A frisson of first impressions in a single take, we root around a character and see something in the recipe.
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JCVD
This long take opening to JVCD sports a hyperreal sequence that smashes a few formulas while giving us a newly vintaged Van Damme; a survivalist who knows every tough guy trick in the book.
Belgium/Luxembourg/France | 2008 | Color | 2.35:1 | French/English | DVD/Blu-ray
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FIGHT CLUB
Bouncing around your head like jargon, like some synaptic pinball nebula, a blow-out of thought like “I’ve been holding the gun that has chipped my teeth long enough for it to be warm,” the groundbreaking opening title sequence to David Fincher’s Fight Club is a massively budgeted roller coaster. When will another film come along and show us our primal core through a prism of heartsick dementia?
Feature Commentary excerpt with Director David Fincher from the Two-Disc Collector’s Edition DVD:
“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.”
USA/Germany | 1999 | Color | 2.35:1 | English | DVD/Blu-ray
Extras
Visual Effects Featurette: Main Title Sequence
Click to Watch with Kevin Haug audio | iPod/iPhone | Click to Watch with Kevin Mack audio | iPod/iPhone
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)
Brain Ride Pre-Production Images – Click to Watch Slideshow
CREDITS
Main Title Design: Makela
