Title Sequence: 'Kiss the Girls' Title Card

Experimenting with fonts and Title card design

Further title card development

One idea for a title card design

All photos are authors own

Moving forward to the last frame in my title sequence, I have started to develop/generate ideas for my title card. I am focusing on the visual idea of lip prints, to reflect the seductive nature of the film, overlaid with harsh, sharp typography to accentuate its brutality. In the film, the killer feels as though he is in love with each of the women he abducts and feels as though he treats them with love and tenderness. However, the reality of the situation is psychotic and violent, including rape and murder. 

I think the idea of the two opposing marks (one of tenderness and one of violence) works well. Although, this successful juxtaposition is muted some what by the images of women's faces. My initial intention was to take photos of girls that looked candid, as if taken secretly by the killer. When looking at the experimentation so far, I feel the girls take away the visual impact of the mark of the kiss against the sharp typography. Therefore, I won't be including the faces in my final outcome. 

Title Sequence: 'Kiss the Girls' Experimentation

Quick montage of my Kiss the Girls experimentation

Authors own

Experimenting with the style and medium of the title sequences was a great way of figuring out how to represent the mood and themes of the film visually, as all successful title sequences do. I found what worked well here was the chance to diversify not only the style of each experiment, but also the way the different typography worked or did not work. Some ideas I found weaker than others, because the text was not legible enough or it came across a little too erratic. 

Screen shot, working in Flash

Authors own

A made most of the arms using paper cut out or drawing and scanning them into flash. I then added the typography in on flash, either drawing it digitally or modifying existing fonts. If I were to redo this process I would have tried out more software, like After Effects, to see the advantages or extra effects it could have brought to the style of the title sequence. 

Title Sequence: Kiss the Girls Storyboard

Final storyboard for the Kiss the Girls title sequence (left) and Style/media experimentation (right)

Photo is authors own

Creating the final storyboard for Kiss the Girls was great as a starting point for how I would like the sequence to look and what medium I could use to effectively produce the ideas seen within it. I really like the potential for a strong sense of style and atmosphere for the sequence. However, I'm not sure how well the first box, which would be live action, will fit in with the rest of the sequence. I was surprised how hard it was to find purpose in the flow of the sequence as it did not have a narrative and was relying solely on visual representations.

Experimenting with the style/medium a of the title sequence was the most creatively rewarding part of the process. I was able to explore ideas and identify what would work best in representing the themes of the film. I initially started working with newspaper print in relation to a scene in the movie where one of the killers has a safe full of newspaper clippings. Once I had tried out a few different ideas, I took them into flash and made a series of short animations. This gave me a clear indication of what would work best on the whole. It was a shock to find how engrossed you can become in exploring ideas and metaphors. In future I will definitely give myself a stricter amount of time in which I'm allowed to do this. 

Title Sequence: Thriller, Spaghetti Western, News, TV Drama?

Mind-map of Kiss the Girls

Mindmap and inital storyboard for Django 

Research and storyboarding for BBC 3 60 Seconds News

All photos are authors own

The aim of this project is to produce 4 storyboards for a title sequence for a Thriller, Spaghetti Western, News/Recent Events, Bollywood or TV Drama and then animate two of them. I chose to go with the Thriller, S. Western, TV Drama and News genres. I looked into existing title sequences created by directors such as Saul Bass (Psycho, 1960), Maurice Binder (Dr. No: James Bond, 1962) and Iginio Lardani (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, 1966). The process of choosing which genres I wanted to work with was quite straight forward. I went with which I felt I had the most experience with. I decided on the thriller Kiss the Girls (1997), the western Django (1993), the TV drama The L Word (2004-09) and the news programme BBC Three 60 Seconds News (on presently). In order to create the best possible title sequence designs for each of these shows I made mind maps that explored and analysed them. I want to produce something that explores the themes of each show in a visually metaphorical way. 

I have designed storyboards for each film/show and decided that I am going to animate the ones made for Kiss the Girls and BBC3 News. I made this decision in regards to what I can produce with the amount of time and facilities I have, but also on the designs that were most successful in portraying what the film/show is about. I found this process to be a great way of getting rid of weaker ideas.