For our first post in 2010 we revisit the “How We Built Britain” titles with an interview with their creator Gareth Edwards. This was requested by some readers, facilitated by others and now available to all and feels like the perfect way to begin this new decade. Edwards, a truly multi-talented designer/visual effects artist/director has worked for the BBC on numerous productions including “Seven Wonders of the Industrial World” and “Attila the Hun,” this year completes his first feature film, “Monsters.”

A tangle of utility in both architecture and typography offers a fascinatingly structured title sequence for the BBC’s “How We Built Britain” that bespeaks an acquisitive England. The artificial monuments of type seem proportionally sound, the final title card an achievement of engineering.

Art of the Title: Tell us a little bit about where you are with your career.

Gareth Edwards: I kind of got into graphic design by accident. I always grew up wanting to be a filmmaker. But when I went to film school (about 15 years ago) it was very clear that computers were going to be the future of filmmaking. So I bought one, learned the software, and got completely sidetracked in a career doing visual effects, title sequences etc. Over the last few years I was able to use this skill to bribe companies like the BBC into letting me direct TV shows, by promising to add lots more production value through creating my own digital effects. I’m currently finishing the post-production on my first feature film called ‘Monsters,’ a sci-fi road movie set in Central America made for Vertigo Films in the UK.

ATS: How did you become involved with How We Built Britain?

GE: I was waiting to begin my next directing project and had a bit of a work gap. I knew the people in BBC Arts through my time doing visual effects with them. The producer called me about the show and it had been a while since I had created a title sequence, so I felt like it could be fun.

ATS: Take us through the design process, how did you develop the concept for the piece?

GE: I remember going to a meeting with the various people at the BBC and pitched about eight different ideas (all of which I quite liked). I was trying to find a simple visual metaphor for their show. By the end, I could tell they didn’t like any of them and I thought ‘well, that’s that then, I guess I won’t be doing this’. Then as the meeting was nearly over and I had a better handle on what they wanted I said ‘Well, we could just do the obvious thing.’ ‘What’s that?’… ‘We could just do the title ‘How We Built Britain’ … as buildings… across Britain,’ I was a bit embarrassed as I said it as it felt a bit clichéd, but they loved it!

ATS: Describe the development process of the sequence.

GE: Once we had agreed on the concept, everything else fell into place very easily. None of the footage was specifically shot for the titles, so I spent a day sitting through all their helicopter footage that they had filmed for the series, looking for shots where I might be able to add giant letters. I then did a very rough edit and tracked the footage adding a simple ‘Arial’ font as an example of where each letter would go. They really liked what they saw and didn’t want me to change anything, including the font! (Although I have nothing against Arial either).

ATS: What equipment (hardware/software) did you use?

GE: I created the 3D letters in 3ds Max. My 3D skills back then were pretty average, so I just modeled and textured as best I could. I used Photoshop for textures (taken from other buildings found in the rushes). Everything was comped in After Effects, which didn’t require much work other than grading, rotoscoping, etc. The 3D was tracked using Boujou (just the version where you push a button, as I’m no expert tracker either).

ATS: What was the most difficult aspect of this piece?

GE: I guess the tracking was hardest. Some of the elements do slide around in some of the shots and I had to go in by hand and squash and stretch elements to make it less noticeable. What’s funny is that I think when people know something can’t be real, they are much better at spotting it. But there is a shot in there where I replaced and added an entire mountain range (the first car POV of the ‘I’) to help it cut with the following shot. The tracking on that isn’t great either, but because you assume it’s real, nobody ever notices.

ATS: What did you learn on this design?

GE: That it’s good to be open minded and listen to your producers (sometimes). They know their project much better than you ever will. I think if I had gone with any of my original designs, I might have created something that I would have liked, but would not have been as good for the show. I also learned that some people care more a lot more about fonts than me!

ATS: What recent work has taken you by surprise?

GE: I haven’t really been following motion graphics as much as I used to. I can’t help feeling that what we went through a few years back with the birth of digital animation/graphic design, was a bit like in the sixties with the birth of rock n’ roll. There was suddenly this new frontier that everyone dived into and came up with lots of really cool work. I think it’s such a fast moving, incestuous industry, that it is very hard to create anything timeless. As a result, I don’t really find myself sitting and watching any of my old favourite graphic design DVDs, but I’m always sitting and watching my old favourite films, which I think says a lot – that a great story will stay with you much longer than a great design. But on very rare occasions something comes along that manages to combine both, and it is those pieces of work that will outlive us all.

ATS: So what’s next for you?

