![]() They are supplements, not advertisements. Whereas trailers, for example, are easily categorised as promotional material that must raise awareness and draw people to the theatre (or TV set, or video store or online aggregator), title sequences are unburdened with this task in that their function is to ease your dive into a world of fiction (at the same time as they straighten some legal matters concerning property rights). It seems that the difficulty in exploring title sequences lays in their ambiguous position that makes them more than advertising, yet less than stand-alone productions. that provide the “early frames through which we will examine, react to, and evaluate textual consumption” (26),” but almost no literature in English has been published on title sequences proper. You get scholars discuss different incarnation of media “paratexts,” meaning, in Jonathan Gray’s definition, the extras like posters, press reviews, making-ofs, DVDs etc. Although its short-form and short-time span qualify the title sequence as an “ephemeral medium,” the publications dealing with this topic, most notably Paul Grainge’s edited anthology Ephemeral Media, make no reference to them. What the academic in me brought home from watching the documentary is that not enough is being said about them. ![]() So it is not like we didn’t already know that title sequences can be fun and beautiful to watch. My last post was about Saul Bass, the undisputed forefather of contemporary title design, who, starting in the 1940s, elevated a cinematic form, whose existence is tied to legal and economic exigencies, to new artistic heights. ![]() ![]() Entertainment media have long been an experimental ground to test innovations in audiovisual techniques, becoming, in the last decade, the platform of election of the digital/design revolution that Anne Balsamo discusses in her new book Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work. Watching the documentary, with its selection of moments from various title sequences, one is impressed by the degree of aesthetic refinement, inventiveness and heterogeneity in terms of montage, rhythm, photography, that they radiate. Ruben Fleischer) and a variety of commercial ads, and Jim Helton’s work on Blue Valentine is certainly a proof of his ability to create stirring audiovisuals compositions. Logan created the opening sequence of Zombieland (2009 dir. Harald Zwart ), Boardwalk Empire (HBO 2009-), Mad Men (AMC 2007-), Hell on Wheels (AMC 2011-), The Pacific (HBO 2010), and more. Michael Bay), The Pink Panther 2 (2009 dir. Imaginary Forces is responsible for the credits of hits such as Transformers (2007 dir. All of them are behind some very artsy productions. These are Peter Frankfurt and Karin Fong from Imaginary Forces Ben Conrad from Logan and Jim Helton, film editor of Blue Valentine (2010 dir. The video lets the creators of some great title sequences of American movies and TV shows speak of their work. Not only is the documentary fun to watch, it is also instructive to learn about how credits are made and what kind of logic inspires them. Why should those who watch a film be interested in contract negotiations between actors, agents, and production companies as well as the union agreements on which these negotiations are based? But it is exactly this, dealing with this tension, responding to it, that is the task of the title sequence.Ī few days ago, I stumbled into a minidoc entitled “ The Art of Film & TV Title Design” which I have watched twice and plan on watching more.
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