Choose film or tv show wisely – I would try to think about a more abstract concept to represent your film/tv show through your own graphic elements or footage.

Think about your approach – do you want to foreshadow elements, set a mood or tone, give a background to the story, set a scene, introduce characters, provide a summary of what we are going to see without spoiling? There are many approaches to designing title sequences.

Typography and legibility is very important to this project. Also sequence is very important since we are dealing with a longer piece than we have before.

In this assignment concept is key – you are essentially setting up the mood for your film or tv show. It could almost be viewed as mini-movie within a movie.

Approaches to Main Titles:

Foreshadowing/Summary/Montage: Mission Impossible, James Bond
Montage/Mood-Setting: Seven
Stand-Alone Pieces: Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Game of Thrones
Integrating into First Scene: Fight Club
Contrast in Style to the Film: Monsters Inc. (also score visualization), Catch Me If You Can, Juno, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World, 
Thematic: Thank You For Smoking, Godfather of Harlem (won best titles emmy), The Politician
Symbolic/Satire/Parody: American Psycho; Dexter
Transparent titles over first scene: The Shining, Dr. Strangelove
Titles integrated into objects in film: Napolean Dynomite, Panic Room, Wes Anderson, Zombieland, Atlanta, Legion, Umbrella Academy
Character Introduction: Grand Prix, Royal Tenenbaums
Type-focused: Saul Bass titles, Spring Breakers, Stranger Things, Alien, Goodfellas
Consistent and prior to film: Woody Allen movies

25% of your total grade

Project Breakdown:
Project: 80%  (60pts)
Process: 20%  (15pts)

***

CONCEPT  (15pts)

• Innovative solution to represent film/tv show
• Strong communication for appropriate audience
• Successful narrative with a beginning, middle, end

DESIGN  (20pts)

• Strong compositions
• Strong typography
• Considering other design aspects such as color, graphic style, cohesion, texture, emphasis
• Use of space

TIME-BASED  (20pts)

• Smooth natural motion
• Temporal design: pacing, seamless transitions, and relationship with audio
• Effective sequential order of scenes and elements
• Rhythm: consistency and variety overall / contrast

SOUND  (5pts)

• Appropriate sound/music to complement and carry visuals

PROCESS BOOK REQUIREMENTS  (15pts)

• Process Book Template (Size can be 11×17 or 8.5×11 landscape. Design it on brand to go with your final sequence. Use the template just for required information, not design.)
  1. Title Cover page – listing the project title, your name, quarter/yr, dept/school
  2. Brief synopsis of film or tv show
  3. At least 3 inspiration examples of title sequences. Include screenshots, label why you chose them, and describe what approach you think they took to set up the film or show.
  4. Brainstorm results (including initial assigned brainstorm, then in-class word list/mind map/do’s and don’ts list, as well as optional freewrite)
  5. Purpose, feeling, audience defined
  6. Concept 1 (statement, storyboard, moodboard)
  7. Concept 2 (statement, storyboard, moodboard)
  8. Concept 3 (statement, storyboard, moodboard)
  9. Finalized/refined chosen concept (include statement, updated storyboard, and moodboard again for reference)
  10. 2 style frames
  11. Screenshots from final sequence (+ possible link to final video)

Process Book:
Process Book Template  (size can be 11×17 or 8.5×11 landscape)
(design the book yourself, just use this as a guide for content)

Project:
1. Length: 1:00 – 1:30 minutes with an additional 2-3 seconds of black at the beginning and end

2. Size: 1920 x 1080px

3. Content: Must be original asset creation. Could integrate any mediums from illustrator vector graphics, photoshop rasterized images, frame-by-frame animation, to video, photography, or shapes created within After Effects.

4. Credits: Must have at least the following credits or equivalent amount, give or take two, in this order:

1. Production Company (example: Fox Searchlight Pictures Presents)
2. A Film By (Director’s Name) or A (Director’s Name) Film
3. Title of film (sometimes this is also towards the end before writer and director)
4. Actors/Actresses (some famous actors also get their name before the title)
5. Casting
6. Music
7. Production Design
8. Editor
9. Director of Photography
10. Producer
11. Executive Producer
12. If it is a book: Based on the (book title) by (Author’s Name)
13. Writer
14. Director

5. Format: mp4 Video uploaded to Vimeo or Youtube exported using H.264 compression in Adobe Media Encoder

6. Audio: Copy-right free audio original music only.

• YouTube Audio Library (need a YouTube account)
• Creative Commons: (Search and click on SoundCloud, CCMixter, or Jamendo) and do a search. Make sure to double check the Creative Commons license when you go to the subsequent page)
• Free Archive Music
• FreeSound.org – Sound Effects
• Archive Audio

