"Advertising is based on one thing: Happiness." - Don Draper

A shadowed figure enters his office, sets down his briefcase, and the room collapses around him. As he tumbles through a chasm of diamond rings, happy families, and women in pantyhose, the glossy veneer of advertising gives way, revealing the rough humanity of a man lost. RJD2’s jazzy “A Beautiful Mine” conducts the viewer through the parallel worlds of the philandering, chain-smoking Madison Avenue boys' club and the idyllic nuclear family, introducing us to some of the themes underpinning the Emmy award-winning show, Mad Men.

Art of the Title spoke with Cara McKenney, Mark Gardner and Steve Fuller about the brainstorms and battles that went into this refined and cryptic opening title sequence, produced by Imaginary Forces.

"Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets." - Travis Bickle

An opaque plume of sewer steam rises, slowly, before being dispersed by the emergence of a yellow taxi cab. Dan Perri's neon infused title designs are revealed on the re-formed mist, each credit appearing only as long as necessary before the next is displayed.

Paul Schrader's screenplay introduces the anti-hero, Travis Bickle:

Cut to Bickle's eyes as he peers through the window of his taxi, observing the city streets. The seedy splendor of 1970s New York City flashes by, images of a nightly routine that threatens to become hypnotic. This intra-diegetic gaze provides an insight into Bickle's psyche and his relationship to the city - its inhabitants, its buildings, its allure. All we see through this point of view is a melange of colors and images that remain constant and blurred.

Bernard Herrmann's remarkable career—composing classical scores to films such as Citizen Kane, Psycho, North by Northwest, Vertigo—culminated with Taxi Driver. His final opus oscillates between two contrasting parts, each with their own rhythm; one a foreboding crescendo of horns, the other, the romantic languor of a saxophone.

The binary opposition within the score serves as a counterpoint to the visuals, offsetting Bickle's roaming disdain for the city streets. The saxophone medley in Herrmann's "Main Theme" is later repeated when Bickle first encounters Betsy. The accompanying monologue is his reverie, "She appeared like an angel. Out of this filthy mass, she is alone. They...cannot...touch... her..." This evoked mood is something pure, almost celestial, and is ultimately associated with a fleeting feeling of hope in the city he abhors.

The title sequence for Taxi Driver provides a window into Travis Bickle and his world. It remains unclear whether he is savior or villain, a man with a clear conscience or an individual driven by rage and anguish.

WRITER: Shaun Mir
AUDIO EXCERPTS: Taxi Driver - Two-Disc Collector's Edition DVD (2007)
LAST UPDATE: September 5, 2011
© Art of the Title, 2011

"Why someone weak? Because a weak man knows the value of strength, the value of power... "
- Abraham Erskine

As James Montgomery Flagg’s iconic Uncle Sam orders viewers to join him on a final tour of American war propaganda, the line between two- and three-dimensional art is blurred. Painted images of smiling pin-up girls, parachutes, and fighter planes warp and shift, invigorated with a depth beyond their original form. Even ol’ Rosie the Riveter makes an appearance among the flags and artillery as the closing credits for Captain America: The First Avenger roll out.

"How’d you do it Frank? How did you cheat on the bar exam in Louisiana?" - Carl Hanratty

A gifted young grifter scamps and stamps across the screen, his fugitive flights aided by doctored documents and lying lawyers. The scurrying swindler dares viewers to keep up with his caper, but this race is now a chase with a “top man” on his case. Flowing type, smooth lines and cool jazz are a playground for this pursuit, snaking and sneaking across the colorful jet-set world of our confidence man’s creation, slowly fading to reveal the darkened truth.

Kuntzel + Deygas stylistically transpose the handmade design of Saul Bass using decidedly modern means. Accompanied by John Williams’ unexpectedly unctuous score, the duo’s title sequence for Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can is simply outta sight.

"I wonder all the time why no-one's never just stood up and become a real superhero." - Libby

Pop comic colors straight from the idle margins of a high school student's sketchbook splash high contrast iconography from James Gunn's Super across the screen, providing a startling impact in comparison to the film's themes – winding the viewer up before sinking them into the mundane and sometimes pathetic life of Frank D'Arbo.

Art of the Title speaks with PUNY, the design group behind the whimsy.

"I think it's time we blow this scene. Get everybody and the stuff together. OK. 3 2 1. Let's jam!"

Erratic flashes blast the black and white canvas, synchronized in harmony with the pulsating sound of horns and drums to reveal the title: Cowboy Bebop. Composer Yoko Kono's opening theme, "Tank!," begins its eclectic mixture of bebop jazz, an incandescent barrage of instruments each punctuating the visuals to stylized effect.

The jazz influence, not only prevalent in the soundtrack, also carries through to the execution of the visuals; the colors and camera movement strengthen the exuberance of the music's hip, free, and expressive spirit. The palette of pink, blue, yellow, green serves as a backdrop to the black silhouettes of characters, which are repeatedly paired with free-form animated text and the Cowboy Bebop title. Squares and rectangles dominate the screen, in varying graphic layouts–splitting the composition some times, and at other times separating frames to provide spacing for the credits. Incorporated throughout, a series of action shots congruous to the cadence of the music provide a glimpse at some of the show's symbolism: martial arts fighting, billows of cigarette smoke, frantic running, various spaceships interjecting, guns firing.

The art direction for the title sequence of Cowboy Bebop is reminiscent of Sejun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter (a 1966 film made during the Japanese New Wave or Noberu Bagu) and also from the pop art movement. The primordial element, however, is the bebop jazz influence (hence the term's inclusion in the show's title and the labeling of the show's episodes as "sessions"). The title credits even act as a manifesto supported by the meandering text in some shots: "They must create new dreams and films by breaking traditional styles. They are sick and tired of conventional fixed style jazz. ...the work, which becomes a new genre itself, will be called COWBOY BEBOP, will play without fear of risky things." The strong images coupled with the aural landscape of trumpets, saxophones, trombones, drums, and double-bass create a marvelous introduction to one of Anime's seminal works.

WRITER: Shaun Mir
LAST UPDATE: August 3, 2011
© Art of the Title, 2011

"Only Sanity Can Keep You Alive."

In clever shadow play, the title type is the very thing you pass in the darkness that makes your blood run cold. With an issuance of fractal lobotomies and mirrored banishments worthy of Zod, the opening titles to John Carpenter's The Ward begin with woodcut prints from the middle ages depicting men and women racked to the tools of torture. Glass shards fly in the final moments before death sentences are carried out, and we are shown the early days of mental science in which similar and yet more evil devices were used to "cure” the insane.

The designers, known for their work on Up in the Air and Juno, exacerbate the already robust sense of dread that exists regarding the sensed helplessness that has become synonymous with the mental profession in the viewers' collective minds.