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GRADUATION PROJECT.
Animation which shows typography evolution from paper to screen.
The animation is divided in two parts.
The first deals with the basic rules of typesetting.
The second, is about the evolution of typography in cinema.
Used mainly for Opening and Closing title.

Music : 
Clair de Lune - Debussy
Shoot the Piano Player: Poursuite - Hugh Wolff & London Sinfonietta - Georges Delerue

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WINNER OF THE VIMEO AWARDS 2012 in CATEGORY MOTION GRAPHICS! Thanks so much for voting everyone! Watch a short 1 min. making of here, which was shown at the awards: vimeo.com/44046584

Graduation project 2011
Designed as a possible title sequence for a fictitious documentary, this film shows a history of the title sequence in a nutshell. The sequence includes all the names of title designers who had a revolutionary impact on the history and evolution of the title sequence. The names of the title designers all refer to specific characteristics of the revolutionary titles that they designed. 
This film refers to elements such as the cut and shifted characters of Saul Bass' Psycho title, the colored circles of Maurice Binder's design for Dr. No and the contemporary designs of Kyle Cooper and Danny Yount. 

This title sequence refers to the following designers and their titles:
Georges Méliès - Un Voyage Dans La Lune, Saul Bass - Psycho, Maurice Binder - Dr. No, Stephen Frankfurt - To Kill A Mockingbird, Pablo Ferro - Dr. Strangelove, Richard Greenberg - Alien, Kyle Cooper - Seven, Danny Yount - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang / Sherlock Holmes

CREDITS

Direction and Animation: Jurjen Versteeg / www.synple.nl
Music and sound design: Lea Jurida / www.jurida.com

Many thanks to all the people who helped me realizing this project!

For some more info on the concept and the production process, please check out the interview on 'Forget the Film, Watch The Titles': http://bit.ly/pzvXXE

Watch a short 1min. making of here: vimeo.com/44046584

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Georges Méliès

2013, Parachutes, From paper to screen : https://vimeo.com/77330383

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Le Voyage dans la Lune est un film de science-fiction français écrit, produit et réalisé par Georges Méliès, et sorti en 1902.

Le film est le premier représentant, au cinéma, d'une œuvre de science-fiction.

Le projet du film a sans doute été motivé par le succès outre-Atlantique de l'attraction foraine . Il est inspiré des romans De la Terre à la Lune de Jules Verne ( 1865) et Les Premiers Hommes dans la Lune de H. G. Wells ( The First Men in the Moon , 1901).

Lors d'un congrès du Club des Astronomes, le professeur Barbenfouillis, président de ce club, surprend l'auditoire en faisant part de son projet de voyage dans la Lune. Il organise ensuite pour ses confrères la visite de l'atelier où l' obus spatial est en chantier. Il sera propulsé en direction de la Lune au moyen d'un canon géant de 300 mètres de long, embarquant à son bord six savants astronomes, dont Barbenfouillis.

Après le lancement réussi de leur fusée-obus, les six savants découvrent l'environnement lunaire et assistent à un lever de Terre. Épuisés par leur voyage, ils se couchent à même le sol et s'endorment. Apparaissent sept étoiles représentant la Grande Ourse, puis une étoile double, Phœbé et Saturne. Survient une tempête de neige provoquée par Phœbé (déesse assise sur son croissant de lune), qui les réveille. Ils s'engouffrent dans un cratère lunaire et arrivent à l'intérieur d'une grotte où ils découvrent des champignons géants.

Lorsque surgit un Sélénite (représentant du peuple autochtone de la Lune), un savant le pulvérise d'un coup de parapluie. Les Sélénites suivants arrivent en nombre, capturent les visiteurs, les ligotent et les présentent à leur roi. L'un des prisonniers se précipite sur le souverain, le jette au sol et les savants parviennent tous à s'échapper, poursuivis par les Sélénites. Barbenfouillis s'accroche à la corde qui pend à la pointe de l'obus et le fait basculer dans le vide. L'un des poursuivants reste accroché à son fuselage alors que l'obus prend la direction de la Terre où il amerrit. Les savants sont accueillis en héros.

