, or inside an eyeball, then used those veins as a way of transitioning into lines on the map, always hinting, always working to heighten the sense of urgency and mystery without being too explicit. We even worked on an over-the-shoulder shot of the Hulk standing up from his chair, shot from the Hulk’s POV and using an effect to create the Hulk-vision similar to the old TV show.

ATS: Do you emphasize incorporating elements of the comic, TV series, or this film itself when you work or do those elements and themes rear themselves? (In other words, do you have a list of elements you want to use?)

KC: I do a lot of research. I had not read The Hulk comics in a number of years but I read them a lot when I was growing up. I had all The Hulk comics, and the entire first set of The Hulk and Submariner comics, so I certainly knew the story. I was kind of a hardcore Marvel Universe guy. Growing up, my brother and I had 6000 comics. We even had The Amazing Spider-Man #1 but my mother threw it away because she would do that if we left them out on the floor, she also would not let us watch The Three Stooges, you know how mothers are. I loved the Hulk, I loved the Fantastic Four, and I feel lucky that they have all come back to me working on these projects.

But for a comic, as with any main title, the first stage is always research. I read the script. I find out everything I can. I listen to the director and watch the movie. Then I try to figure out how to best answer the brief. We wanted to get right into the movie by telling the origin story in the credit sequence, and yet the story we needed to tell was extremely important. I didn’t want to walk into this with the attitude that we just needed to get the origin story out of the way fast so the real movie could start. I wanted it to be an essential part of the film, to add another layer of meaning to the overall script. Everyone thought it would be a very difficult thing to do. In fact, I was really surprised at the number of people who wrote about the title sequence online and in the press. I actually put a lot of those quotes on our website because it was wild to me how many people mentioned that the origin story was done in the opening credits. I didn’t understand why that struck people. To me, it always seemed possible. And more than that, it seemed natural. It always just seemed like the right thing to do, although looking back, I guess it was a challenge.

I went to the first Hulk premiere with Garson who was the title designer for that film. Garson and I are old friends. We went to school together, and I hired him at R/Greenberg Associates in New York. I had met with Ang Lee about doing the first film, but Garson got the project that time. The two movies had some of the same producers, but they didn’t want to do it the same way, so I ended up doing the titles this time around.

ATS: You’ve also done the titles for the Spider-Man films, in what ways do the themes of a superhero film change your approach compared to other films you’ve worked on (if there is a difference?)

KC: I don’t think the process is any different. The tendency is to lean more towards something illustrative or animated. It is a different problem to solve, but I don’t approach it any differently. I like doing comics. I loved working on Spider-Man. There is a need to set up the story each time, to tell the audience where they are and what has happened before, although the first Spider-Man was a bit of an exception. For the first film we had more of a blank canvas, which enabled us to play more freely, coming up with visual metaphors and ideas that did not have to be tied to a narrative. I liked the idea of type being caught in a web and so that became a form of typographic wordplay that we used throughout. But in each of the subsequent films we had to tell the story of what happened in the last episode, so there again, the opening turned into a prologue, setting the stage for the next chapter in the story.

ATS: When did Craig Armstrong’s theme music become a part of the sequence? Did you have access from the start?

KC: When we first began doing editorial sketches, we did not have the music. We started by cutting to temp music, then as we progressed, Craig provided us with different pieces. He kept refining the music, making it better, and so we would modify the edit to his music as it developed.

This goes differently every time. Sometimes we get a piece of music like we did on Mission Impossible, where it already exists, but often times I pick the music I want to cut to and offer my opinion to the composer. Sometimes the rights to music used in the edit are obtained, but it can be a lengthy process. The composer is generally very proprietary about the title score, and prefers the opening to be his own music.

ATS: How do you work with members of the production team, in terms of participation? How many people worked on this sequence?

KC: There’s always someone who has to lead the team. For this project it was me. But people collaborate on different levels. There are animators, there are editors. Sometimes I’ll have more than one editor trying different things. For The Incredible Hulk there were two editors, at least three animators, and a full crew for the live action shoot. The team at Prologue built props for the shoot and everyone kind of rallied around the project.

