Critical Debates in Design: Task 3 - Title Sequence

After seeing the Kyle Cooper talk about his story of making title sequences, I got inspired by his devotion and work and remembered some movies, that impressed me with their original openings. Interesting how I always pay attention to them, and remember some movie just because it's beginning has caught my eye.

One of them is "Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events"  It is designed by  Jamie Caliri  in 2004.




The movie, which is based on a children's book series, tells the story of the three orphans who are sent to live with a distant relative Count Olaf. But the evil and greedy Olaf is after the children's fortune and is secretly concocting a scheme to kill them.  The end credits for this dark Hollywood fairytale - one of the most impressive credit sequences of 2004 - are built around a truly original piece of animation, featuring the animated characters of the children and Olaf.



Jamie Caliri about the process of making:

"Brent Watts of Axiom Design had the notion of turning the character designs they had created for Lemony's merchandising campaign into an end title sequence. They pitched this notion to the producers who agreed to look at story boards. Axiom put together storyboards even though they're not an animation or film company. The original boards were just shots of illustrations moving inside of picture frames with floating text." 


"Meanwhile I read the first three books twice. I pitched a more dynamic version of the picture frames. These concepts were presented and rejected by the powers that be and we were asked to make something without story. 'Images floating' was one of the quotes. I think they were worried about us making a mess in the kitchen so to speak." 
"I had this idea that Count Olaf should be represented as a huge, invasive, graphic element. They liked this. Without saying it to anyone I decided to go deeper into a story style approach.""Brent and I met at a coffee shop and I pitched the concept. Together we came up with a series of vignettes based on this approach. Together we pitched the ideas back to Brad Silberling [the director]. Brad narrowed down the field of ideas and we were soon off. After this point Brent and Brad gave me the freedom to carve out the piece as I went." 

                                                                                                                                                                    Interview: Remco Vlaanderen

Another video, that caught my eye is an alternative opening for the "Dexter" series. They are again based on a book "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" by  Jeff Lindsay, that tells the story of Dexter Morgan, who is a blood spatter specialist at the Miami Metro Police and a serial killer of serial killers. Here is the original title sequence. It represents the morning daily routine seen in a different way. The macro footage, the way he slices his eggs, tightens his shoe laces or put on his shirt - it is all seen in kinda expressionists way and every picture is very well presented. The way that images and music respond to each other is also very interesting. There is something ironic and sarcastic - almost like a wink along with Dexter's smile at the end of the sequence. I think, that this is one of the most original title sequences recently created for TV series. It was created by Digital Kitchen and it won several Emmy awards.

And here is the Dexter inspired animated version of the title sequence. It was created by Ty Mattson, who also created an illustrated poster series for the show. He used significant moments and objects using black, white and red, and created something very graphical and beautiful as well. You can see his poster works for Dexter on the SHOWtime site.