GE: I’m just finishing the post production on my first film ‘Monsters,’ which I need to get much better at explaining in just one sentence. It’s kind of a monster movie, but set years after most monster movies end, when people aren’t running and screaming anymore, but life just goes on as normal with these ‘things’ in part of the world. We shot it all very guerrilla style in Central America. Apart from our two main characters, everyone else in it are real people just going about their real lives, with all the sci-fi elements being added in digitally afterwards. As a result I think we’ve created a very believable world with some really subtle performances. I can’t wait for it to be finished and start showing people… and not an Arial font in sight! Actually, maybe a few on some road signs here and there, but just for realism!

“We created the feature main title for the new animated movie “Superman/Batman: Public Enemies” for Warner Video and DC Animation that tips the hat to Saul Bass. The project is a 2:17 long animated piece that captures the spirit of classic 1960’s film titles. Bold and slightly abstract, the animated twists and turns are geometric references to the power of comic heroes as pop culture icons and a playful lead-in for the graphic novel-style drama to unfold.”

“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?”

“I had to set up the movie studio and wanted to set up the characters that we were going to be dealing with and I wanted to get the audience’s attention, to tell them that they had to pay attention. And I actually built a scale model of the set with a crane to see where I could go. Then we choreographed all the positions. We introduced this [film] in one reel, which was nine minutes.

All of the various things that happen were all planned pretty well, but none of the dialog was. It was all improvised…We did about 15 takes, with 11 microphones. We rehearsed it for a day, we lit it and came back the next day, which was a Sunday, and we shot it in half a day. It turned out to be a very efficient way to get ten minutes of film. And you save your editor’s fee. It’s a very conceited thing, this shot with no cuts, it draws attention; it’s of the mode of people who make pictures. It is showing off. It sets the picture up…it’s like music [in that] it tells you what kind of deal you’re in. It’s a satire on the way people behave in these movie studios.

There was such a fuss about it. People were afraid I was going to do this or that. The more afraid they got, the more ideas they gave me. Looking back on this picture, it is a pretty tame satire. This is no big indictment. Things are much, much worse than this picture seems to say. The truth of the matter is I cannot make the kind of movies [Hollywood] wants to make. The kind of movies that I like to make, and can make, and make are not the kind of films they know how to distribute. So we basically aren’t in the same business. There’s no point in calling me to make a pair of gloves for you when I make shoes.”

“Welcome to the 1958 release cut of “Touch of Evil.” This little egg timer is set for precisely three and a half minutes. Tick, tick, tick we’re embarking on a combination thrill-ride morality tale bursting with the energy of its co-star, writer and director Orson Welles. I love the fast-running shadow along the wall. Of the three versions that exist of Touch of Evil this is the fastest-paced, the most energetic. It’s missing about six minutes of material Welles would have preferred to include. In harmony with our ticking timer and our deadly bomb this astonishingly complex master shot is going to unfold across precisely three and a half minutes. Shadows are like a Greek chorus commenting on the action in Welles-O-Vision, so is this airborne camera moving like a winged serpent over these rooftops and streets.

We are in the mythical U.S./Mexico border town of Los Robles. Connoisseurs of L.A. architecture will recognize the looped arches and fanciful galleries of Venice, California [which was] built in the 1920s by Abbot Kinney, a developer with a mad crush on Venice, Italy. These magical facades were ideal for Welles’ purposes as storyteller. They anchor us in a place apart from either the U.S. or Mexico. We can think of it as a geographic Twilight Zone.

Here are the two great romantic leads, the two greats of their time, Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh as Mike Vargas and Susie.

Henry Mancini’s music here is sensational. He organized a latin-style band using talent from outside Universal Studio. It’s a perfect counterpoint to the sensuous muscularity of the camerawork and the very precise criss-crossing of all the people; an enormous operation. Welles originally intended that the music blasting from the cantinas would create a surf of sound and atmosphere (for that see the 1998 Restoration cut where those intentions are scrupulously honored). But I have to say, as a life-long fan of the film, I find Mancini’s magnificent overture indispensable to the power of this opening, I even prefer it, with all due respect to Welles.

Small wonder there is an explosion when these two kiss. The blast plunges us into another world altogether. We are free of the elaborate crane and we are running with the characters [the camera is] handheld.”

James Naremore: “This is the second version of “Touch of Evil.”"

Jonathan Rosenbaum: “[This] was found in the mid 70’s and it 15 minutes longer, but we should emphasize right now that there is no such thing as a director’s cut, nor could there be. This is another version that was found that has more material by Welles but also more material not by Welles.”

