For my title sequence project, I am still deciding between doing Vertigo (1958) by Alfred Hitchcock and Pursuit of Happyness (2006) by Gabriele Muccino.
The title sequence for Vertigo is one of the most thrilling and well-created ones and it would be hard to come even close to it. Here's the original title sequence.
It is one of the best and I would love to work on this one. The title uses a lot of animation and I think I can get inspiration from there.
The second movie that I looked at was Pursuit of Happyness because it is one of my favorite films. The movie does not have a specific title sequence but it is a very inspiring movie and I wanted to give it a shot.
Here is the current opening scene of the movie.
I am still deciding between these two and any suggestions are welcome.
Much like I had mentioned on my previous post, I am a busy college student. Very busy. By that, I mean that I peruse YouTube and completely ignore most if not all of my responsibilities as a student and as a functioning human being in today's fast-moving society. Anyway, what I'm getting at is Epic Rap Battles of History. Due to the fact that I'm genuinely a child, I get an incredible amount of entertainment out of these videos. Often laced with more offensive material than an internet troll could muster, ERB is usually rather educational and incredibly pleasing to the eye. Or not. There's really no in between. One of my favourites was a finale episode where they pit five monumental directors against each other in the form of, you guessed it, a rap battle. Honestly, why not. Warning: it's very NSFW with its profane lyrics. Sorry. Not really. It is a good watch, though.
One of my favorite parts of these videos are the loads and loads of behind the scenes that they upload alongside the main photos. These videos usually showcase anything from the recording process, the post production, the costumes, and even just a full dance cover version. I enjoy seeing how much effort goes into the backgrounds because they tend to build them from scratch and usually use the same small things over and over but in different ways so the normal viewer wouldn't notice. Overall, I find it a very unique idea and really inspiring and I love learning their little shortcuts and reasonings when creating all of the aspects of their project. I wouldn't wanna work on it myself (I actually really would), but it is very nice to see all of the steps that go into creating the special effects and backgrounds for these videos.
You've probably seen it a million times. Any cartoon or movie made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or simply MGM) is prefaced with a majestic roaring lion dubbed--Leo. Trust me, you've seen him. And if you haven't, you're about to see more Leo's than most people will ever be exposed to. Oh wait, did I make a typing error? Surely I didn't mean to make Leo plural. I mean, how could there be more than one famous MGM roaring lion?
"Oh no," thought Mr. Loew to himself, "I just made this new company, and I have no logo. What ever should I do?" Then he came up with the most genius plan. You see readers, Loewe is German for lion, therefore, Mr. Loew could take Goldwyn's previous logo, (he did buy it after all), and not even have to worry about creating something new and original.
Just a side note, the original lion logo was designed by studio publicist Howard Dietz in 1917 who wanted to give a little shout out to his alma mater: The University of Columbia
Although in 1917, the mascot probably looked more like this:
Alright, so as I was saying, Loew decided to stick with the Goldwyn logo. But the very first "Leo the Lion" wasn't named Leo at all! In fact, the original roaring lion was named "Slats."
Here's the handsome fellow during a shoot in 1924:
No one can deny that the lion earned the part after submitting this suggestive headshot:
And here's the Logo featuring Slats (used 1917-1927):
Some of our wittier readers may have already realized something interesting. Sure Slats was the first roaring lion, but MGM didn't produce their first sound-accompanied film until 1928. Therefore, it was not the majestic roar of Slats that audiences first heard, but the roar of Slats' look-a-like,"Jackie." Jackie continued to appear on all of MGM's black and white films until 1956, even with the development of color film. In fact, if you've ever seen the beloved 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, you've seen Jackie.
Here's Jackie doing his thing:
Hollywood stars used to take it as a high honor to get a photograph with the MGM lion.
Here's a snapshot of a slightly nervous looking Greta Garbo and Jackie:
Still she had little reason to be nervous. Jackie just liked to play.
During and after Jackie's reign a couple other MGM lions hit the big screen.
There was "Telly" the Lion Then "Coffee" And then "Tanner"
(1927-1932) (1932-1934) (1934-1956)
And we can't forget the scariest MGM lion, "George"
(1956-1958)
^Is that even a lion?
