John Adams
You can usually tell how a movie/tv show is going to be and what it’s going to be about from the opening title sequence. The title sequence for John Adams conveys the time and place of the show perfectly. The music makes me feel like I’m in the 18th century getting ready to go to battle in the Revolutionary War. I love how the sequence incorporates important symbols of the revolution. We have all seen pictures of “Join, or DIE,” “Unite, or DIE,” “Appeal to Heaven” and “Don’t Tread on Me” (although now whenever you see “Don’t Tread on Me” it’s usually at an idiotic Tea Party rally.) I think the use of these images on flags as opposed to just graphics is what makes it so good, along with being lit by candlelight. I watched the whole John Adams mini-series in August and remember thinking how good the beginnings were and how much I enjoyed the music. Everything about the title sequence makes me feel like I can get a better sense of how life was like in the late 18th century, from the music to the flags to the candlelight.
The Pacific
I’m going to stay on the same course of HBO mini-series for my next title sequence: The Pacific. The Pacific is unbelievably good and I would consider it right up there with Band of Brothers, which I think is the greatest anything on World War II. The idea to have everything in the title sequence based around drawings is unique because it gives the viewer two ways of looking at war. The best parts about the sequence (besides the music) are the transitions from drawings to real life. In the picture to the left you can see how it transitions from left to right as the left side of the picture is more lifelike and the right still looks like a drawing. You can even see where parts of the drawing pencil have come off and are falling off of Lt. Sledge’s helmet. I also like when they show live actions shots from the actual show, but set them to a background so that it looks like it’s still on paper. If you didn’t know the show was about WWII in the Pacific you could probably figure it out from the blatant war scenes, uniforms and the map of Japan and it’s surround islands that appear throughout the scene. My last point about what makes this so great is the music. It’s calm, the opposite of war, but you can just tell from the music that it’s going to be emotional. Another thought that I’d like to add about both John Adams and The Pacific is that the text is not the emphasis in the sequences. You know the text is there, but it does not distract the viewer from everything that is happening on screen.