Symphonie Diagonale

The film begins with: "Made in 1924 by Viking Eggeling, SYMPHONIE DIAGONALE is the best abstract film yet conceived. It is an experiment to discover the basic principles of the organization of time intervals in the film medium."

Symphonie Diagonale is widely considered to be a one of the best early short animation films, leaving an imprint of the history of film. Done in the the style of art deco, Swedish director and famous Dadaist, Viking Eggeling explored motion using scroll drawings.

Since animation at the time was not in the mainstream of art, Eggeling originally framed his idea for the film on long scrolls of paper. He would paint sequential images on the scrolls as if he were painting the film itself. This abstract way of making film was closely tied to music, in new form that Eggeling called "Visual Music."

Visual music was borrowed from numerous times, especially from Bauhaus design students who embraced it as a new temporal design method. Often using jazz, this new form changed the minds of many well known German animators.

Casino Royale

      My favorite movie franchise of all time is Albert Broccoli and Eon Production's depiction of James Bond.  Strangely enough, both Mr. Broccoli and I share the nickname "Cubby!"  Back on topic though, I find it impressive that the Bond series stays fresh and enjoyable despite having more than twenty movies.  Sure it may be the same spy premise every time, but if it's not broken, why change it?  Aside from how entertaining the films are, I also love the title sequences.
      Everyone knows the gun barrel sequence, which may be perhaps the most recognizable aspect of the series aside from the theme music.  What I like more than the famous gun barrel sequence is the intro credits.  They all follow some sort of theme from the movie.  Of all the intros, I like Casino Royale's the best.  The theme it follows is playing cards, which constitutes the latter half of the film.

      There are so many subtle aspects of this intro that get often overlooked.  For example, at about 1:36 when the crosshair passes over the queen's face, it reveals the face of the lead actress.  At the end of the sequence, there are cards flying around but over time they change into British pounds if you look closely.  What I would like to replicate or learn how it was done would be at 2:16 when the gun fires and streaks fly out in different directions.  It makes me wonder if it was done with an expression or perhaps when they assembled it they set it to random and it just happened to create that design.  A better question might be how many people did it take to put this together!