Leur retour donne lieu à une grande fête, avec remise de décorations, exposition triomphale de leur capture, défilé des marins et des pompiers, et inauguration d'une statue commémorative représentant Barbenfouillis, érigée sur la place de la ville avec l'inscription latine (Un travail acharné vient à bout de tout),.

L'historien du cinéma " le succès du Georges Sadoul note que Voyage dans la Lune marqua le triomphe de la mise en scène sur le " plein air " lumiérien. " Le succès triomphal, aussi bien en France qu'aux États-Unis, consacra en effet dès 1902 la préférence du public de cinéma pour la fiction, en contradiction avec les vues photographiques animées de Louis Lumière, qui faisaient la part belle à ce qui plus tard sera appelé le documentaire. Les amis britanniques de Méliès, ceux que Sadoul regroupe sous le nom d' École de Brighton, George Albert Smith et James Williamson, avaient déjà amorcé le courant avec leurs Chase Films , leurs films de poursuite loufoques.

Cette féerie baroque donne dans le registre burlesque. Au cours du premier tableau (ainsi que Méliès nomme ses prises de vues), les scientifiques sont affublés de chapeaux pointus et de robes étoilées qui évoquent les personnages de Nostradamus ou de Merlin l'Enchanteur. La caution scientifique est simplement balayée, faisant place à une fantaisie débridée. Sur la rampe de lancement, des jeunes filles légèrement vêtues dansent et, en fanfare, allument la mèche du canon qui va propulser la fusée dans l'œil de la Lune. Quant à l'arrivée sur la Lune, c'est une débauche de découvertes, toutes plus extravagantes les unes que les autres jusqu'à l'entrée en lice des Sélénites, habitants de la Lune, que les scientifiques combattent plutôt efficacement à coups de... parapluies.

" Méliès réussit à son tour (après Ferdinand Zecca dans Histoire d'un crime) un effet d'ellipse temporelle dans Le Voyage dans la Lune, qu'il résout par un subterfuge scénique. Il s'agit de montrer la première nuit des savants astronautes sur la Lune, qui se couchent sous des couvertures et s'endorment. Pour raccourcir le temps de leur sommeil, Méliès fait intervenir différents phénomènes cosmiques. Une grosse comète passe en roulant dans le ciel lunaire, puis la Grande Ourse s'illumine, chaque étoile est ornée en son centre d'un visage féminin, souriant comme les anges des étoiles de sapins de Noël. Apparaissent encore des figures fantaisistes dans le style nouille de la statuaire de l' Art nouveau, au centre une jeune femme en tunique légère, assise sur un croissant de lune, à gauche deux jeunes femmes dont l'une brandit au-dessus de sa tête une grosse étoile, un peu à la manière de La Liberté éclairant le monde de Bartholdi. "

Dans le film, les Sélénites, habitants imaginaires de la Lune, étaient interprétés par des acrobates des Folies Bergère.

