For Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), directed by Stanley Kubrick, Pablo Ferro created an outstanding title sequence.
The movie opens with an aerial shot coupled with a voiceover giving the political context and setting of the film, followed by a scene of a U.S. Air Force plane being refueled in midair. While the scene’s details unfold (with an admittedly oddly sexual hint pervading the scene), the white titles appear superimposed on the black-and-white footage. While this imagery and type unfold on-screen, we hear a very relaxing classical soundtrack.
The type is handwritten, with alternating thin and thick strokes, outlines, and a variety of font sizes. It resembles some of the fonts typically used in comic topics, giving the title sequence a comedic appeal. It seems that there is no rule that governs the font size. The crew and cast last names are displayed 300% larger than the corresponding first names, or vice versa. Articles are much larger than the following names. Every title card keeps the audience on edge. Where are the names going to be placed? What is going to come next?
This juxtaposition of the military imagery of a plane being refueled, the airy white handwritten typography, and the classical music all perfectly match the style, content, and emotional reaction that the audience is about to experience on a larger scale when they watch the entire movie: a political dark comedy.
For Repulsion (1965), directed by Roman Polanski, the title sequence was created by Maurice Binder—well known not only for his opening title sequences for the James Bond movies such as From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, and Live and Let Die but also for the spectacular opening title sequences of Charade and Arabesque.
Accompanied by a minimalistic ominous soundtrack, Repulsion’s title sequence opens with an extreme close-up of an eye. The titles appear coming into and out of frame, except that the frame is actually the eye. The titles are masked by the edge of the eye and they have a slight rounded distortion on the edges, as though they are actually scrolling over the surface of the eye’s cornea. After the first few title cards, the camera slightly zooms out and the title cards become populated by multiple names. The type is no longer masked by the eye and enters the frame from the bottom, moving across the screen on different diagonal trajectories, and exiting the top of the frame. The interesting aspect of this part of the title sequence is that we start noticing the eye moving and looking in different directions. A careful look shows it is actually following the type moving across the screen. Considering the time (the 1960s), I believe that this title sequence offers an innovative approach in that it involved creating and orchestrating a variety of assets (video and animated type) that interacted with each other.
Fantastic Voyage (1966) is a spy sci-fi movie directed by Richard Fleischer. The movie opens with an airplane landing, and Jan Benes, a scientist vital to the scientific formula of miniaturization, is escorted away from it. When the escort is attacked, the scientist suffers a major head injury.
Following this opening scene we see the opening titles, created by Richard Kuhn; they present a quick montage of close-ups of Benes’s brain, X-rays, numbers, electroencephalograms, jump cuts of the patient in a hospital bed surrounded by doctors, medical machinery, and rolling tape. We hear heartbeats and synthetic sound effects. Title cards are superimposed on the imagery, and they appear as though they were typed in real time on a typewriter. It is a surreal title sequence that gives the audience a taste of the mysterious fantastic adventure on which they are about to embark. As soon as the quick title sequence is over, it dissolves back into the movie with a more sedate pacing.
The movie evolves into revealing that an agent will be miniaturized and will lead a group of scientists onboard a nuclear-powered submarine on a fantastic scientific expedition into the bloodstream of the scientist to try to save his life.
Matte titling
When title cards are required to be superimposed over film footage, title designers utilize a technique called matte titling. This technique, which was thriving before the titling process became dominated by a digital workflow, is still utilized today by independent filmmakers whose movies are shot on film and who would like to avoid a digital intermediate process by creating their titles directly on film.
This technique requires the creation of two identical title cards, which are used as mattes. The first one consists of a title card with black type on white background, the second with white (or colored) type on black background. Using an optical printer, the first title card is exposed against the background footage, creating a blank area that corresponds to the title card lettering. Subsequently, the film roll is rewound and the second matte is printed over the background footage. This last optical printing pass allows the lettering to be registered over the previously blank areas. The visual result is white (or colored) titles superimposed over the footage.
In Fahrenheit 451 (1966), director Françoise Truffaut gives us an outstanding title sequence. The movie is based on the futuristic novel by Ray Bradbury, which takes place in a state that forbids reading. A fireman, Guy Montag, must find people who are hiding topics and confiscate and burn the topics. The opening title sequence consists of a montage of shots that zoom in from wide to a close-up of a variety of antennae on top of suburban houses, indicating that television has replaced reading in this society. The shots alternate monochromatic orange, blue, green, purple, and red antennae. Similarly to The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942) and M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970), rather than seeing and reading title cards, the audience actually doesn’t get to see the type on-screen but rather hears the opening titles being recited by a voiceover: “An Enterprise Vineyard production. Oskar Werner, Julie Christie … in Fahrenheit 451. Co-starring …" The soundtrack we hear is another brilliant musical composition by Bernard Herrmann. It is indeed a surprising and unexpected opening, which, in a way, poses the question at the core of the movie: “What happens in a world where there is no writing to read?"
In the same year, another movie made its impression: Uccellacci e Uccellini (Hawks and Sparrows; 1966), directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. In this stark opening title sequence, simply designed title cards appear superimposed over a locked-down shot of a cloudy sky, accompanied by music composed by Ennio Morricone. When the title cards appear onscreen, a cheerful Domenico Modugno actually sings them. But he doesn’t limit himself to singing the names and titles of the cast and crew—he embellishes the reading with adjectives and fun facts, almost as though the narrator was the modern version of a troubadour who is singing and preparing the stage for a well-narrated story that’s about to begin. This opening fits perfectly with the movie, which has a deep political theme (the Marxism crisis of the 1950s in Italy), wrapped around a sweet-and-sour fairy tale structure.