Yupp. That's a lion alright.
Anyway, that brings us to the most famous MGM lion of them all: "Leo" the Lion. Leo is the most commonly used/seen lion in recent years because he's the lion you see (and hear) roaring in almost every MGM film made after 1957.
No one really liked the fake lion, so it was discontinued pretty quickly. Still, the Stylized Lion was retained by the MGM Records division and was also used as a secondary logo on MGM film posters, in addition to being shown at the end of credit rolls following most MGM movie releases of this period.
After the stylized lion failed, MGM went back to the lion that worked: Leo. It's Leo the Lion that audiences know and love today.
P.S. Ever wondered what the phrase scrawled across the top of all of the logos mean?
"Ars Gratia Artis" is Latin for "Art for Art's Sake." I think Dietz chose this mantra so that if people asked why he chose a lion he could just respond with, "Art for Art's Sake." Cause you know, he didn't want to look like a nerd who went to Columbia University.
Saul Bass
is a major influence on the rise of title sequences for feature films.
As a graphic designer and a filmmaker heis best known for his title
sequences, film posters and corporate logos. He made title sequences for
Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. His sequences started a trend and moved title sequences in a new direction.
"He did something very simple very graphic very modern. And he did that with very economical means."
"To set up a context. To take you from the time when you're getting your popcorn to to bring you to the place where you need to be to follow this story to put you in that context."
"People kind of woke up and said, hey the main title sequence can be a vehicle by which he artist may express himself...he did something that was graphically innovative."
His simplicity, but very telling and purposeful titles re invented another aspect to the entire art of storytelling.
Something that has been stressed upon my introduction to After Effects is the importance of planning. Trying to create a project that you haven’t actually planned out proves especially frustrating when it comes to animation. I’ll elaborate. Anyone can take a camera out and shoot some footage of whatever happens to be convenient. In this case, let’s say you shot 2 minutes of a man sleeping on the bus. While editing your footage, you realize that a shot of a bus driver would really tie everything together. So, the next day, you film the bus driver, insert pieces of the clip throughout your sleeping man footage, throw on a black and white filter and Viola! You’ve successfully created an incredibly deep cinema film in less than 48 hours.
Now let’s imagine you’re an animator. First of all, recreating the shot of the sleeping man through animation would take even the best animators hours upon hours to recreate— regardless of whether they use digital tools or not. Oh, now you want to add a shot of a bus driver? Ok, that means spending hours upon hours recreating THAT scene, hours upon hours repositioning the original animation to allow room for the new animation, a couple dozen hours trying to figure out why your sleeping man keeps flipping upside-down 5 frames in and— oops. Looks like you not only missed your project deadline, but also the birth of your firstborn son and 3 Super Bowls.
In short, preproduction is an essential element of animation.
One of the most common documents associated with animation is the storyboard. Traditionally, filmmakers/animators create a storyboard before they move on to the actual shooting/animating.
Here are some examples of storyboards from some of the most famous scenes in movie history:
In all of the above examples, the storyboard acted as the blueprint for each scene. However, I recently stumbled upon an animated film that strayed from the traditional production timeline. Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashiris an animated documentary film depicting Folman’s experience as a soldier in the 1982 Lebanon War. Often times when it comes to documentaries storyboarding is left out completely. This of course makes sense considering the uncertain/candid nature of the genre. Still, Waltz with Bashir is not just a documentary, it’s an animated documentary. Therefore, the 90 minute movie was filmed in a sound studio and then transferred to a storyboard. I’m sure that the unconventional production timeline of Waltz with Bashir is the real reason the film was banned in Lebanon.
Alright, I’m going to be honest— all of that “storyboard” talk was really just a way for me to gracefully (hah) transition into talking about how Waltz with Bashir was animated. Many people initially assume that the movie was made through rotoscoping, or the animation style that uses drawings over live footage to create realistic animation. These people are wrong. “Waltz with Bashir” is actually a combination of Adobe Flash cutouts and classic animation. Each drawing was sliced into hundreds of pieces which were moved in relation to one another, thus creating the illusion of movement. This technique is a unique style invented by Yoni Goodman at the Bridgit Folman Film Gang studio in Israel.