À une époque où le statut d'auteur et la " Edison fit accomplir au cinéma une étape décisive, en créant le film moderne de 35 propriété intellectuelle n'existent pas dans l'art cinématographique, le film peut être légalement piraté ou plagié. Dans le monde entier, des copies contrefaites du Voyage dans la Lune sont distribuées dès la sortie du film et rapportent à leurs auteurs d'importants revenus qui auraient dû revenir à la . Les grandes sociétés de cinéma sont même à l'avant-garde de ce pillage organisé. Ainsi, des américaines ont acheté en bonne et due forme à Méliès plusieurs dizaines de copies du Voyage dans la Lune, elles en tirent aussitôt de nombreuses copies illicites qu'elles exploitent à leur profit. D'autres producteurs de cinéma américains tels que Siegmund Lubin contretypent (technique du duping, la contrefaçon pouvant consister à faire une copie-pirate avec la marque " grattée sur l'obus) les films produits par leurs concurrents américains ou étrangers. Thomas Edison, par le moyen de l'Edison Manufacturing Company , tient déjà Méliès dans son collimateur, car le cinéaste français, pour alimenter sa caméra en pellicule de 35 mm de large, a tout simplement adopté le jeu de 4 perforations rectangulaires Edison de part et d'autre de chaque photogramme (breveté internationalement) sans entente préalable avec l'inventeur américain, commettant ainsi en premier une contrefaçon industrielle. mm, à quatre paires de perforations par image. " Edison entend se payer " sur la bête " l'utilisation frauduleuse de ses brevets. " Edison entreprit sans scrupule la contrefaçon, il estimait reprendre son bien : les films Méliès employaient la perforation qu'il avait inventée " et déposée. Les frères Lumière, ainsi que Léon Gaumont, au courant de ces brevets, ont adopté pour leurs tournages des pellicules différentes : 2 perforations rondes de part et d'autre de chaque photogramme pour les frères lyonnais, pas de perforations du tout pour le 60 mm de Gaumont- Georges Demenÿ, deux formats inaboutis qui disparaîtront par la suite. Un accord met fin à ce détournement de droits, quand Méliès entre dans le trust créé par Edison pour contrôler la distribution des films (où il rejoint son compatriote Charles Pathé et la plupart des sociétés de cinéma des États-Unis). Contrairement à ce qu'on affirme souvent, Méliès n'a pas été ruiné en 1902 à cause du piratage de son film par Edison, mais en 1923, après l'interdiction des comédies lors de la Première Guerre mondiale, qui donna un coup d'arrêt aux productions de la Star Film, et après des déboires auxquels son frère Gaston, à qui il confia des responsabilités dépassant ses capacités d'organisation et flattant en revanche son goût pour les gros revenus, n'est pas étranger. Méliès peut engager contre ces producteurs des procès, mais il risque ainsi de se faire condamner à son tour pour un plagiat d'une autre nature. C'est cependant l'ampleur de ce piratage qui l'incite à envoyer son frère Gaston aux États-Unis pour essayer de protéger les droits de la .

Les distributeurs français Pathé ou Zelig établissent également des doubles-négatifs du Voyage dans la Lune et vendent par dizaines des contretypes d'un film dont la mise en scène ne leur a rien coûté. En 1908, dans , le réalisateur Segundo de Chomón, reproduit plan par plan le film de Méliès pour Pathé. Ce remake ne peut être considéré comme un plagiat.

Il faut aussi remarquer que les nombreuses copies pirates du Voyage dans la Lune et d'autres ouvrages de Georges Méliès, disséminées dans le monde entier, ont participé au sauvetage de l'œuvre du maître, dont lui-même avait vendu les négatifs au prix de la récupération des sels d'argent et du nitrate de cellulose. " Les copies pirates distribuées aux États-Unis et dans d'autres pays, qui avaient été parfaitement conservées, sauveront pour l'histoire l'essentiel de l'œuvre du maître français. "

En 2010, Lobster Films, la fondation Groupama Gan pour le cinéma et la fondation Technicolor pour le patrimoine du cinéma engagent ensemble une restauration coûtant environ 400 000 .

Georges Méliès avait fait colorier une version à la main, aux encres à l' aniline. Longtemps donnée pour perdue, la bobine très endommagée a été retrouvée à Barcelone en 1993. Près d'un an de travail a été nécessaire pour ré-assembler les fragments des 13 375 images du film de 1902 et les restaurer une à une, comme le permettent les avancées du numérique aujourd'hui. Une copie noir et blanc nitrate originale appartenant à la famille Méliès et un contretype nitrate appartenant au CNC ont été utilisés pour cette restauration. La numérisation de ces deux éléments a été réalisée aux Archives françaises du film.

Cette version colorisée restaurée est présentée pour la première fois en ouverture de la édition du festival de Cannes, le . À l'époque de la sortie du film, les projections étaient toujours accompagnées d'un musicien sur scène qui jouait des " airs à la mode ". En 2011, c'est une bande son originale, composée par le groupe Air, qui accompagne ce film muet retrouvé. Il y a eu une version pour casque de réalité virtuelle et la société Technicolor a réalisé des copies de ce film tant piraté et si mal préservé grâce à une technique nouvelle, la sauvegarde sur de l' ADN.

En 2016, Lobster Films sort une nouvelle édition du Voyage dans la Lune, avec trois bandes originales composées par Jeff Mills, Robert Israel et Dorian Pimpernel, ainsi qu'une version bonimentée du film.

