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!

“This opening scene used 500 hand-drawn illustrations and the team spent two months experimenting with the many options.”

“The first minute and a half was not in Taiyo Matsumoto’s original Manga, “Tekkon Kinkreet.” This [beginning] sets the tone…this shot [of the raven’s flight] is the first thing we actually executed. I thought we’d take the hardest shot first and figure how far we could take it and that would set the pace for the rest of the production.”

“I would send them our rushes to keep them in the loop. I haven’t heard of too many animated films where there’s been any music completed during the actual production of the film. It was one of those art school ideas of having the actual production of the music be a metaphor for something that’s happening in the story itself (the old world giving way to the new world) I was feeling like [Plaid’s music] had that in it.”

“We had to decide how to communicate [Shakespeare’s] prologue…setting the film in a modern day world, we decided to use the media.”

“The idea is to find modern images and equivalents that could decode the language of Shakespeare. What’s interesting here is that…you hear the prologue once and when we go inside the news report you’ll hear it a second time. The same speech appears twice to give the audience the chance to acclimatize their ear to the language.”

Regarding the violent footage, “Most people think it is real riot footage. Most of [the imagery] is of Mexico City shot from helicopter and staged behind the studio backlot. There is no library footage at all. We shot every frame that is in that moment.”

Regarding editing, “The constant invention and reinvention…the moving of beats…there’s a lot to be said about that opening overture. That was something totally constructed and driven by Jill [film editor Jill Bilcock]. For our way of working it is an endless ongoing process of building, testing, criticizing and improving.”

“We had many versions of the start of the film. There was a time where we didn’t trust the text…we were making a lot of excuses and felt enormous pressure that the audience simply wouldn’t understand the heightened world we had created. We finally realized that if you create a world where things were made clear [then] Shakespeare’s language would tell the story.”

Director Shane Meadows, “When the actor’s names come up we decided to put these rolling numbers; the whole font idea was meant to be…like a British soldier’s dog tag. So those numbers rolling ‘round are meant to echo the numbers of soldier’s dog tags who’ve died because…[SPOILER] the lead character’s father has passed away [in the Falklands Conflict].”

Producer Mark Herbert, “One of the things about this archive [opening sequence]…[were] the amount of tapes you had to sift through in the edit.”

Meadows, “It was a joy to be honest, looking at this footage from the 80’s…some of it was local news…a range of things of the time…like this…you don’t see people on the streets anymore whereas back in the 80’s, everyone, it seemed, from women to miners to the riots in Birmingham, everyone seemed to be out saying what they thought.”

Imaginary Forces' opening title sequence for the film "The Number 23" features spreading blood splatter and a changing typography featuring historic events surrounding, what else, the infinite variations on the integer of 23.

Studio Daily's in depth interview with title sequence director Michelle Dougherty

“Gripping imagery consisting of…chiariscuro in the style of Goya. [Director of Photography Gabriel] Figueroa…would use color to create, from the early images of Firmin’s [played by Albert Finney] nocturnal wanderings, an allegorical universe that mixes death (sugar-candy skulls and banes, laughing masks) and celebration (garish lanterns, garlands)…a night peopled by wild illusions…suffocating qualities…[the] poetic frenzy of an alcoholic.”

“Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless; like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.” – Bruce Lee

Art of the Title: How did you develop the various artistic styles for the film? The differences are striking.

Nina Paley: I immersed myself in Ramayana art. There’s thousands of years of it from pretty much every country in South and Southeast Asia. I had no shortage of inspiration. The visual styles included in “Sita” are but a tiny sampling of what’s out there. As to how I chose…everything in the film felt like it chose itself. If anything seemed to work, I went with it; if something didn’t work, I threw it back.

ATS: Why did you feel that this story needed to be a feature film?

NP: I wanted to work through the story for personal reasons. It’s a big story; it called for feature length. Initially it was just a short, “Trial by Fire,” which was 3 minutes. Most audiences liked it but didn’t get the Ramayana references. I realized I’d have to expand the story for audiences to receive my message. My art isn’t finished until an audience “gets” it.

ATS: How did you finalize the structure?

NP: Intuitively.

ATS: With regards to in the incredible intricacy of the storytelling, how did you know what something was right; is it from the gut?

NP: From the gut, or maybe the heart. I like to think all my organs were cooperating on this, even my brain.

ATS: How did you discover Annette Hanshaw’s music?

NP: After my husband dumped me by e-mail I was staying with various friends-of-friends. One place belonged to a record collector, and some old Hanshaw sides were on his shelf. My friends played Hanshaw’s “Mean to Me” and I was hooked. Later one friend bought me an all-Hanshaw CD he found. I played that thing over and over during the months after my break-up.

ATS: What qualities does it possess for you to lead to its historic usage?

NP: The synchronicity of the Hanshaw songs and Sita’s story is uncanny. This impresses audiences and allows the film’s point to be made: the story of the Ramayana transcends time, place and culture. Because the songs feature an authentic voice from the 1920′s, they demonstrate that this story emerged organically in history. New songs composed by the director, while they could be entertaining, could not make that point. They would be a mere contrivance, whereas the authentic, historical songs give weight to the film’s thesis. They are in fact the basis of the film’s thesis, irrefutable evidence that certain stories – like the story of Sita and Rama – are inherent to human experience.

ATS: What element of the film is closest to your heart?

NP: I think my favorite scene is “Agni Pariksha,” that rotoscoped bit that comes shortly after the intermission. It doesn’t feel anything like the rest of the film – it’s not funny at all. It was my attempt to convey what my heartbreak felt like, emotionally. Although I only got a tiny little fraction of the experience in there, I think it works. In some ways it’s the heart of the movie.

ATS: How are you keeping the copyright issue from overshadowing the film itself? How will copyright inform your creativity on future projects?

NP: I am never again going to close-license (“copyright”) my own art. Any publisher or distributor that wants to work with me is going to have to accept an open license. Open content has been generating lots of money in software for years; it’s time for popular culture to follow.

ATS: What is next for you?

NP: Freeing “Sita”! I’m currently a full-time Free Culture activist. And I plan to make some short cartoons on this current obsession.

Watch/download/burn the full-length animated film at Archive.org! The H.264 MPEG4 encodes are courtesy of Art of the Title.