Title Sequences

This blog assignment made me think of a scene in one of my favorite movies, “The Holiday.” In it, Cameron Diaz creates title sequences for a living. She tells her designer to make the red font in the opening credits of a movie “less of a Christmas-y red, and more of a ‘Scorsese’ red.” I think watching that scene was the first time I ever really thought that “wow, someone actually does that for a living…cool.” So I guess I’ve come full circle.

Anyways, I started with ADBNE 2013. I actually posted this one to my Facebook page just because I thought it was so hauntingly beautiful. I love how it’s sensual, but in a non-sexual way. It makes the viewer look at the human form as architectural and mechanical. The typography forms to the curves of the body and the music makes it mystifying.

Next I watched Hostage. I don’t love the beginning red font; I think the gradient makes it look a bit cheap. The red and black colors make it suspenseful and eery, and the way the names are presented on part of the buildings give it an industrial feel. I’ve never seen the movie but the sequence made it seem like you’re looking through a different world; maybe this conveys foreshadowing?

I watched the sequence from Skyfall next. And not going to lie, it was mostly because I love Adele’s song and wanted to listen to it. I’ve never seen this movie either, but I liked how it looked like a continuos scene and most likely foreshadows what is going to take place in the movie.

Mad Men is one of my top two favorite shows and I never actually picked up on the symbolism of the title sequence until a friend pointed it out to me during the past season. Don Draper has literally spiraled out of control after years of imbibing liquor and seducing strange women. In the last season’s season finale we saw him essentially “fall” in that he is no longer happy and has hurt too many people around him. The sequence shows him falling down around buildings plastered with women and alcohol. Makes sense. The fact that his character is a black and white vector image is very reminiscent of the 50s and 60s.

Since I was having too much fun with this, I watched one more. Catch Me if You Can is one of my favorite movies (clearly there’s a 1960s theme going on here). I love the music in the title sequence and the illustrations are period appropriate. The use of typography in motion is clever especially in scenes like where the plane flies through a “cloud” of letters that disappears with the plane. Like the others, the sequence hints at the content through clever use of foreshadowing.