Le Voyage dans la Lune, Lobster Films, 2016, DVD Films + Le Voyage Extraordinaire de Serge Bromberg et Eric Lange. Trois musiques originales de Jeff Mills, Robert Israel et Dorian Pimpernel + Bonus : courts métrages de Méliès, interviews de Michel Gondry, Michel Hazanavicius, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Costa-Gavras et des fondations partenaires.

Le film est parodié dans un épisode d'Itchy et Scratchy dans Les Simpson (Le Mot de Moe) en 2010.

1. L'œil est une mer lunaire, Méliès ayant traduit le phénomène paréidolique.

2. Centre national de la cinématographie (France), Georges Méliès, Jacques Malthête et Laurent Mannoni, L'œuvre de Georges Méliès : Catalogue de l'exposition présentée à la cinémathèque française à partir du , Paris, La Cinémathèque Française, , 359 p. , p. 125 .

3. " Le prix du mètre étant proche de 2 francs en 1902, ce film devait être vendu aux alentours de 500 francs en noir et blanc et le double en couleurs ". Jacques Malthête, Cf. Méliès. Images et illusions, Exporégie, , p. 204 .

4. Brunnet était prestidigitateur au théâtre Robert-Houdin, dont il avait été le directeur. Cf. Affiche du théâtre, lire en ligne sur .

5. Depierre est le seul acteur du film sur lequel on ne possède aucune autre information.

6. François Lallement était l'un des opérateurs de la . Comme d'autres collaborateurs de Méliès, il faisait à l'occasion de la figuration dans les films du réalisateur.

7. Jules-Eugène Legris (1862-1926) faisait partie, comme Brunnet, de la troupe du théâtre Robert-Houdin. Cf. " Trucographie de Georges Méliès ", Bulletin de la société Le Vieux Papier, , Paris, 1963, , lire en ligne sur .

8. Jeanne d'Alcy deviendra en 1925 l'épouse de Georges Méliès.

9. Michelle Aubert et Jean-Claude Seguin (dir.), La Production cinématographique des frères Lumière, coll. " Mémoires de cinéma ", Bifi-éditions, Paris, 1996 .

10. Jacques Malthête, Essai de reconstitution du catalogue français de la Star-Film , Service des archives du film du Centre national de la cinématographie, , p. 111 .

Sur les autres projets Wikimedia :

Articles connexes

Liens externes

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Le Voyage dans la Lune est un film de science-fiction français écrit, produit et réalisé par Georges Méliès, et sorti en 1902. Le film est le premier représentant, au cinéma, d'une œuvre de science-fiction. Le projet du film a sans doute été motivé par le succès outre-Atlantique de l'attraction foraine .

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James Stuart Blackton

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A short animation created by Anglo-American film producer James Stuart Blackton which proved hugely influential in the development of animated films in America. The film comes six years after his equally groundbreaking The Enchanted Drawing and is regarded by film historians as the first animated film to be recorded on standard picture film.

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A short animation created by Anglo-American film producer James Stuart Blackton which proved hugely influential in the development of animated films in America. The film comes six years after his equally groundbreaking The Enchanted Drawing and is regarded by film historians as the first animated film to be recorded on standard picture film.

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générique : Erich Kettelhut

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Card from Metropolis (1927) which says, in translation from German: THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!

Metropolis (1927) "ende" card

Title Designer: Erich Kettelhut

Kettelhut is credited with the positions of Art Direction and Art Department, but is also responsible for uncredited roles including special effects, visual effects, and technical consultant.

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Title Designer: Erich Kettelhut Kettelhut is credited with the positions of Art Direction and Art Department, but is also responsible for uncredited roles including special effects, visual effects, and technical consultant.

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Sacha Guitry

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générique : Saul Bass

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Saul Bass: Carmen Jones (1954) title sequence

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générique : Saul Bass

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The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) title sequence

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générique : Saul Bass

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HELP ART OF THE TITLE KEEP GOING. BECOME A PATRON THROUGH PATREON.