For most films or commercials it seems like there is a team. I know these days you can have a one-man band, where a single designer can do his own boards, his own typography, can shoot his own footage and even do his own animation. But usually we have to work fast and having a team allows you to have each person dedicated to one thing. For myself, I’m usually working on a couple of things at once and function more like a director, which is what I really enjoy most.

ATS: What are some of your favorite elements from this sequence? You use live action, typography as well as still imagery, considering the whole range of media within your work this sequence seems to have most of what you like working with.

KC: Everything but the kitchen sink? Sergei Eisenstein talks about the “immutable fragment of actual reality.” It’s like breaking reality down into all its pieces and thinking about each frame as a singular composition – and each element within the composition of that frame as separate entity as well. You can break it down that far.

I try to go through each sequence frame by frame and not have any frames, or any sequences of frames, that I think are poorly color corrected or composed. So to answer your question – what did I like best about the Hulk?

Well, for the image gallery on our website I went through the sequence frame by frame and pulled the ones I liked the best. There are a couple of frames that could be made better, but the ones that I like are the ones I picked for the website. There is one frame that you cannot even see when it’s running in real time; a moment in which the seam of the Hulk’s shirt is tearing. I like the color correction on it. I like the composition. I think it’s beautiful even though it is depicting a violent moment. So that is an element I think is good even though you hardly see it. I also like the skeleton of Edward Norton’s face, just before the Hulk credit comes up. I like moments like that where you are seeing many things at once, many layers coming together to create a whole.

ATS: You mentioned filming eye veins and maps earlier, and that image really stood out when going though the end of the sequence frame by frame prior to this call.

KC: Thank you for reminding me of that. That would be the next one I would mention. I really like the idea of the veins of an eye becoming a map. He’s changing, but he’s also running away. It’s a very short moment, but as a frame, and as an idea, I really like it. It’s well composed. It’s beautiful, and it tells the story in a very quick and concise way. So those kinds of frames – those kinds of little details – perfection is made up of trifles. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but those kinds of trifles are interesting to me.

ATS: To have perfect moments within?

KC: Yes, and that’s maybe the argument for going through frame by frame. On the other hand, even if every frame is beautiful, if the animation isn’t choreographed in an interesting way or if it is not interesting to watch, but rather just a series of good looking frames – then it will not transcend the sum of its parts and become something more. There are so many choices. There is so much stock, and so many elements, and so many stills, and so many key frames. There is so much stuff going on in the sequence, in the office, in my life, I have to ask myself, “What do I do right now?” And the answer always seems to be, “Just focus on one little, small thing first.”

Art of the Title: How did you become involved with the project?

Garson Yu: It was six years ago. I had never worked with Ang Lee before Hulk 2003.
I was called to meet with Ang and producer Larry Franco. They met with me and with people from Imaginary Forces. I was picked by Ang to develop the visual look for the film. At the beginning, the project was not about the opening title sequence; Ang wanted to create a unique look for the film. He wanted me to develop a new visual language incorporating multiple cameras to tell a story. In film, it’s difficult to show multiple events simultaneously on one screen. Ang wanted to develop a concept that incorporated how we normally read comic strips. He wanted to present the film in one giant comic page. I was asked to do R & D on a technique to choreograph multiple image panels on screen. As it developed, my involvement on the film expanded to design the opening sequence.

ATS: What kind of collaboration was involved in creating the sequence?

