Fringe Title Sequence and Overwhelming Assets

This is the opening titles for "Fringe" on Fox, which I just learned recently was designed by Andrew Kramer of Video Copilot fame. The thing I want to draw your attention to is how much is going on in this sequence, but also its simplicity. The whole thing is incredibly slick, the "moving off into the horizon" transition is very cool, and there are several lens flare effects in there too. There are several easily identifiable assets, like the hand and the frog that are fairly straightforward. But there are a bunch that you have to go frame by frame to figure out. This style of "overwhelming assets" seems pretty common in a lot of TV title sequences, where the designers through up so many images it's impossible to keep up.

Another prominent example of this is the title sequence for "The Big Bang Theory" where the whole intro is literally an overwhelming series of flash images. The thing I think is interesting, and why I personally appreciate the Fringe intro more, is the elegance at which the Fringe intro comes back to a non-scattered state. It has a bunch of flash images, then comes back to the sci fi words, and back again. You never feel completely overwhelmed, whereas in the Big Bang Theory titles the same effect is used to overwhelm intentionally. 

Project #1 ideas

So i've been sitting here thinking of any idea for this project and this is what i've come up with. The first one is The Big Bang Theory.



When you look at each of the elements closely it doesn't seem like their's that much to it. Basically it starts with you flying through space, where i would create glowing stars and planets and try to make them appear to fly by as if the viewer was zooming through. It then zooms into the earth to show dozens, maybe even over a hundred still images. It seems as though you are flying through each image to the next faster and faster as if you were flying through history. Here i think i would take each image and scale animate them so they scale up and cut to each image somehow. The sequence ends with a quick video clip of the cast in present day and then the show's title graphic.

If i am able to figure this out, i was going to replace the historic images with images of me throughout my college years. I haven't thought of a name for it yet.

I have a few backups as well in case this turns out to be to difficult. My next idea was to replicate Heroes. This one is shorter. It's all graphic and animation and no video which could be difficult but it seems pretty simple.