The 2007 film, Juno, directed by Jason Reitman and starring Ellen Page, has an extremely memorable and fitting title sequence. The first scene of the film flows seamlessly into the credits, which are printed, hand-drawn, xeroxed, cut, and colored images. Over 900 of them. It focuses on the main character, Juno, as she walks through her neighborhood.
Designer Gareth Smith of Shadowplay Studio said it took "nearly supernatural patience."
Smith worked with Reitman to create an idea for the opening credits. "The music, the tone and originality of the screenplay, and the uniqueness of Juno's character, led us down the path toward creating a low-fi, hand-animated title sequence," Smith said.
Smith and his wife, Jenny Lee, flew up to Vancouver where they were shooting the film to shoot thousands of photos of Ellen walking with a high-speed camera from a number of angles.
The cut-outs of Juno were created from the photographs. They printed out every frame, outlined Juno, and photocopied the prints to degrade the quality. Then they cut out the frames with scissors and colored them in by hand.
Read the whole interview and the in depth process they did here.