GY: Ang was very busy shooting the principle photography with Fred Elmes, the DP, at the Universal Studios Lot. It was a very intense working schedule for him and his production crews. I started to develop the storyboard for the opening. It was not that easy. In the opening, he wanted to create a backstory that explains David Banner’s experiments in extracting DNA from other species, which turns him into the Hulk. A week after I presented the storyboard, the production manager called and said the producer wanted to start shooting the opening in San Francisco at the ILM stage in 2 days. I sent out a shot list, they prepped the shoot in a day and we started shooting the next day. I ended up spending 5 days shooting in San Francisco. All the major set ups were shot up in the bay area and we also did 2 days of pick up shots for all of Banner’s journals at our own studio. We started editing the offline in L.A. while Ang was still working at ILM. We sent quicktimes back and forth until we locked the picture. That was a 6 minute long sequence. The studio wanted to cut it to 3 minutes. All the VFX and animation were done at yU+Co. We had a team of about 6-8 artists working on the project.

ATS: Can you breakdown the development of the sequence? Were there differences between this and other yU+Co. projects?

GY: First we went through an R&D stage. We had two concerns: content, and design, meaning the look and feel. The content was defined by Ang, but it was my responsibility to determine how to tell the story. The sequence is divided into two parts. In the first, I wanted to compare a microscopic world to the larger universe in outer space. To me there is always a universe within a universe- a world within a world. There is a visual similarity between the two. I decided to start with a drop of water which represents the beginning of life. From that, the journey begins. I did research on the look of a DNA double helix. For this project, the research was very important. The studio had hired a science consultant, John Underkoffler, who helped me to make sure all the visuals I created were scientifically correct. He was also involved in developing the story with me. The animation of a cell dividing is all based on real science reference. My sequence takes us traveling down to double helix DNA level and from there we find the Hulk graphic logo at the end of the journey.

The second part of the sequence takes us on a journey through David Banner’s experiments, which take place over time. His experiments involve extracting DNA from four species to harness certain characteristics from each. He uses the jellyfish for luminescence, the starfish for regeneration, sea cucumber for tough skin, and the lizard for its resistance to poison. One of the greatest challenges in the sequence was to communicate complex information without voiceover. We had to explain the whole scientific process visually. To help with this, we shot tabletop inserts of Banner’s diary which were then intercut with the lab footage. Ang later decided to also use the diary shots during the movie to help tell the story.

This was no different from other yU+Co. projects. We always start with research and defining the creative direction, from there we will go through a design process defining the look and feel. Once the design and offline are approved then we go into final production.

ATS: Were you responsible for the custom Marvel logo?

GY: Yes I was responsible for the custom Marvel logo. Ang wanted to replace all the comic pictures with The Hulk images.

ATS: Were you able to reference Danny Elfman’s theme music? If so, how did it influence the sequence?

GY: I must say Danny’s theme music was influenced by my temp music that I put together with my composer friend Walter Werzowa. The original music sketch was more fragmented. I used Walter’s music to edit my picture. Danny followed our picture and music to recompose his version of the theme music. He scored to my picture.

ATS: Was the type design always integrated? Were the scenes shot and edited with the title placement already in mind?

GY: Yes the scenes were shot with the placement of the titles in mind. I wanted to integrate the typography with the picture, reacting and interacting with the physical environment. I didn’t have time to plan everything before I went to San Francisco so I had to improvise a lot on set. A lot of design decisions were made in the post production stage because of that. The typography is a custom font designed to recall the movie’s comic book origins.

ATS: Do you have any interesting stories related to this sequence?

GY: Shooting on a tight schedule was pretty stressful. I got to the set for an 8am call and I had all the producers behind me watching over my shoulder waiting for me to give direction to my crew. I had to make quick decisions to tell my DP and AD what to do. I think I smoked at least 10 packs of cigarettes for those 5 days in San Francisco.

ATS: Is there someone relatively new whose work has taken you by surprise?

GY: There are so many young talents out there. Their work always surprises me. There is a Japanese saying: “The flow of the river is ceaseless and its water is never the same.” There are always fresh perspectives and new talents. Design never stops evolving.

ATS: What inspires you these days?

GY: My inspiration usually comes from everyday life observation. I think I’m like other artists. Everything around us affects our thinking: our life experience, our memories of the past, our dreams for our future, our imagination at any moment in time. I guess everything from music, literature, art, films, TV, internet, pop culture, dancing, architecture, my kids, my dogs… everything around me inspires me.