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générique : Saul Bass et John Whitney Sr

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générique : Saul Bass

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Saul Bass: North by Northwest (1959) title sequence

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générique : Saul Bass

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générique : Elaine et Saul Bass

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1964, Docteur Folamour ou : comment j'ai appris à ne plus m'en faire et à aimer la bombe

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1964, Docteur Folamour ou : comment j'ai appris à ne plus m'en faire et à aimer la bombe

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générique : Pablo Ferro

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1966, Les Яusses Aяяiveиt, Les Яusses Aяяiveиt

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1966, Les Яusses Aяяiveиt, Les Яusses Aяяiveиt

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générique : Pablo Ferro

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The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966) title sequence

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générique : Pablo Ferro

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HELP ART OF THE TITLE KEEP GOING. BECOME A PATRON THROUGH PATREON.

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générique : Pablo Ferro

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The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) title sequence

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générique : Maurice Binder

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générique : Robert Brownjohn

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HELP ART OF THE TITLE KEEP GOING. BECOME A PATRON THROUGH PATREON.

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générique : Maurice Binder

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générique : Maurice Binder

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© 2007-2020 Art of the Title, LLC. All rights reserved. Works appearing on Art of the Title are the property of their respective owners.

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générique : Daniel Kleinman

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From the first notes of the synthesizer in the opening gun barrel sequence, a sense of smooth suspense takes hold. The barrel sequence is familiar and yet different. Shinier than before. Brighter, faster, and on the move. Its target as always is James Bond, but this is 007 as we'd never seen him before.

When GoldenEye was released in 1995, it had been six years since audiences had looked down this barrel at James Bond. After a slew of legal difficulties between distributor MGM and production company Eon, the departures of actor Timothy Dalton and director John Glen, and the death of title designer Maurice Binder in 1991, the franchise was on shaky ground. At the same time, Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, co-founder of Eon Productions and producer on the Bond films for 40 years, stepped down from his duties due to health problems and tapped his daughter Barbara Broccoli to succeed him. Some critics speculated that it was time to throw in the towel, suggesting as The Sunday Times' Tom Shone did in 1992 that it was "time to junk Bond."

But GoldenEye, the 17th film in the series, saw James Bond return a new man. Director Martin Campbell was enlisted to helm the picture (he'd later return to direct 2006's Casino Royale), Pierce Brosnan became the face of Bond for this and the next three entries, and Barbara Broccoli set about breathing new life into the franchise.

Director Martin Campbell with actors Izabella Scorupco and Pierce Brosnan on the set of GoldenEye

Realizing the need to bring the suave superspy into the digital era, she and co-producer Michael G. Wilson turned to music video director Daniel Kleinman to carry the Bond title design standard forward. Throughout the 1980s, Kleinman had directed more than 100 music videos, experimenting with montage, special effects, and surreal, dream-like sequences. With technology changing in leaps and bounds in the late '80s and into the '90s, pushing the franchise's graphic sensibility into the modern era was crucial.

Kleinman's first task was to update the iconic gun barrel sequence in which Bond turns and shoots, a staple of the series since Binder created it for 1962's . The barrel is jogged out of its static form and recreated digitally, following Bond as he walks across the screen. After the conventional pre-title sequence, a second gun barrel appears. One explosion begets another, and suddenly we are blasting down the barrel, traveling through the cylinder alongside a bullet. This barrel is a departure from the first, with photorealistic reflections, shadows, and movement, ushering in what would become a new effects-laden visual language for the franchise. As Tina Turner sings about reflections and darkness in depths, fire engulfs the screen and women dance, languidly and in silhouette. More scantily clad women wield sledgehammers, demolishing giant Communist statues and symbols against vibrant full-colour screens in a sequence that implies the passage of time as well as the fall of the Soviet Union. With this combination of elements, Kleinman acknowledges the title design tradition of Bond - girls, guns, and glamour - while leading it into the future through new techniques and expanded narrative possibilities.

Hiring Kleinman proved a savvy choice, as Binder described his own title sequences for Bond as "the forerunners of today's pop videos." Indeed, Kleinman's work reinforced the connection between music and image, using lyrical and aural cues to inform the narratives, visuals, and editing, ultimately giving rise to a new generation of Bond power ballads that were intimately linked with the films. Though it had only been six years since 007's last jaunt, the world and the means of telling screen-based stories had changed dramatically. GoldenEye 's updated gun barrel and slick main title sequence announced the return of James Bond and reclaimed his status as a sophisticated, seductive, and cutting-edge character. The titles also gave the franchise a strong foothold in the Hollywood spotlight, ensuring Bond's continued relevance as the world revolved toward a mysterious and increasingly digital new millennium.

