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Textual fluidity frozen repeatedly.
Art of the Title spoke with Julien Widmer, the designer of the opening titles for “Le Souffleur” a film about an imaginative but shy theater prompter who falls in love with an unwitting actress.
“‘Souffleur’ means ‘the prompter’ and ‘the blower.’ It’s the same word in French because a prompter ‘blows’ the words to the actors when they are in need. This particular theater prompter happens to live in his prompter box. So for this title I chose to blow letters and words like a prompter would do. In this 3D graphic space, we are like the actor who forgot his lines, searching for the words between the letters.”
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 768×414 | Size: 16 MB | Running Time: 2:00 | Year: 2005
Created by
Julien Widmer “Kolt”
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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 “3OO” 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).
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 696×285 | Size: 24 MB | Running Time: 2:12 | Year: 2008
Images Extra: Download 7 HD stills from the title sequence (4.3MB Zip Archive)
Related Extra: The Criterion Collection release of Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan, featuring “Hoichi, the Earless”.
Created by
Imaginary Forces
Creative Directors: Karin Fong and Steve Fuller
For all its efficiency a guillotine isn’t easy to erect. Sometimes you have to swing an ax. The pulse quickens and the reverberation connects those on each end. These four title sequences take a little off the top and open films that put a lump in your throat.
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Sisters
Brian De Palma, what hath thou wrought? Snapshots of a devil-fetus(es), the aural anxiety brought to us by Bernard Herrmann in a style reminiscent in tone of his work on the opening titles for Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”
“What the devil hath joined together let no man cut asunder.”
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×400 | Size: 14 MB | Running Time: 1:33 | Year: 1973
Click to Watch with subtitles
Click to Watch without subtitles
Riget (The Kingdom)
I’ve come to know the title sequence of Lars von Trier’s “Kingdom” well; I’ve read the subtitles enough times to know the narration to its core. I will on occasion watch it without subtitles to bask in the black. There is death in every visual, even the water seems dead. Then, those hands. Not to mislead, but anyone raised on Romero smiles at that moment.
What happens next is perhaps the most jarring occurrence in title sequence design; this lushly cinematic sense of sheer dread is halted by spastically edited Dogme 95 footage that was shot on sub-standard video and scored to music fit for a late-in-the-episode SNL skit. All this as an introduction to one of the best television series in history.
Direct Link subtitled | Format: QuickTime H.264, 640×480 | Size: 30 MB | Running Time: 2:32 | Year: 1994
Direct Link no subtitles | Format: QuickTime H.264, 640×480 | Size: 30 MB | Running Time: 2:32 | Year: 1994
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The Changeling
An absolute thing of beauty where the sheer gravity of the action
between the titling becomes the film’s constitution. As the opening sequence resumes we get the aftermath of too-great an emotional weight. And we know, most of us from personal experience, the doorman’s perspective; he wants to help but there is nothing to be done.
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×400 | Size: 54 MB | Running Time: 4:53 | Year: 1980
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Onibaba
Fields of whipping reeds that house an abyss. What emerges? The jazzy paranoia of Hikaru Hayashi’s percussive score jolts one from uneasy contemplation while the frame remains remarkably disciplined -the music is allowed to do its job. We see patterns in the wind. There is movement there. And it is chaotic and hungry and wholly uninviting. An opening to a cinematic masterpiece that is the very embodiment of a most fearsome artifact, the Noh mask.
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 703×288 | Size: 25 MB | Running Time: 1:56 | Year: 1964
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Who envisions a throat slit crescentic to a curving world, all its ephemera owned by one of the most famous cocaine dealers in Latin America?
Smog’s Moises Arancibia, spoke with Art of the Title; “‘El Don,’ is a television series inspired by the life of notorious Chilean gangster known as ‘El Cabro Carrera.’ The creation of the title sequence required a marked visual identity for the series; we took cutthroat cues from the wild west and James Bond and the entire project took us three weeks.”
Cutthroat indeed. Blood flows, drips, is fired from gun (in one example the splatter is wonderfully conceptualized as an entry wound), saturates sultry backdrops, is squeezed from a handshake and seeps from a not quite dead body before it explodes and finally, blood blots the frame.
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×480 | Size: 18 MB | Running Time: 1:39 | Year: 2008
Created by
Smog
Art direction: Moises Arancibia
2D Animation: Moises Arancibia. Luis Suarez. Miguel Gonzalez
3D Animation: Rodrigo Sepulveda
Click to Watch SD | Click to Watch HD
Inspired by the true story of a New Zealand businessman battling the Inland Revenue Department, filmmaker Jonothan Cullinane optioned the book and made the film (see his blog “How to Direct a Film“).
Art of the Title discusses the opening sequence with Cullinane:
“The story covers a five year period and we wanted some sort of transitioning effect to indicate the passage of time. A very clever friend of mine, Anthony Farac, came up with a graphic device that was so good we thought it was wasted as a transition but would work really well as a title sequence. Originally we planned to do the titles with type over picture because we had little money - the film’s budget was just over 2 million (NZ$). Ant came up with a way to do the sequence that established the topic and the tone of the film very clearly for the princely sum of $7000.”