Next Week: Kyle Cooper of Prologue anatomizes “The Incredible Hulk.”

“Hulk is big…[so] I wanted to do something in a micro fashion to compare big and small.

I thought that maybe David Banner was trying to trace it back to the beginning [to try to find] that moment where cells begin to have feeling. The objects [he studies] are the beginning.”

Art of the Title: How have your life and your former creative experiences informed this work?

Howard Nourmand: This project in particular was the result of something I went through early in my life–my struggles in elementary school. Back then sitting still in the classroom was torture. It wasn’t that I was mischievous or that I didn’t care about my grades. NOT AT ALL. I cared a lot, but for the life of me I couldn’t stay focused on the curriculum and my mind would wander.

My parents (who believed that a good education was priceless) put me through numerous developmental classes. Somewhere along the way I was sent to see an educational therapist. On our first or second session she pulled out a set of Rorschach cards. I remember being struck and mesmerized by them. “There is no right or wrong answer,” I was told. It was a big departure from all the other examinations I had taken. In a way I was interfacing with abstract art for the first time.

The crude and dated psychological tool always stayed with me. Twenty-three years later when I was racking my brain and trying to dream something up for The Dog Problem, it came to me while I was tossing and turning in my sleep. I had been looping in my head and putting a lot of pressure on myself to figure it out. It took a lot of questions to get there, and then, it hit me and woke me up.

ATS: What kind of response to the title sequence have you received to-date?

HN: The response we received from this title sequence exceeded all my expectations. It landed my company (Grande Jeté) on Apple’s homepage and opportunities sprung up from all over the place. We got a lot of exposure and people contacted us from all over the world.

ATS: Have you ever taken a look at the music video for Gnarls Barkley’s track, “Crazy”? It’s a nice complimentary piece to your sequence. What is your take on that video?

HN: Yes, of course. It really is a spectacular piece. It was a humbling experience for me because their music video was released first, just as we were putting the finishing touches on ours. Keep in mind that even after we finished we had to wait for our film to get distribution. The Dog Problem only showed on a few screens and did not get the exposure I thought it was going to get while the Gnarls Barkley Song was a huge hit and won best video of the year.

It is surely not the first time that more than one person tapped into the same creative wavelength serendipitously. The good news is that they are entirely different approaches to the same Rorschach concept, and they have such different sensibilities. I think their video and our film sequence both succeeded in what they were trying to achieve.

ATS: What is the most important thing you learned before this sequence? What’s the most important thing you learned while creating this sequence?

HN: 1. One of my good friends Patrick Hoelck taught me a good habit: Reducing your outcome to a single sentence. (*I think he got it from Vincent Gallo). I wrote it out for this project. (It is a run-on but it still kept me fixed on the target):

“To visually stimulate and induce the viewers subconscious by using totally authentic psychiatric devices which take them on a psychological trip that explores the inner depth of the male psyche.”

2. Hard work always adds up to something (my old acting coach used to say that all the time).

ATS: Do you have a favorite element from the piece?

HN: My favorite element is the first inkblot I got to work as a graphic. It’s probably the most rudimentary of them all but something about it speaks to me. After the film was finished, I burned a screen and ran some limited edition silkscreen prints of that inkblot at Richard Duardo’s studio…it then became part of a group show at Otero Passart Gallery. We have continued to sell them and a portion of the proceeds of all the inkblots sold goes to The Learning Disabilities Association of California.

ATS: What was the process for working with the composer Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo)?

HN: In the beginning we used the Devo song because we didn’t have anything else and we all liked it. But as we got further along in the animation process I realized if we had to change the song it would be a MAJOR setback in what was already a very challenging project. Scott Caan (Director of The Dog Problem) kept saying, “Don’t worry, we’ll get it.” And whenever I would express my concern he would yell, “W-E A-R-E-G-O-N-N-A-G-E-T-I-T DOOOODE!” He challenged me a lot on this project…BUT at the same time he forced me to play above my head (Saul Bass once said that about Otto Preminger).

