Film Title Sequence

BRIEF -

To create a movie title sequence, with an accompanying ten minute film.

WEDNESDAY 14th APRIL 2010

I began by researching the opening sequences by Saul Bass. I love the retro feel to them, this lead me to looking at other retro title sequences, such as Pink Panther and Clockwork Orange.

These were some of my favorites. The music really helps to set the tone of the preceding film. This is something that I will have to think about when producing my own.

Even though this has a more modern feel to it, this title sequence is obviously heavily inspired by Saul Bass, particulary in the way that the illustrations flow seamlessly to the next clip with the use of line.

I also love this title sequence, even though it is not the look I am aiming for, I like the seamless flowing effect between graphics and the use of casino patterns.

I looked at additional work by Saul Bass on his website http://saulbass.tv/ and on additional net sites.

These logo designs by Saul Bass are amazing!

I’m currently freelancing for a theatre company, at the moment i’m creating a poster and flyers for their upcoming murder mystery night which is set in a fifties Jazz club. Researching into the work of Saul Bass has inspired me to produce artwork in a similar way, the idea of a retro detective fits so well with his style. This may be something that I incorporate into my title sequence, possibly along with a recent private investigator illustration created for my Dream Dictionary project. For this illustration I drew inspiration from retro detective characters, such as Inspector Gadget.

These are a few ideas i’m working on for the murder mystery night.

A few rough sketches and ideas of what some of my stills might look like, I developed these into a storyboard.

A few of my objects drawn out in Illustrator. The Saul Bass style lines that I will be using and various other shapes that form objects can easily be created in After Effects. I want to create everything for my movie from scratch if possible.

Wednesday 28th April 2010

Unfinished version that I showed in class today. It has taken me around sixty hours to get this far! There’s still a few additional parts to add, and I need to sort out any jumpy bits.

I decided on using the font Hitchcock, I have previously been working with more modern looking sans serifs, but I felt that this font added more of a Saul Bass retro feel to it. With the main storyboard complete, I started to think about what type of music I felt would fit with my title sequence. The jazzy feel to Anatomy Of A Murder is close to the sound that I want to go for in my detective film. I adapted a loop called Mystery in Logic that fitted with what I was aiming for; it helps set the scene for my detective searching for clues.

I worked on the flow between the clips so that it would flow seamlessly,  adding additional items that wiped across the screen or opacities that helped merge new objects. I also added a turbulent displace filter onto the rectangles to give a more imperfect hand drawn feel to them.

I decided on the name Dreams and Vengeance, as my title sequence features a woman dreaming of an investigator who tracks down a murderer.

As my title sequence was more of an extended version and had taken me so long to complete I hadn’t planned on adding additional film footage to the end. However, I decided to use film footage from the murder mystery night. I cut the down the original footage from over half an hour to around ten minutes and added a old  film effect in iMovie to reduce the colour. Ideally I would have liked to film at the dress rehearsal, so I could have got closer to the action and varied my camera angles.

I’m unable to load the full movie title sequence and footage to youtube, as it’s over the maximum length. Here is the title sequence part, minus the audio.

Part two