JN: “One of the things we are seeing that he didn’t originally plan is the credits are playing over this sequence that [Welles] wanted without the credits…the photographer for this film is Russell Metty, a contract photographer at Universal and he was well known for his use of crane shots.”

JR: “This is the most famous shot of the film, but Welles himself was much prouder of a couple of other shots he did later in the film because this is the kind of thing that calls attention to itself whereas he thought that the most effective virtuoso work was the kind that wasn’t noticed by the audience.”

JN: “This shot is not simply a flamboyant tracking shot, it also has to do with the theme of the film. The film is very much about the ambiguous border between the U.S. and Mexico…the two leading characters are representatives of either side of the boarder and there is a kind of racial/ethnic theme running through the film. It’s almost as though the kiss between the Mexican character and the woman from Philadelphia sets off racial tensions. The timing of the kiss is important in relation to the explosion.”

JR: “This has got to be Orson Welles most politically incorrect movie, which is one of its strengths.”

JN: “Yes, and it is very much a political movie…with the explosion, the film shatters into montage. We might want to keep in mind that this film was shot not too long after the Supreme Court desegregation decision of 1954, the integration of Little Rock high school had taken place, the Civil Rights Movement had begun, and Welles had a long history of being involved with activities of that sort. And, in this case, he had completely transformed the novel that this film is based on (Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson) and made it into, I think, an indirect commentary on racial tensions in the United States.”

Pure sugarcane, Yellowshed’s end credits to “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” take 2D to the land of Pez and Skittles… and doesn’t let up. There are candied orange slices and pinwheel lollies! And as we race from savory to spray paint it is raining sunshine on this rainbow highway. There’s even a pasted hand-powered pie in nod to Terry Gilliam’s stop-motion animation for Monty Python. Disasters are remedied and through child’s eyes. Whoa.

Art of the Title: How was the sequence put together?

Todd Hemker: We took our cues from directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who wanted to end the film on an absurdly happy note set in a utopian trippy wonderland made out of food. We worked from story ideas already developed by them that would help provide some sense of resolution with the storytelling of the film (i.e. food did NOT destroy the planet, the formation of a tight bond between father and son, the corrupt mayor getting his just desserts, etc…). The unpredictable nature of the titles was already “built-in” by the directors’ original vision for the piece. However, when you know the story and characters from the film, you see that the titles are a mix of tying themes from the film together with things that are just plain silly.

Our inspiration in many ways mirrored that of the directors and designers at Sony. At our initial meeting with them they referenced the Muppets, the film Twice Upon a Time, the illustrator Miroslav Sasek, Yellow Submarine, Monty Python, Schoolhouse Rock, and Xanadu. We were thrilled… and it was all relevant in terms of getting us into the right frame of mind for establishing the look of sequence (for example, the quality of character animation was influenced by the Muppets and Twice Upon a Time while the FX were very Xanadu inspired).

Overall, it was a very collaborative effort. Since there were many unknowns to be addressed, we started a back and forth process with the directors / designers of refining the boards and building animatics to figure out transitions, character performances, and timings. It took close to two months to get a “locked” animatic, because each version brought fun opportunities that pushed the sequence even further over the top. Whenever we would show them something as a suggestion, they would send back sketches that brought it to the next outrageous level. There was also cause for some concern, because at one point we ended up a full minute over the mark we were supposed to hit (2 minutes 30 seconds). So we had to figure out how to trim it back to that length – which was difficult considering that almost everything was built with a continuous camera move.

One of the more interesting developments was the evolution of the Bruce Campbell / Andy Samberg card. Originally, it was just the fat mayor (Bruce Campbell) floating and dancing with the title hovering somewhere in the sky. The camera was supposed to fly into his mouth and down into his stomach, where there would be a conga line of characters dancing with various fruits and vegetables. Then we learned that Bruce Campbell needed to be paired on a card with Andy Samberg, and we introduced them floating together on clouds. Chicken Brent (Andy Samberg) danced with a shish-kebob as the mayor sneaks a bite – which leads us down his gullet. This lead to the final solution of clouds being food items that the mayor could eat as he floated across the sky… so the mayor became a hot-air balloon, with chicken in tow, and all of our problems were solved. This is what you see in the final version of the sequence.

The background designs were primarily handled by the team of artists at Sony, led by Justin Thompson. They did all the backgrounds up until the molecules. We designed backgrounds and titles from there to the end. The Sony team also designed all the main characters for animation, led by Paul Rudish. We designed all incidental characters and FX. Once we received artwork from the Sony artists, everything was prepped and rigged for animation by our team at Duck.