Free Music Archive artists that don’t totally suck:
johnny_ripper
Podington Bear
YACHT
Jahzzar
Gablé
Music For Video Curator page
Gillicuddy
Lucky Dragons
Deerhoof
Vivian Girls
Thee Oh Sees
Glass Candy
Nine Inch Nails
WFMU Radio Station

2020 Examples

• A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
• Queen’s Thief // Process Book
• Adventure Time
• La La Land
• Saw // Process Book
• What About Bob? // Process Book
• Twilight
• The Magnus Archives
• Cu Chi Tunnels
• The Lighthouse
• Boyz N the Hood

’18-’19 Examples

• * The Outsider 
• * Solaris
• Where’d You Go Bernadette
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane
  
• The Sea Runners
  
• Worms Eat my Garbage
  
• Your Art Will Save Your Life
  
• I’ll Be Gone In the Dark
  
• Strawberry Spring
  
• I, Lucifer
  
• The Summer of Crud

* Past Examples from older students 

• The Arrival
• Ender’s Game
• 1984
  
• Dune
  
• Oryx & Crake
  
• The Vengeance Trilogy
  
• White Oleander
  
• Iron Giant
• Cat’s Cradle
• Corduroy

Professional Sources

A Brief History of Title Design
Visit Art of the Title
Best Titles of 2020
Visit Forget the Film, Watch the Titles | Interviews
Visit Movie Titles Stills Collection
Visit my YouTube playlist
The Art of Film and TV Title Design
A History of The Title Sequence

Designers:
Saul Bass Titles montage | The Look of Saul Bass
Pablo Ferro: Titles montage
James Bond: 50 years of Main Title Design
David Fincher: A Film Title Retrospective
Behind the Scenes of Catch Me if You Can
Behind the Scenes of Seven

11.16 – project assigned.

For Next Class:
1. Find 3 examples of Title Sequences that inspire you. Label why you chose the different examples and what approaches they took.
2. Choose film or tv show
3. Write brief synopsis for film or tv show
4. Brainstorm – Answer the following:

• What genre is the production?
• What are moods, themes, or symbolism you want to communicate?
• Who is your audience? 
• What feelings do you want your audience to have?
• What keyword associations come to mind? 
• What visuals come to mind to represent the film or tv show?
• What are different narrative and conceptual approaches you could take?

11.18 – Discuss inspiration, film or tv show choices, brainstorm. In class – additional brainstorm exercise.

For Next Class:

1. Write 3 different treatments each including the following:
   Treatment Example
   Download template, fill out, and also turn in corresponding storyboards and moodboards for each concept.

• Purpose
• Feeling
• Audience
• Concept
• Storyboard
• Moodboard

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11.23 – Pitch treatments including purpose, feeling, audience, concepts, storyboards, moodboards

For Next Week:
1. Create 2 refined style frames that demonstrate your graphic style, typography, colors, and so on. Make one of them the main title card.  
2. Finalize concept statement.
3. Finalize storyboard.
4. Finalize moodboard.
4. Choose music.
5. Generate the rest of the assets for your sequence, so you can start animating next class.

11.25 – NO CLASS.

Sun, 11.28 – Post at least one refined style frame on Slack by Sunday at noon to get feedback on overall look-and-feel before you make all your assets. You can upload well before Sunday if you like, so you don’t have to wait for feedback.

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11.30 – Look at style frames, finalized concept, finalized storyboard, and overall assets.

For Next Class:
Progress on Sequence. 

12.3 – Look at sequence progress.

For Final:
Final sequence and process book.

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FINALS WEEK

Tues, 12.7 – Post progress on Slack to get feedback before final.  You can always post process earlier than this too, you don’t have to wait!

Final: Thurs, 12.9 – 8:00 – 10:00 AM: Final Project due / Process Book due.

Video: 1:00 – 1:30 minute Title Sequence uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube and linked to #FinalProject Slack Channel

Process Book Multi-Page PDF: uploaded to Slack and also posted to #FinalProject Slack Channel:

• Process Book Template (size can be 11×17 or 8.5×11 landscape, design it on brand to go with your final sequence)
  1. Title Cover page – listing the project title, your name, quarter/yr, dept/school
  2. Brief synopsis of film or tv show
  3. At least 3 inspiration examples of title sequences. label why you chose them and what approach they took
  4. Brainstorm results (including initial brainstorm, then word list/mind map/do’s and don’ts list, as well as optional freewrite)
  5. Purpose, feeling, audience defined
  6. Concept 1 (statement, storyboard, moodboard)
  7. Concept 2 (statement, storyboard, moodboard)
  8. Concept 3 (statement, storyboard, moodboard)
  9. Finalized/refined chosen concept (final written concept, updated storyboard, and moodboard)
  10. 2 style frames
  11. Screenshots from final sequence (+ possible link to final video)