A discussion with GoldenEye title sequence director DANIEL KLEINMAN.
So, GoldenEye came out in 1995. This was your first foray into title design. Before GoldenEye, you had primarily worked as a music video and commercial director. What was that transition like for you?
DK: Oddly, it was not that difficult. Because of my graphics background, I was quite interested in special effects and creating images that were not just caught in camera but montages. I was quite used to working to a music track. Normally, doing music videos, you had to have the band in the video and I didn't need to include the band in the title sequence! So the transition wasn't too bad. It was very difficult for the film optical house, but that's another question!
And you'd already kind of dipped your toe in the waters of Bond with your video for Gladys Knight, right?
DK: Yes! I'd done a few music videos which linked into feature films. Music on TV was really big at the time. A lot of movies were using MTV as a promotional tool so the music video wasn't only for the band - it would include clips of the movie. I think that was the reason I got asked to do the one for Gladys Knight, for "Licence to Kill", which I really enjoyed because I was a big fan and a James Bond fan.

Gladys Knight - "Licence to Kill" music video (1989), directed by Daniel Kleinman

DK: I did it as a kind of primitive homage to Maurice Binder. The [ GoldenEye] producers remembered that I'd done that.

I remember going in to meet the big producers, Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. I remember Michael asking me, "Do you think we should keep the girls? Should we have guns in it?" There'd been some question - now that Maurice had sadly died - whether the style should carry on or whether it should change. My answer was that we should keep all the visual tropes that Maurice had set up and kind of update it. That was the answer they wanted to hear, so I did get the job.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) main titles, designed by Maurice Binder

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) main titles, designed by Maurice Binder

So there were questions about the formula for the titles? It was a relaunch of Bond in many respects.
DK: It was never really spoken. They just asked me what I would do. But I think you're right. It was a new Bond, a new actor... it had been a six-year lull between the last film. It had gone through a lot of legal wranglings behind the scenes with copyrights. It was something that was on their minds - how much it should change and how much it should modernize. I wanted to make it more contemporary to that time but hang on to the original feeling that Maurice Binder had. That made everybody feel okay. If I'd come in and said, "You know, you should trash everything Maurice has done and I'm going to reinvent the whole thing!" [laughs] maybe I wouldn't have gotten the job. He was such a clever bloke and he had created such a worldwide famous visual language which was very potent. To radically change it and not build on the strengths of that would've been silly.

When I look back to GoldenEye, I look back quite fondly 'cause it came out quite close to how I'd imagined it.

-Daniel Kleinman
What sort of direction did you get from the director, Martin Campbell? Had you seen a rough cut?
DK: I saw nothing! I think I read the script and I probably had, you know, one meeting with Martin just to say hello. The thing with the Bond titles are that... by the time I get involved with it, it's usually just before they're going into production. I read the script, I have a meet, and I tell everybody what my ideas are, and then usually the directors are off filming the main film. Martin just left me to it.
What were your initial concepts for the sequence?
DK: I had a very strong idea that I wanted it to be a sequence of time passing. The pre-title sequence happens in one time period and the post-title sequence happens many years later, so the most interesting thing to do was to make a sequence that says, Time is passing and these are the events that happened during that time. The most important event that happened during that time was the fall of the Soviet Union. So, once I was thinking of images of the fall of the Soviet Union, it came to me that it was all sort of Western values embodied by women in lingerie smashing the sickle and hammer statues to pieces. [laughs] It linked in with the story as well, so it had an edge of humour and an edge of sexiness and all the things that make up a Bond title sequence.

It came to me that it was all sort of Western values embodied by women in lingerie smashing the sickle and hammer statues to pieces.

