Opening Title of Deadpool

Through advanced CGI and visual effects, the opening title sequence of Deadpool was one that was extremely memorable. It was a jab at basically every superhero movie that gave an insight as to what the film's total atmosphere would be like. A great opening title sequence, like Deadpool's is key to making the film entertaining to its' viewers. There were a lot of logistics and intense thought put into this opening sequence that made the distinct 3-D visual effects and placed them into an atmosphere that was able to be manipulated into looking like a frozen fight scene for a lengthy amount of time. There were various levels of preproduction that went into making this opening title one to be competed with.

Check out the creation of it:

History of Titles

On Monday, our name title is doing. I was doing research to figure out what I wanted my brand to be and I came across this video about the history of movie titles. I found it very interesting and I thought I should share it with you all since we will have a project where we have to change a title. Take a look:

I find it so cool to see the progression of technology from the early 1900's to today. We went from still slides to actual cool animations. And just from the few classes that we've had so far I'm blown away what After Effects can do and we've barely touched it. As someone who has no artistic ability, it's cool to see that there are so many possibilities I can do with a program, even if I don't have the talent for it.

Element 3D

Element 3D is an After Effects plugin that lets users more easily create 3d items in After Effects. This is a quick rendering tool and Compatible with After Effects so it is ideal for quick graphics and animation.

This was used in the creation of the Star Trek title sequence in order to create the planets and other objects. This plugin is powerful and a great tool if you know how to  use it. 

Here is a link to the title Sequence:

Star Trek Titles 

I just downloaded this plugin earlier today however I have already started using it and my personal opinion is that it is great. If you like animation and have some money to spare I would suggest downloading it. 

Catch Me If You Can: A Story in a Title Sequence

The first time I saw Catch Me If You Can, I didn’t really have much idea of what the movie was going to be about. My knowledge going in was Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a dream. The title sequence for this movie is pretty cool and sort of sets you in the mindset for the movie. The sequence itself actually tells the entire story of the movie in just 2.5 minutes. With no knowledge of the plot at all, I didn’t catch this on my first view, but the style and execution of the sequence gave me an idea and something to expect. I entire sequence is a little bit whimsical and a little bit mysterious. The illustrations are easy and the colors are nice and it’s pretty easy to follow the story the title sequence is telling. After seeing the movie and knowing exactly the story the title sequence is telling, I can appreciate those colors even more. The color change from scene to scene within the sequence is a very deliberate reference to the overarching theme of the movie. I think it was handled in a very cool way. It’s amazing that you can tell the full story of a 2.5 hour star-studded movie in just 2.5 minutes using cartoons and colors.

Title Recreation: Breaking Bad

  I posted about the original Breaking Bad opening sequence but I recently saw a recreation of the title sequence. This particular sequence includes the actors and their names whereas in the original sequence, the show title and creator are shown in a few seconds. The title that "jamesmontalbano" created is a little over a minute and includes video clips from the show in a mosaic form using the periodic table of elements. I think that this title sequence is better than the original. It poses the question, why would Breaking Bad have such a simple title with no character names or actors? I believe that a show with a large following and such a complex story requires a simple title. The dedicated viewers know who is in the show and what more content rather than a filler title sequence going on for a few minutes every week. I think that a title sequence similar to this recreation could be used on the pilot episode of a show to introduce important characters. I would like to see a tutorial for this After Effects creation. This title sequence uses important scenes from various episodes to describe each character and although the mosaic effect shows small video clips, they all act to paint of picture of the character's past and reflects certain traits.

Spiderman opening titles

I found this title sequence to be incredibly interesting, since it takes the simple task of introducing actors and turns it into part of the movie. Setting up a movie through a title sequence can really bring an audience into a film, and keep them engaged. The sequence itself is very interesting by how the webs make up the names of those involved with the movie. I personally enjoy these more involved sequences at the beginning of movies, as I stated before, they gain the attention of the audience. so below I have attached a video of the Spiderman opening title sequence, hope you enjoy. 

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.

You can read the article here if interested:
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/blue-valentine/

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.


