In small towns like Ramville, Ontario, hockey is more than just a sport – it’s a way of life. This tiny hamlet is defined by the fortunes of the local semi-pro club, its collective spirits rise and fall with each triumph and defeat of the team. What is Ramville all about? The sights and sounds and smells of the arena really say it all. It’s about simple things like spilled beer and crisp rink air; the sweet clack of stick on puck; the roar of the crowd and the crash of bodies into boards.

Oily Film Company’s nostalgic title sequence for Télé-Française d'Ontario’s Les Bleus de Ramville perfectly captures the essence of Canada’s national pastime. From the team’s pre-game ritual and the hard numbers of the coaching staff to the basement passions of devoted fans. It’s the good old hockey game.

"You know, Abe Lincoln, when asked how long a man’s leg should be, said: 'Long enough to reach the ground.' Well, these titles needed longer legs than most." —Saul Bass on It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World from Bass on Titles.

Bass' titles for It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World come in at just over four minutes – his longest sequence, second only to West Side Story in 1961. He directed it in 1963, the same year that he designed the iconic poster for Hitchcock's The Birds.

Mad World is a frenetic, exhausting film, and Bass reflects this in his sequence, featuring a crudely-drawn globe subjected to an endless barrage of visual puns and sight gags, courtesy of its inhabitants. Propelled by Ernest Gold's carnival-themed score and boiled down to a thick palette of black, white, and saturated hues, Bass employs a simplistic, childlike illustration style, contrasted sharply by the heavy lines and formal typesetting of the title cards themselves.

Unlike many of Bass' previous sequences, Mad World does not have an allegorical link to the film itself. Instead, it sets the tone of the film through color, tone, and character – essentially, it's a primer for director Stanley Kramer's lighthearted tryst through the universal language of greed and deception. Bass' oversimplified sight gags downplay the film's dramatic overtones, mirroring Kramer's treatment of the film itself.

The animation techniques used by Bass in Mad World were heavily influenced by a new movement in the cartoon industry that favored a modern, stylized aesthetic over the then-dominant school of Disney hyper-realism. He also took advantage of a new animation technique called 'holding,' which involved splitting characters and environments up into several layers and selectively recycling them during photography. Originally used as a money and time saver at big commercial studios, it was exploited by the new school for its inherent quirkiness, with the fast turnaround as an added bonus. Bass took this one step further, playing his visual 'holds' off Gold's soundtrack, creating a tango between the audio and the visuals that gives the sequence its own distinct pulse.

Among the several talented animators who contributed to the sequence was Bill Melendez, an established Disney & Warner Bros. animator who was also Charles Schultz's exclusive go-to on the Peanuts franchise until his passing in 2008.

The Mad World titles saw Bass return to his earlier ventures into comedy (The Seven Year Itch, Around the World in Eighty Days) – a genre he enjoyed but had become disassociated with after his name became synonymous with Hitchcock thrillers. It is also his first collaborative project, as his design framework mainly showcased the talents of other established animation artists of the day. But it was ultimately his use of their techniques within his design framework that gave Mad World a credible tongue-in-cheek sophistication that may have otherwise been lost in the whirlwind of the film itself.

WRITER: Ben Radatz
© Art of the Title, 2012

"She's different in every way." —Dragan Armansky

The beat sidles in: a throbbing arrhythmia peppered by desperate, howling vocals, and then that ooze. That viscid, black ooze that seeps into everything, penetrating crevices, dribbling into lips and eyes, suffocating and sensual and silent. Each ebony form is made osmotic – surging and melding, torn apart and punctured, ensnared, set ablaze – thrashing in the deep. Through flashes of embers and murk, sticky vines creep, hands grapple, foul petals unfurl, and sable fists inflict their fury.

In this elegantly violent title sequence, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Karen O’s version of “Immigrant Song” swells when coupled with Blur Studio’s monstrous fantasy in David Fincher’s newest offering, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

"There is no winning! Only degrees of losing!" —Gavin D'Amato

The War of the Roses is Danny Devito's second excursion into feature film direction, having received accolades for his slapstick comedy Throw Momma from the Train two years earlier. It concerns the courtship, marriage, and, mostly, the comedically bitter divorce of Oliver and Barbara Rose, played by Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, as recounted by their chain-smoking attorney Gavin D'Amato, played by DeVito himself.

The ingredients in the Roses opening title sequence are basic: a static, nouveau sans-serif typeface is superimposed over a neutral gray background, soon revealed to be a swath of white fabric – presumably a bedsheet or a wedding gown detail, given the film's premise. Over the course of the sequence, the fabric gains depth and relief, presented at first by subtle gradients and delicate shafts of light, then becoming a contoured landscape of rolling hills. The folds become more pronounced and dramatic over time and by the end, we find ourselves face-down in a crumpled mess of fabric.