-Daniel Kleinman

It's a funny idea, really! This notion of using scantily clad women as the representation of the fall of Communism and the Soviet Union.
DK: Well [laughs] it's absurd in one sense but it's also rather true in another! At the time, if you wanted to get anything in Russia or have a good time or get money, what you would do is smuggle in jeans and Western clothes, because they couldn't get them. So things like Western lingerie, cosmetics, goods, Western values - the sort of sexiness of Western culture - eventually caused the cracking up of the austere Soviet ideal. So even though it was kind of tongue-in-cheek there was a truth about it.

The sequence begins and ends with a look down a gun barrel. There's also the classic gun barrel that originated with Maurice Binder's work. How did you approach updating that?
DK: Right. There's the one where Bond walks across and turns and fires at the screen which is like the logo gun barrel, and then I put in another gun barrel in the beginning of the title sequence. The one where Bond walks across was the real classic Binder image of Bond, framed in the gun barrel. I obviously had to remake it. Binder had effectively taken a still and panned it across the screen - he just didn't have the technology to create something in three dimensions. So I made it a three-dimensional object and gave it some parallax. I made it a bit shinier and a bit less '60s.

It was my first foray into Bond and I really wanted to leap straight in with all the classic images.

-Daniel Kleinman

Bond barrel sequence designed by Daniel Kleinman from GoldenEye

DK: Then likewise with the gun barrel at the very beginning of the title sequence, I felt - I just had this idea of coming into it through a tube, which is the gun barrel, and having the bullet fire at you. It was my first foray into Bond and I really wanted to leap straight in with all the classic images.
You often work with storyboards and draw out the scenes. What was your process for creating this? Can you take me through it, step-by-step?
DK: GoldenEye was probably the only title sequence I've done with this particular technique. I was used to using analog video effects in an online suite. I had done a storyboard and worked out the story I wanted and the transition of images.

Draft of a shot list by Daniel Kleinman for the GoldenEye title sequence

DK: Then I went and filmed all the stuff with the girls and made the props batches and filmed them in the studio. I had a guy called Eddie Kidd, who was a stunt double for Pierce Brosnan, come in and do some filming. All the elements that I needed to create the sequence, I filmed on film. That film then got transferred onto video tape. Then I used the videotape in an analog online suite. This is before digital stuff, before Henrys and Harrys and Flame and Inferno and all those machines. You could key, you could move things around, spin things around, make them smaller and larger, and it all happens in real time. So if you imagine: I've got a picture of a lady, and I've got a picture of a statue; I can shrink the lady, and I've got a little joystick and I can move it over and place the lady on top of the statue.

DK: It's a very easy way for me to see what I'm doing and build up the pictures. So I created the whole sequence in that way. But! Big, big problem with it is that it was only video, not film, so it was very low resolution. What that means is it's no good for the movie, because the movie has to be in full, high-res film projected resolution, which I think they shot anamorphic so it's very, very high resolution! But because the sequence I've created is on video, it had to be recreated - but on film! This was all starting to be done on the big digital machines but they were very slow. They were set up for doing opticals on shots that were maybe one or two seconds long and what I had to do was take my three- or three-and-a-half-minute sequence and re-create the sequence that I made on video. I had a whole other team which had to copy by eye - they had the sequence I'd created on video on a screen in front of them and they had to recreate that frame-by-frame in these massive, very slow computers. It would take maybe 24 hours to do twelve frames. And there was no way of watching what you were doing as you were doing it! It chugged all the way through.

DK: When it finished you could run it but not in real time - you could sort of jog through the frames and you could see whether it had come out right. It's a bit like putting a pot in the kiln - you don't really know until it's finished whether it has got a crack in it or not! [laughs] So it was a very laborious process. Really difficult. The actual creation of it, for me, designing it and putting the images together was very easy, but translating the video at TV resolution into film resolution, that was really difficult. It drove everybody around the bend. It just took so long. And as you're copying it by eye, mistakes were made, and I'd get cross because something I wanted wasn't there, and somebody forgot to do something or didn't put it in the right place... But for the next film, which was ... what was the next one? The World Is Not Enough, was it?
It was Tomorrow Never Dies, that was '97.
DK: Yeah. The post house that I was using said, "Look, it was far too difficult last time. You're going to have to work directly..."
Was this Framestore?
DK: Yeah, Framestore. They said it's just not practical. You can't create the sequence and then re-create it. It's like doing the whole thing twice. These aren't enormous budget things. So I had to work directly on the next generation of machines which were still very slow, very clunky. So for the next process after GoldenEye, I found it terribly difficult. It wasn't intuitive. I had to spend days and days - weeks, in fact.

