A unique insetion of design for a movie or television series can become a symbol for the story.
The below video is a series of interviews with successful motion graphic design artists.
Within the PBS interviews there is conversation of Kyle Cooper and his "game-changing" production of the Opening Sequence for Se7en. Cooper said that a good introduction is like a courtesy to the audience, for it means the creators are going to try as hard as they possibly can to entertain the viewer. Cooper's Se7en opening was a thought provoking intro that related deeply to the psychopath and his journal he keeps throughout the film.
Jim Helton and Charles Christopher Rubino’s story they tell at the ending of Blue Valentine is proof that there use to be love in the character's relationship. It is heart wrenching for you had just watched their dramatic break up, making the viewers follow the characters in their emotions.
Lastly, Zombieland motion graphic designer Ben Conrad, inserts text into the story, creating a light hearted feeling during this graphic scene. By using a simple font and creating a simple concept, the humorous mood is set for the rest of the movie.
I recently watched Blue Valentine for the second time and although the movie had one of the most heartbreaking and intense endings I've ever seen, I enjoyed and thought of motion graphics during the end credits sequence. The shots of the fireworks work great with the emotional stills from the movie and the music syncs up perfectly with the fireworks and shadows created on the still images. Jim Helton and Charles Christopher Rubino were given the ultimatum to use a Grizzly Bear song and received footage from fireworks in Scranton, PA from the director. The end title sequence captures emotion through shadows, light, intense colors, and a powerful song. The movie was extremely powerful and captivating and this end sequence embodies the entirety of the movie. The use of field footage and effects with still images works great and I plan to create something with footage that I've captured outside of the realm of after effects. I think that this title sequence is technically not as advanced as many animated title sequences but appropriate for the movie and very powerful.
Friday, September 20, 2013
Blue Valentine is a film directed by Derek Cianfrance, released in 2010. I watched it the other night and thought the end credits were superb.
Take a look:
This title sequence was designed by Jim Helton, an experimental filmmaker and editor who commonly collaborates with Derek Cianfrance. Mr. Helton has a very interesting past: born in Germany on a US army base, he then went off to attend the University of Colorado to study film under Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon, whose work he credits as his main influence.
In an interview on theArtofTheTitle, he cites Phil Solomon as his main inspiration and recommends interested in this type of design to explore Phil's work. He talks about learning a process called "bi-packing," a process of placing two film strips on top of each other, and then rephotographing them to create a different effect than a superimposition. He goes on to describe his process for this sequence, made entirely on Final Cut Pro, taking a layer of footage of out-of-focus exploding fireworks, then taking the song by Grizzly Bear and using its rhythms to edit, and finally taking set photography by Davi Russo and reframing them to fit within the fireworks, and cutting them up into little details. Although he does not give away entirely his process, he says it was basically made with the composite feature and lots of tweaking. The fourth layer, the actual typeface for which he used "a short fade in, and a long fade out, like exploding and disheartening light." And finally, the fifth layer he discusses is the sound recordings of fireworks streaking and crackling, children playing and laughing, mixing it with the image to create an abstract echo.
I really like the elegance of this piece, but I really love how this clearly shows me that the tools and tricks to do these things are not necessarily difficult at all. Instead, coming up with good design in the first place is the actual labor.
Phil Solomon's influence on Jim Helton makes it clear how important an awareness and attention to other design truly is for making original design work. By paying attention to other's work, Jim was able to find ideas as references points for this piece. For me, this is a good example of how paying careful attention to design, and being knowledgeable and active supplies you with a well of creative influence from which to pull.