The sequence is capped by D'Amato removing the fabric from his coat pocket and blowing his nose into it.

As with many of Bass' previous title entries (Saul crafted this sequence with his wife Elaine), the opening titles to Roses can be read as a microcosm of the film itself, albeit entirely allegorical. Oliver Rose's dull existence is given new meaning and definition when he meets Barbara, but their honeymoon is short-lived, and soon the pretense of marriage becomes a catalyst for destruction instead of salvation. This narrative is played out in its entirety during the opening sequence, right under the noses of an unsuspecting audience.

The titles to The War of the Roses are not the most memorable in the Bass portfolio. Their signature op-art approach in the ’50s and ’60s had fallen out of vogue, and they had long since migrated over to commercial design. Along with Penny Marshall's film Big in 1988, Roses represented a return to titling for the Basses, having won the favor of a new generation of directors who had grown up on their work. And with that revival came a paradigm shift in their approach to the craft: sharp lines gave way to smooth surfaces and graphic representation was replaced by photographic imagery. And while it would take some time for the Basses to regain their footing with this new vernacular, their trademark less-is-more, concept-over-content approach to title design remained intact.

WRITER: Ben Radatz

While title sequences come in all shapes and sizes, it is of course inevitable that similar topics and themes will emerge from the pile. These don't necessarily have to be genre-specific and in fact, their ability to transcend film genres is part of the lasting appeal. Consider the Saul Bass school of graphic animation and the many genres that particular aesthetic has been applied to, from comedies and romances to thrillers and capers. The detail-oriented montage is another example, where the audience is introduced to themes in a film or information about its players through relevant close-up or overlapping imagery.

Whether by accident or due to a trend, these categories are born from ideas with universal appeal and are often broad in scope: graphic animation, nostalgic influence, situational type (in which the titles are integrated realistically into live-action footage), photomontage, and so on. Microscopic and inner worlds are also common topics, embracing both the mechanical and the organic – and, sometimes, a combination of the two.

There are certain narrative, technical, and graphic techniques for which title design is an ideal venue. Because of its short format and creative license – and sometimes because of their budgets – title sequence real estate is often used to explore elaborate, abstract worlds previously unknown or unseen, letting us see the world in a different way, or conjuring up worlds of their own. For this reason – combined with an enduring human fascination with how things tick – Inner Workings is a theme that is frequented by a broad spectrum of genres (though, to be fair, most often associated with sci-fi and fantasy).

The following are a collection of some of our favorite sequences under this umbrella, selected not only for their superior execution but also their creative significance and contribution to the craft.

"When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness." — Alexis de Tocqueville

Adam Jensen is dying. The blinding lights of an operating theater melt away in a mechanical fever dream of pleading voices, surgical tools, and rent flesh. Memories of lost love flash between images of a broken and dissected form, while shattered limbs and failing organs – the embodiment of Jensen’s flawed humanity – are replaced with the cold perfection of carbon fiber and silicon. A body restored, a soul fractured – but what remains of the man? A corporate thrall bound to unseen masters or a transcendent being gifted with the power to change everything?

Echoing the central motif of Eidos-Montreal’s video game – the merging of the real and artificial – Goldtooth Creative’s stunning title sequence for Deus Ex: Human Revolution seamlessly blends both live-action and computer-generated imagery to introduce players to a world at the dawn of a cybernetic renaissance.

“One final thing I have to do… and then I’ll be free of the past. “ —John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson

There is a threshold in art and design where a work can become so iconic as to transcend its own scope and become a symbol for its medium. Consider Warhol’s soup cans or Mondrian’s color fields, or – to bring it closer to home – Saul Bass’ iconic AT&T or United Airlines logos. And just as it would be difficult to find an American unfamiliar with these works, so too would it be difficult to find a moviegoer unfamiliar with the title sequence to Vertigo. Credit Bernard Herrmann’s haunting score or Bass’ odd synthesis of sensual Kim Novak closeups and spirographic imagery, but it’s likely an alchemy of the three that makes the Vertigo titles an enduring classic.

The spirographic images (called Lissajous waves, technically) were contributed by artist John Whitney, a pioneer of computer arts and a long-time animator at UPA, a commercial animation studio well-known for their modern aesthetic and experimental techniques. (In fact, Bass would again use a UPA alum, Bill Melendez – best known as the Peanuts sole animator – three years later in his sequence for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.)

While seemingly unrelated to the story and perhaps even too modern for their own good, Whitney’s contributions to Vertigo were validated by Bass’ graphic direction and Hermann’s score, folding his designs into their tried-and-true audio-visual template. The resulting sequence is a landmark work both for Bass and the title industry, framing the film’s premise through evocative-yet-unlikely imagery and Hitchcock’s unique branding eye.

WRITER: Ben Radatz