New Zealand | 2007 | Color | 1.85:1 | English
Direct Link: 480p (QuickTime, 848×480, 18 MB, 01:44) + 720p (QuickTime, 1280×720, 32 MB, 01:44)
Credits
Opening Titles
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Click to Watch 720p HD Version
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.
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 864×368 | Size: 27.1 MB | Running Time: 2:35 | Year: 2004
720p HD Version | Format: QuickTime H.264, 1280×544 | Size: 56.6 MB | Running Time: 2:35 | Year: 2004
End Titles
Click to Watch (contains nudity)
Click to Watch 720p HD Version (contains nudity)
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.
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 864×368 | Size: 48.1 MB | Running Time: 4:33 | Year: 2004
720p HD Version | Format: QuickTime H.264, 1280×544 | Size: 102.3 MB | Running Time: 4:33 | Year: 2004
An Unrelated But Very Cool Audio Extra: “The Dead Flag Blues” by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Lee Marvin(?) narrates the apocalypse in a film that never was.
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Created by Kyle Cooper,
Prologue Film
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With the backdrop of a high school science text book this opening brilliantly weaves its deliberately cliché-ridden tale, taking every sitcom formula and soap opera stereotype, and crafting it into pure comedic gold. The amazing writing, performances, music, art direction and animation could only lead to one thing - cancellation - which MTV did in 2003 after only 13 episodes.
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 640×480 | Size: 10 MB | Running Time: 1:09 | Year: 2004
Video Extra: Behind the Scenes Discussion with creators Phil Lord and Chris Miller
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 480×270 | Size: 37 MB | Running Time: 10:53
Website Extra: Clone High USA “Ye Olde Unofficial Interweb Whatever” site
Wiki Extra: Clone High on Wikipedia
Created by: Phil Lord &
Chris Miller,
Bill Lawrence
(Video materials courtesy of ITVF
The daily routine, broken down to the extreme. Optimized perfectly, perhaps too perfectly.
Opening Sequence
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Click to Watch 720p HD Version
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 864×464 | Size: 36.5 MB | Running Time: 3:23 | Year: 2006
720p HD Version | Format: QuickTime H.264, 1280×688 | Size: 76.2 MB | Running Time: 3:23 | Year: 2006
End Titles
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Click to Watch 720p HD Version
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 864×464 | Size: 27.5 MB | Running Time: 2:15 | Year: 2006
720p HD Version | Format: QuickTime H.264, 1280×688 | Size: 59.8 MB | Running Time: 2:15 | Year: 2006
Video Extra: Picture a Number: The Evolution of a G.U.I.
A detailed look at the on-screen graphics design process.
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime Streaming H.264, 539×272 | Size: 78 MB | Running Time: 17:13
Created by
MK12
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Repeat to yourself “It’s just a show”…
Note the consistency of design in the title sequences to the Alien Quadrilogy. Note too how they differ. Does each tangent of theme reflect the respective film?
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Alien
Crossing over an eclipsing planet with the title appearing in non-linear, segmented letters. From the outer letters inwards (even the middle swath of the letter “E” is last to appear). Everything pointing to the center because the center is where the parasitic pupae of the Alien comes from; the middle of you. Steady, dark tension.
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×304 | Size: 14.1 MB | Running Time: 1:46 | Year: 1979
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Aliens
The sparse, soldiering snare drum opening to an almost digital yet organic titling, like the profile of some never before seen hive. The text, apparitional at first, seems to be gestating; the “I” blooms into a symbol of life and we are in the story with a masterful tilt down on the encroaching vessel. Fairly glorious.
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×384 | Size: 13 MB | Running Time: 1:54 | Year: 1986
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Alien³
The last brassy notes of the Twentieth Century Fox theme holds and contorts into the reverberating growl of the film’s soundscape. Then, the familiarity of the abyss punctuated by staccato, mini cut scenes that move the story along. New format, familiar threads…the wrinkle, we begin to understand, will be in the telling. Nothing comforts quite like facehuggers interrupting stasis to earn cinematic trust!
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 853×352 | Size: 47.8 MB | Running Time: 4:29 | Year: 1992
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Alien: Resurrection
The womb-like viscera of human and alien-crossed monstrosities connotes a bastardization.
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×304 | Size: 17.2 MB | Running Time: 2:09 | Year: 1997
Click to Watch
Alien: Resurrection - Alternate [1997]
Conceptually interesting but perhaps too great a departure. And no one puts bug guts anywhere near their mouth. Not unless they are chocolate covered and never if they’re space bugs. And who fires spitballs at a window needed for navigation? I can’t seem to get past that, even with the now-boilerplate spaceships in space shot.
Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×320 | Size: 25.1 MB | Running Time: 3:09 | Year: 1997
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