Broadcast title design began to catch up to the creativity demonstrated by the movie title sequences of the time and definitely made their own mark. A couple of notable title sequences are the ones for ABC Movie of the Week (1969) and The Partridge Family (1970).
In the ABC Movie of the Week opening, we see titles that animate toward the viewer three-dimensionally, with exaggerated perspective. The effect was achieved by an optical technique called slit-scan. The technique’s look and feel is definitely a precursor of what would later be applied to numerous other applications, including cinematography (the “Star Gate" scene in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968), title sequences (the 1973-1979 Doctor Who opening titles or the crawling text block that opens 1977′s Star Wars), and computer motion graphics (a number of software plug-ins are called slit-scan).
Slit Scan
Originally utilized in still photography to create blurriness or deformity, the slit-scan technique was achieved through the use of an animation stand. The image or title to be photographed is placed on the glass plate and is generally backlit. A black matte is placed over the image, with a slit in the center. The camera is arranged on a vertical rig framing down on the glass plate and can be moved up and down. When the frame is exposed, the camera moves down, creating an effect similar to a still shot with long exposure, which records the light streaks of fire or car headlights; instead of the object (car) moving, the camera is moved. When the camera reaches its desired end position, the shutter is closed and the film advances to the next frame to be exposed.
The visual result is the illusion of one, two, or even four planes of infinite proportions, moving either toward or away from the viewer.
The Partridge Family (1970) was an American sitcom broadcast on ABC from 1970-1974; the story followed a mother and her five children on their quest to seek a musical career. The opening title sequence features the theme song by Wes Farrell, “When We’re Singing," with lyrics by Dianne Hildebrand, and animation by graphic designer Sandy Dvore, who later in his career went on to design more title sequences like the ones for Blacula (1972) and Lipstick (1976). The animation opens with an egg cracking open, from which emerges the main title, then a “mama" partridge emerging from and getting rid of the shell. The title card comes up on-screen, consisting of a monochromatic rendition of a photo of the mother, played by Shirley Jones. Then five little partridges are introduced, with all five children represented similarly to the first title card. Then the entire family of partridges walks across the screen to reveal the Mondrian-esque pattern of the back of the school bus in which the family travels, and the title sequence dissolves into the sitcom.
In the 1970s and 1980s, partly influenced by video art, we began to see computer-assisted title sequences such as Superman (1978), created by Richard and Robert Greenberg.
In the early 1990s, Adobe After Effects was released, marking another turning point in the history of title design. Title designers were now able to design, animate, and composite title sequences directly on their computers.
Delicatessen (1991), directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is a dark comedy film set in a post-apocalyptic France in the 1950s, where the food is scarce, animals are quasi-extinct, and a butcher hires helpers that he then butchers and sells as a delicacy to his clientele.
The film opens, revealing a sinister building in a rural street. The camera slowly enters an empty butcher shop, revealing a butcher sharpening his knife. The camera enters and continues through an air duct to reveal a man wrapping himself with paper and trash. It’s garbage day, and the man makes his way into the trash can. The escape plan seems to be going well, except that right when the trash can is about to be collected, the butcher throws his cigarette into it, burning the man and causing him to yelp, blowing his cover. The butcher opens the trash can and, with a delightful point of view shot from inside the can, we see him raise his knife in the air while smiling sadistically, and as the knife falls to slash the man, the movie cuts to the main title card, Delicatessen, coupled with a brilliant combination of sound effects and a swinging metal pig—the butcher’s logo.
After the first scene sets the mood and gives a few hints of the dark humor of the film that is about to unfold, the title sequence can truly begin.
Lulled by the calm, almost sedate version of circus-like music, the camera gently moves around and pauses to frame title cards embedded in a set composed of broken records, pictures, dirt, a variety of paper (production logs, labels, menus, newspaper articles), a vintage camera, patches, photo booth pictures, and mirrors. The camera wanders as though it is simply moving around to explore the territory, but then it pauses to allow the viewer to read and make out the title cards embedded in the set, as though they were meant to be there all along. This title sequence was artistically and skillfully orchestrated in one take; the set is composed of real props, as opposed to a computer-generated set.
Some of the type is handwritten, some is presented in varying qualities; all appears on a variety of surfaces. What is most striking is that each title card has a specific place in the set and a particular way of manifesting itself with a meaningful style: a concise summary and symbolic representation of the key people behind the movie. For example, the title card that credits the director of photography, Darius Khondji, is engraved on a vintage camera. The music credit is printed on a vinyl label, the wardrobe credit is embroidered on a patch, and the editor credit is handwritten on a set of photo booth pictures that had been hand-ripped and taped back together.
Last but not least, the transition from the end of the title sequence back into the movie is truly remarkable. After the last title card that credits both directors, the opening title sequence fades to black. We hear a paper-crumpling noise and we see the hand of the butcher taking a sheet of butcher paper off the lens (as though it was on the shelf in front of him) to wrap some meat for waiting customers. The result is a brilliant transition that throws the audience back into the swing of the movie.