So one day Scott shows up toward the very end of a six-month stretch and says, “I got some bad and some good news: The bad is that we CANNOT use the Devo song…BUT the good is that I showed it to Mark and he is going to score something really similar to your titles.”

At first it was hard for me to tell if that was good news, but in the end it worked even better than I could have imagined because the new track felt more contemporary and fitting. To me it sounds like the version of “Gut Feeling” that would play in a psychedelic dream.

ATS: Who inspires you?

HN: Tony Robbins…you think that’s a joke…seriously.
Here are some others: Elia Kazan, Herb Lubalin, Charles & Ray Eames, Busby Berkeley, Saul Bass, Pablo Ferro, Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782), Gustave Eiffel, Guy Bourdin, William Eggleston, David Hamilton, Dawn Tarnofsky Ostroff.

ATS: Is there someone relatively new whose work excites you?

HN: I saw an installation (Mother + Father) at Sundance this year by Candice Breitz that was pretty fantastic. Todd Cole has always been one of my favorite artists. Darren Romanelli, who I would define as the modern day Nudie Cohn (Elvis Prestley’s costume designer).

ATS: Parting thoughts?

HN: There were many many people who had their hands on this other than me. But there is one person who was literally by my side for the entire duration of this creative journey. Her name is Eileen Bertumen. Simply put, I never could have pulled it off without her.

Also, look out for Scott Caan Photographs Vol.1.
This art book was a collaboration between Scott Caan, Brett Ratner, and myself. It is being released this May 2009.

Art of the Title: Tell us a little bit about how you were approached to do this sequence; what were some of the early conversations?

Jamie Caliri: I first met with the writers and producers of the show. They had a pretty clear idea of what they wanted. Dave Finkle had sketched out a loose story board that showed the camera moving through a series of paper pop-up environments. Each environment represented a different Tara personality. Over the course of sending story boards back and forth, we decided to add actual characters into the pop-ups. We would keep her face hidden until the end.

ATS: How much of a character sketch did you have for each of Tara’s alters?

JC: They showed me the first few episodes, this helped a lot.

ATS: It seems like the sequence combines real-time action as well as stop-motion action? Is this the case?

JC: The piece is stop motion from start to finish. Some shots had minimal animation and others more. We attempted to build as many actual working pop-ups as possible

ATS: How did you work with the musical element? (Did you have it beforehand?)

JC: The music came in about half way through. We started cutting and shifting things a bit, but not much. It all just worked out. I did shift the music at one point to land a big boom sound over the falling foot. I thought this was Tim’s intention. It turned out to be a happy accident.

ATS: What equipment did you use?

JC: We shot with both the Canon 40D and the Nikon D300. We used Dragon Stop Motion to capture our 3K files. We did a bit of multi pass and multi exposure shooting. We composited in After Effects.

ATS: What is the most important thing you learned while creating this sequence?

JC: That building pop-up books is an art and a science. I understand why they call those folks paper engineers.

ATS: What recent work has taken you by surprise?

JC: I loved Raf Wathion’s Electrabel spot with all of the tea lights – amazing!

What you see in the title sequence for Tarsem's "The Fall" is a director's absolute control over his vision. To view it after seeing the film is a gift; a rare and beautiful thing. Surreal, extravagant and a world I'd like to step in to, not to bear witness, but to sense things in such a way.

Scored to Beethoven's Symphony No 7 In A Major, Op.92 (2-Allegretto), the visuals hit their money notes in quick succession. The bridge becomes a stage and the caballus curtain rises as the sequence concludes.

From Tarsem's DVD commentary, "It is hard to define...I wanted chaos without energy."

Art of the Title: Please tell us about your process of working with Tarsem; did you understand the magnitude of the film, and to that end, how did the nature of the title sequence [being independent from the film itself...as well as a front loaded coda] influence the evolution of your design?