You can see Phil Solomon's work here:
http://www.philsolomon.com/

Dan Savage: The Poker Club

I wasn't sure which artist to write about but the thumbnail for The Poker Club title sequence caught my attention. Dan Savage, the artist behind this sequence, went to school at Purchase College in NY and studied more traditional art but had a love for animation so he taught himself After Effects outside the classroom. I think that it's possible to master After Effects via following tutorials constantly and experimenting with the vast effects and possibilities on AE. However, this must've taken Savage years to master and an insane amount of patience and dedication. When asked about The Poker Club title sequence, Savage responded, ""There was practically no budget...I art directed, designed, and animated the entire thing with the exception of the 3D chips. I rented the exact gun model from the film and hired Eric Wagliardo to help photograph it. The titles were designed for HD 1080p, so to get the extreme close ups on the card elements I went through the tedious process of scanning in the cards, cutting out the parts I liked, printing, photocopying each part like 20 times to get the nice texture, then scanning each part in to piece it together for animation. It was a lot of late nights and weekends." The creative process behind this opening sequence is amazing and the sequence itself is quite mesmerizing. Savage created a title sequence that immediately engages viewers without giving too much away. Savage hints that the movie will involve poker and then draws your attention with the perfectly animated gun and then to top it off, he fades out the sequence with blood dropping on the cards. I think this sequence works well and I want to see the movie now.

CHECK OUT SOME MORE OF HIS WORK AND TUTORIALS HERE 

Incredible Animation

    Pixar's The Incredibles creates dynamic characters with physical traits that directly correspond to the superheroes' powers. For example, the fast running boy has pointy, lightning bolt like hair and the mom is extremely skinny due to her stretching super powers. The end credits sequence, however, consists of different animations than the movie. The style is more simplistic yet flows well and transitions into different roles of the behind the scenes players. It is truly a sequence that keeps the audience in their seats during the end credits. Teddy Newton, a Pixar animator, worked on this title sequence along with many others. I looked up Teddy Newton and found a short film he directed entitled "Day and Night." The main characters are simplistic compared to the detailed animation that takes place inside their respective figures. The animation is also completely different than the animation in The Incredibles end credits sequence. I plan to look into more of Newton's work and perhaps find a sequence that I could emulate. I am somewhat nervous for this class because I have difficult using new software. I will work as hard as possible to keep up with others and create something that I'm proud of. I think animation is still young and over the years, even though there are some animations today, it will be nearly impossible to differentiate between real life and animation.

-Matthew Clifford Hadley

The Incredibles end credits sequence

"Day and Night"

Captain Planet is a Mother Earther

WARNING, the following videos may contain language and images not suitable for children.Viewer Discretion is Advised.

Hello one, hello all! Welcome back to my weekly post, today we are making like Oreos because we are double-stuffed! That's right, it's double-Jeopardy, double-Whammy, double-trouble, and it's double the flavor, double the fun. What I'm trying to say is that I will be talking about two videos today and the theme is... CAPTAIN PLANET! (The title was a spoiler in itself and I apologize).

The first video is from one of Adult Swim's Best Shows Robot Chicken. The premise of the show is simple: Seth Green and Matthew Senreich play with toys and we watch the madness ensue. The clip below is from the second season episode titled "1987" and features media mogul Ted Turner turning into one of his beloved  characters he made, Captain Planet. The show is mostly done with stop-motion animation with the occasional use 3D animation, for example in the video Ted Turner a.k.a. Captain Planet ziplines from one building into another which would be extremely difficult to do in normal stop-motion so they use 3D animation to make it work. The show implements other visual effects such as title sequences and motion tracking.

Now onto our second clip. It's from FunnyOrDie.com and it features Don Cheadle as Captain Planet, if Captain Planet becomes mad with power and saving the world by turning every living thing into a plant such as a tree or a shrub. The first video (see below) was made over a year ago and since then its reached over 4.5 million views and now has a whole series devoted to an insane Captain Planet saving the world, one tree at a time. The series offers a number of visual effects, from transforming people into trees to Captain Planet's Iron Man-like hand blasts. Sadly FunnyOrDie doesn't list who does most of the visual effects but I was able to find that Trevor Durtschi worked on the series as a colourist who works with colour grading, the process of altering and enhancing the colour of a motion picture, video image, or still image either electronically, photo-chemically or digitally. They work with colour correction, masks, mattes, and motion tracking. The final episode of the series comes out tomorrow so look out for that, and for Captain Planet because he's watching you and will turn you into a TREE.

Opening title sequences

Last class was great being able to see many different opening title sequences. I liked being able to hear from the creators themselves. It helps to know what the creators were thinking when creating these pieces. I was shocked how powerful this program really is. I did the simplest thing in After Effects. For instance just make a square and add some key frames to it. Then at the end of the class was told that is how simple some opening sequences really are with After Effects. It was really neat just making a shape with the shape or pen tool.

History of Title Design

I noticed a lot of people in our class are doing projects inspired by titles they've seen in movies. Good titles are really memorable so it's a really good thing to learn how to do well. I'm also interested in titles and I came across this video that shows the history of titles in the media.

One thing that's cool about this video is that you can see how certain titles influenced others. Saul Bass' influence is noticeable as well as the Se7en titles. Towards the end the variety in titles and the creativity is  incredible.

It's worth watching if you're interested in title design.


A Brief History of Title Design from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.