Here I will blog my ideas and progress in my movie title project for the Digital Compositing module. I will be creating a movie title sequence for the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
I wanted to do a test video to see if my idea would work and what it would look like. When I produce the final piece the 'scrapbook' will be created digitally, most probably using After Effects, and the images will be stills I have chosen from the film, as a posed to the ones I have in my test video which were pulled from Google Images.
The music I have used is called 'Memories Turn to Dust' by Esmee Denters. I looked through a number of different songs, looking for something with appropriate lyrics that had the tempo and rhythm that would fit with the idea in my head.
The title sequence for Juno is similar to what I want to produce in the sense that it is in the style of sketches, as if is has been drawn into a notepad and Juno has jumped in and brought it to life.
In the same way as Juno, the Sherlock Holmes title sequence is similar to my ideas because of the 'sketching' element. Although in Sherlock Holmes, live action footage is used first, and then is turned into sketches which are then shaded with ink. Instead of using the sketching element on the film footage, I am planning to use stills from the film and use sketching, doodling and hand writing around the stills.
Although it isn't an opening title sequence, the closing credits of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban uses a similar technique again, a technique almost identical to what I am planning. The Harry Potter closing sequence features handwritten credits using ink to write the names of the cast and crew and surrounding images onto parchment, which is very fitting with the iconography in the film.
Figure 1: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban closing title
Figure 2: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban credits
Cast:
Jim Carrey- Joel Barish
Kate Winslet- Clementine Kruczynski
Ellijah Wood- Patrick
Tom Wilkinson- Dr Mierzwiak
Kirsten Dunst- Mary
David Cross- Rob
Crew:
Director- Michel Gondry
Producers- Anthony Bregman & Steve Golin
Editor- Valdis Oskarsdottir
Visual Effects Producer- Michele Ferrone
Music by- Jon Brion
When watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with the intention on looking for inspiration and ideas for the opening title sequence, I noticed that the main character Joel (Carey) used a journal, and this featured heavily at the beginning of the film and was key throughout. This got me thinking about maybe using some kind of writing technique in the opening title. The film is based on the idea of someones personal memories, thoughts and feelings, and a journal or diary is a place where a lot of personal thoughts and feelings are kept, especially in Joel's case. I therefore decided using a journal with doodling and notes in would be a nice idea for the titles, as is is linked directly to the themes of the film without giving any of the plot away.
Then after researching some other opening title sequences and realising that the main characters are almost always used to introduce the film, my journal idea turned into a scrapbook idea. I thought that I could feature the main characters and themes in the film using stills and put them altogether in a book, with a hand, writing important quotes from the film and the cast and crew information, so that it looks as if we are looking into Joel's journal and he is writing down the film info.
I am going to do a test of this using printed images from the film and putting them into a note book which i will then film with my camera. For the real piece I will be creating the scrapbook digitally, but for a test, a real book will be fine.
I decided to begin this project by looking into three things:
Different film title sequences on www.artofthetitle.com
Watching the trailer for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (posted below)
Collecting basic information about the film e.g. the cast and crew I am going to feature in the title sequence.
I used the movie title website mentioned above to look at a variety of opening title sequences for films from many different genres. I wanted to familiarise myself with the similarities these titles had and the difference, and which differences I preferred.
The similarities between the opening titles were the names of cast and crew (obviously) and the presence of the main character, although not always easy to identify. For example in the title sequence for 300 and Quantum of Solace, the main characters are mainly silhouettes. This gives the audience the comfortable feeling that they are in the right cinema, without giving anything away about the film. Another similarity I noticed was that the camera is always moving in an opening title sequence. I think this technique is used to hold the audiences interest and prepare them to enjoy the film.
As mentioned before there were some differences between the titles. Some title sequences used live footage from the film in the opening title, whereas some just used iconography or visual effects that were relevant to the film. I personally don't like the idea of using live footage in an opening sequence, as it is very difficult to chose shots that are relevant without giving too much away about the film. I feel that live footage is more appropriate for a film trailer, and that once the audience is in the cinema and about the watch the film, they don't need to be shown footage that they may have already seen in a trailer and that they are about the see in the feature.
I have therefore decided that I will not be using live footage in my film title sequence and will be creating something using effects and compositing.
Official film trailer: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