Stefan G. Bucher: Tarsem is a genius, and The Fall is a masterpiece. That much was clear from the moment I saw the first photos Stephen Berkman had taken on set, and particularly after Tarsem showed me a rough cut. Even in that format it was epic.

Tarsem initially called me in to design a book of photography from the movie (shot by Stephen Berkman, Steven Colover, Ged Clarke and Tarsem) , which was printed in a very limited edition and sent out as a promotion. In the course of that project I designed a logo for THE FALL that was intended solely for the book. But of course, I secretly had my eye on the titles, and was very excited when Tarsem decided to use the logo for the film and the collateral materials.

This is also how I got involved on the typography for the rest of the titles and end credits. Tarsem had done some rough versions of the type for the opening credits and showed it to me. Less than perfect type is personally upsetting to me, and I felt that the typography for the Fall should be as beautifully considered as the film itself, so I basically pleaded that he let me do the job. Luckily, if there’s anybody who understands that sort of urgent artistic need, it’s Tarsem.

His brief to me was to make the titles beautiful, elegant, and as close to invisible as possible. Which meshes with my own aesthetic for this type of situation. It’s always my goal to make the typography feel so organic that you don’t even notice it as its own, separate element.

Pablo Ferro’s titles were on my mind, and definitely influenced the choice of font. His style of handwriting would’ve been the wrong tone here, but he’s one of the few people who use very light lettering, and that’s what I thought would fit The Fall.

We went with Univers Light Condensed. It’s just about as simple as you can get, and even though it’s a modern font it soaks up Tarsem’s take on Deco and Art Nouveau. It feels much more period appropriate to my eye than actual fonts from that time, which would come off as cliché. The same goes for the title itself, which is a heavily modified version of Univers. As for the swooshes, they were inspired by the Indian’s sword, but I think it’s obvious that I’m also a great admirer of Margo Chase and Marian Bantjes, whose swirly magnificence is always floating around in my head.

Tarsem was the one who edited the whole opening sequence, and there’s not a frame out of place. It’s a gorgeous sequence that was perfect --- and also entirely sacrosanct. When I started working out the timing with my colleague John R. Waters of Atomic Zoo, who was in charge of the animation, we basically worked backwards. Legally, each credit has to be on screen for the exact same amount of time. After we determined what images should hold title cards, we had to use the shortest of those edits as our master length. From there it was a question of testing fade durations to make the appearance of short titles feel natural on long shots. It was a puzzle.

We also decided to put some of the type into perspective, letting it nestle under the bridge, in particular. We didn’t do it consistently, or as a huge, epic effect as David Fincher had done for Panic Room, but only in the one or two instances where a static title over the stately pans would’ve been distracting. We always saw the titles as belonging inside the space of the film.
When the pans occurred over open vistas, the type could conceivably float in that space, but the sharp lines of the bridge made it necessary to lock the type to the camera motion and to the perspective of the bridge. I’m always happy when I hear that people didn’t even notice we did that.

ATS: What qualities of the film informed your decisions? Do you ever go outside the film or project or medium to draw inspiration? Any examples of that?

SGB: I do a lot of design work for fine artists (through the Los Angeles gallery L.A. Louver) and photographers. Tarsem’s images felt very much of that kind to me. I’m always inspired by the work itself, and it’s always my goal to structure the typography as an extension to the piece that feels inevitable. At that point, I go on instinct. This is what feels right to my eye.

ATS: Who are your heroes in type design? What recent work has impressed you?

SGB: Everyone loves Marian Bantjes, and I’m no exception. I also love the lettering of Doyald Young. As I mentioned, I love Pablo Ferro and Margo Chase. Mark Farrow is always fantastic. There are a lot of amazing young designers doing motion work and if I try to name any of them, the people I’ll fail to mention will make me look foolish. There’s just such an abundance of great work coming out right now. It’s a golden age for typography, particularly in motion graphics. So much of it is so beautiful and painterly.