Technically speaking, the project was done entirely with Photoshop and After Effects. The scenes were built in 3D space and done multi-plane to give the environments some dimension for the final 3D stereoscopic output. There were no plug-ins or third party applications involved, since we were going for something that had a much more traditional and hand made feeling to it. Justin and Paul were extremely generous and helpful in the process by providing character pose sketches and layouts for some of the more difficult shots.

ATS: What was the most difficult aspect of the piece?

TH: Because all the title cards needed to be on screen for an equal and set amount of time, it was extremely difficult to get as much out of the character performances as we were really hoping for. An additional challenge was to make sure that whatever we did with the character animation didn’t compete too much with the readability of the names – so in many cases we had to force ourselves to “hold back” on what the character was capable of doing (or what it’s personality was begging us to do). Along these lines, there were a lot of moments that would have been nice to spend more time on – and it was difficult to let that go. For instance, we all loved the goat animation that Morgan Williams (our lead animator) did but it got lost in a camera move as part of a transition. It was a similar case with the plants, near the end, that were designed by Soyeon. Because they were mainly transitional, you don’t have a lot of time to appreciate the nuances of the artwork and the motion.

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

TH: The mayor in the jail suit was an odd development that came near the end of the project. Several weeks before our deadline there was a “final” review of the piece and it came back to us with a “request” that the mayor character needed to be punished, or separated from the rest of the characters in some way (as a form of resolution). His character in the film was quite corrupt. This forced us to go back to the drawing board to figure out how we could insert that concept at this late stage of the game and still meet the deadline. It turned out to be really fun for us – because we got to sit in with the directors and designers to brainstorm / problem solve the issue.

ATS: How did you work with the musical element?

TH: Phil and Christopher had a fondness for the Xanadu theme by Olivia Newton John, so we set everything to that track (on an 11 frame beat). Once that was established it was critical not to mess with it, since all the character animation was timed to be in sync with that beat. The most amazing thing was that no one seemed to get sick of hearing that song over and over again. In the end, they weren’t able to use the track and we were pretty nervous that the animation might suddenly be out of sync, or that it wouldn’t match the fun energy of Xanadu – but our fears were put to rest by the “Raining Sunshine” track by Miranda Cosgrove.

“The brief for the project was to produce opening film titles reflecting the quirky quality of the movie itself which features strong performance from Peter O’Toole and Sam Neil amongst others.

Every element was hand drawn by artist Jason Dickinson, these were then scanned in at a high resolution and prepared in Illustrator in order to be then animated in After Effects by Peter Dickinson. For the typography, a William Morris style font was created and animated by Julia Hall.”

Art of the Title: How did you become involved with the project? How did the idea of animating the type come about?

Tom Barham: We were approached by HBO to pitch the series titles. I was familiar with Jonathan Ames’ work. When I found out that the series was semi-autobiographical — the story about a writer who hires himself out as a PI – it made sense that the entire world should be a fictional one created from the text of his imagination. We used the original copy from the short story in McSweeney’s for the characters as well as all of the backgrounds.

ATS: Including elements of noir or neo-noir seems an obvious choice. What lead you away from that?

TB: Exactly that — it was too easy. We did include a few noir-esque touches like the book cover and general lighting of the pages.

ATS: What was your approach to directing the opening credit sequence?

TB: I wanted to do a combination character and flip-book animation to move the Jonathan character from location to location in a book format. Additionally, since the characters were made from text contained within the book where they exist they needed to move and interact with each other as if they were emitting or leaking letter forms and words.

ATS: What were the first questions you had and how were the answers arrived at?

TB: What’s the idea here? How can we create a sequence that is organic to the subject matter and that communicates both the intent of the show and the intent of the author?

ATS: What was the process for working with the artist Dean Haspiel?

TB: Dean had worked with Jonathan on his novel “The Alcoholic” and done some drawings for the show.

ATS: Do you have any interesting stories related the development of this sequence?

TB: What was most unique was working with Jonathan Ames. It’s unusual for the author of the story to be so intimately involved with the production of the title sequence. He provided a great deal of insight about the characters.

ATS: Can you give us an example of something you took away from this collaborative project? Which gives you a greater satisfaction, collaboration or a project that is entirely your own?

C&A: Both have their merits. For the most part though, I think collaborations provide the greatest opportunity for personal growth. The challenges are more numerous and involve a greater levels of understanding of people and their points of view versus your own personal take on things. The best ventures are usually those that tap into other people’s talents as well as your own.