One of my previous posts was about a tutorial I had found that I really liked and implemented in my music video. Today I am back again with another effective tutorial with a fairly simple application.
I am sure you have seen the famous Vertigo effect (aka dolly zoom), which originated from famous Alfred Hitchcock movie, Vertigo. Interestingly enough, Hitchcock gets all the credit when in fact it was one of his cameramen who figured it out. It works by having the camera dollied forwards while the camera zooms out. If done at the correct pace for both, the z-axis is expanded upon thanks to zooming out while the object stays in the same place. This interesting shot is effective for showing a moment of intense calamity for a character, like seen in this scene from Jaws.
The tutorial explains how this can be made possible in After Effects and it takes advantage of a tool we seldom use, but I now know its true power. This small tool is none other than the ruler. You can expose the ruler with Command-R on your keyboard. I had known of its existence just by accidentally hitting Command-R in the past but I did not know you can make guidelines to use on your screen by clicking and dragging away from the ruler while you are hovered over them. In my music video I am using the dolly zoom with a camera based in After Effects in combination with a photo on stage, but the science still works the same. Maybe you can find a neat application of the dolly zoom in your future works.
So I thought long and hard into this and I came up with something I feel like the majority of people have asked themselves from time to time: how deep is the title sequence of Mad Men? Currently, I'm on the third season with only one or two more episodes until I progress to the fourth and every episode I watch furthers my interest in the story, setting, and style of the show. Every episode begins the same way, with a mostly silhouetted business man walking into his office before his world literally falls apart, all to the musical stylings of RJD2. The titles, created by production house Imaginary Forces, pay homage to graphic designer Saul Bass's skyscraper-filled opening titles for Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) and falling man poster from Vertigo (1958). Every time I start a new episode because it reminds me that although every visual aspect of the show speaks "classy" on a certain level, nothing is perfect and your world could come out from beneath you as easy as dropping your briefcase, as seen in the show. The intro continues by displaying the man falling from what looks like a skyscraper of advertisements with provocatively looking women, the all American family, and alcohol from the 60s, placing the viewer into the world right next to the characters of the show. I remember the first time watching the intro and thinking to myself, "Yes, I'm going to enjoy this show" solely because the intro's animation got me hook-line-and-sinker. If you haven't seen it yet, Mad Men is a show on AMC that isn't currently airing new episode but can be watched between the hours of 6 am to about 8 or 9 am on Sundays and is also available online through Netflix and a number of streaming sites.
First (if you haven't seen it already) watch the trailer for Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window".
Now, you can see what fan Jeff Desom created with footage from the movie. Since everything was filmed from the window in relatively the same angle, he stabilized the footage in After Effects, created a panoramic view of the building and sped it up with a bit of racked focus. What he created was the entire movie from Jimmy Stewarts point of view in just two minutes. He stays true to the movies storyline the entire time, showing the events in chronological order.
What I really enjoyed about this video was that he shows the process of moving the buildings around in the beginning. Jimmy Stewarts character is confined to his apartment with a broken leg, with nothing else to do but watch his neighbors. Desom creates the landscape that Hitchcock wasn't able to show to us by combining the entire environment.
I was thinking about some of my other favorite opening sequences to movies, of course specifically ones involving motion graphics, and one of my favorite movies of all time, Vertigo, came to mind. The opening sequence is a combination of live action as well as graphics, and it along with its eerie music creates an uneasy feeling right from the beginning of the classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller.
The opening sequence, I learned, was designed by famed graphic designer and subject of class discussions, Saul Bass. Bass used a number of shapes and colors to create the anxious atmosphere that Jimmy Stewart's character experiences throughout the movie due to his vertigo, as well as the thrilling storyline. Bass uses vibrant color on top of a black and white live image to captivate the audience right from the opening sequence. He links the uneasiness of the scene perfectly to the score playing in the background as well.
The sequence is a classic example of a great designer using simple graphics to tell a story before it's even been told!