ATS: Can you tell us a little bit about the first moment when you knew you wanted to work in graphic design?

SGB: I started as an illustrator. Which is to say I started drawing when I was little and then figured out how to get my work printed as I got older. It’s always been about control. With each project I get a tiny slice of the world that I can bend to my will, that’s under my complete control. I love that! I’ve always loved that. Graphic design entered the mix when I figured out that I could control the typographic AND the illustrative visuals.

ATS: What are you working on now, what are you pondering?

SGB: Right now I’m working on art catalogs for Enrique Martinez Celaya and Deborah Butterfield (through L.A. Louver) and on a new book of my own called “The Graphic Eye — Photographs by Graphic Designers,” which will be in stores this fall. But of course the Daily Monsters are my main focus. Now that the book of the first 100 Monsters is out I’m getting into longer animated sequences for the creatures. Some of their cousins are about to appear on the rebooted Electric Company on PBS starting with the series premiere on MLK Day.

ATS: What is the last good book you read?

SGB: I know it’s a few years old by now, but I loved “Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson.

Art of the Title strongly recommends viewing a slideshow of this Flickr pool a few days after experiencing the film.

“Enough talk.” – Po

“I can’t stress enough, neither the opening Dream Sequence of Kung Fu Panda nor the character animation in the End Credits contain any CG animation. It’s all 2D/traditional/hand-drawn.

Jen, Ramone and Tang also designed the custom DWA logo sequence to perfectly match and lead into the dream sequence of Kung Fu Panda. We used mostly the same crew as on the dream sequence, but this time with animation by Rodolphe Guenoden.”

“The 2D character animation for the Kung Fu Panda end credits was done in-house at DreamWorks and realized in the same extremely detailed and highly graphic style as the film’s opening dream sequence. Several DreamWorks animators were tapped for this sequence, while the clean-up, ink & paint, color styling, and compositing departments were all lead by the same crew who had worked at James Baxter Animation on the dream sequence.

All hand-drawn animation and clean-up was done on 16-field animation paper, which was then scanned into Animo for ink & paint and color styling, and then exported to After Effects for compositing. The final animated characters were delivered to Shine as TIFF sequences with alpha channel.”

What immediately comes to mind upon viewing these end titles as a stand alone consideration, is that there is great discipline in the master calligrapher's graceful yet contrasting Chinese brush strokes.

His magic carpet ride reminds one of Masaki Kobayashi's "Hoichi the Earless"; only here the Chinese characters -and Kanji, respectively- become life-taking daggers rather than a life-saving shield. Too, I am reminded of splattered ink at the point of impact and the panning flight of a classic aircraft -both seen in the aforeposted "El Don," in addition to owing an incalculable debt to the "300" end titles and, in a true sense, to Frank Miller.

While some frames seem partially rendered (exploding diamond? the odd alignment and spacing of the trekkers? an uninspired mouth of a cave?) others offer flashes of originality (snake-strokes from a blood sun, lettered mountaintop, inkblot blood of fleshless adversaries, a halved opponent, yetis in profile).

Whereas Romero's original film was in part a metaphor for American consumerism, the title sequence for the updated Dawn of the Dead touches upon the idea of Holy War as harbinger to the apocalypse, and details the consequences for the media when it decides to ask tough questions as the feeding is already upon us (they are shot).

Kyle Cooper's design dovetails what appears to be real war-torn footage with actual human blood as Johnny Cash raises the stakes in newfound context. Remaining shelters have been compromised and the machine we are trapped in is bleeding to death.

The heady nature of a floating sarcophagus.

With the nudist joie de vivre of survivalists who have withstood the wet teeth of the dead, the end title sequence of Dawn of the Dead offers snippets of dread navigating a false salvation.

An interpretation of the body suit as an exploded technical diagram on acid. Like Ozzy wails, "Is he alive or dead? Has he thoughts within his head?" Smartly done.