Sketch for GoldenEye by Daniel Kleinman featuring a hand in close-up with bullets. This idea ended up being recycled for use in the main titles to Tomorrow Never Dies.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) main titles, designed by Daniel Kleinman

How much of the GoldenEye sequence did you actually shoot? Was anything pre-existing?
DK: I shot most of the elements. I definitely shot a lot of smoke and fire. There was one explosion that I didn't film. It might have come from one of the special effects units on the movie. The opening explosion, which I kind of made to look like it was in the gun barrel. That was slightly too enormous for me to create! But most of the other things I actually shot in-camera. Like when the bullet whizzes away from the camera, I filmed - I had a wire with a little piece of burning rope rigged on it on a sort of spring-type thing and it flew down the wire and left a trail of smoke. I tried to do as much of it in-camera as I could.

DK: The Bond character - he sort of walks in and he's like a stoic James Bond - that was Eddie Kidd. All the ladies I cast... a couple of them were friends, some were models and dancers. It was like a normal film casting.
Tell me about those statues. Those are real models, right?
DK: Yeah. We did spend a bit of money making the gun barrel, the inside of the gun barrel digitally but that was just about the age of technology at the time. So all the things like statues, big mask things, giant stone hammer and sickle, they were all big props, actually. The statues were twelve, fifteen, twenty-foot high and made out of polystyrene and painted to look like stone.

DK: They were all shot against bluescreen or greenscreen. The sickle was probably about two- or three-foot wide, and so was the hammer. The statues were quite big, but because they were polystyrene you couldn't stand on them. I had to shrink the ladies down. I was interested in the illusion of trying to make them feel like they were there so they cast shadows and reflections, which at the time was difficult to do. Most people didn't bother with it, but I matched the lighting and the angles to make it feel like they were really standing on the statue or dancing on the sickle.

Many past Bond sequences tend to rely heavily on black as a backdrop, but your GoldenEye sequence features a lot of purple, gold, red, full-colour screens. Can you talk about that a little, your use of lighting and colour?
DK: Well, my background was - I went to art school, I thought I was going to be a painter. I always loved colour as painters always like colour. I'm interested in creating images like surrealist paintings. Like a dream sequence. Maurice was probably limited with his colour palette, because there was no way of using gradations of colour. The technical way that those opticals were done, you can't put in a colour filter. Quite often you'd use high contrast images because that was easier to key with. He was actually using the technical limitations in an aesthetic way. I didn't have those limitations.

DK: I wanted to move it on, I wanted it to look more contemporary and not so '60s even though I love that '60s graphic look. Just trying to make it more lush and more exciting. I didn't want to just copy what Maurice did but use his heritage and create these luxurious colours. I think colour, in post-production and the way I was using it at the time, was something I was quite interested in. A way of using colour to create emotion...

How did you work with the theme sung by Tina Turner? Did you get that early on or did you get that later and have to rework?
DK: In that instance, I got a demo track, which was like five-six minutes long. It was somebody else singing, a studio artist... but I couldn't wait for Tina Turner to go in and record it. I had to start. I guessed where they might do cuts, what bits might lead in, what lyrics might be in it. I guessed completely wrongly! [laughs] When I got the final track, it was shorter than I imagined, the lyrics had changed. It was hairy, but I had time to tweak things and add in elements that made it fit reasonably well. That's always the wrong way around. I should get the music first and then do the pictures, but I had to do the pictures and cross my fingers!
How big was your production team on this? It seems like it's bigger than most people would assume.
DK: It is bigger! It's like a full film crew. It's like filming a TV program or a scene in a movie. A big, elaborate music video. I treat it in exactly the same way. You have to hire a studio. You have actors, you have your camera team, you have the art department, production team, I have an assistant director... there's make up, there's hair, lighting, electricians, people that push the dolly. That's just the film part of it. Then it goes to the editing, the post-production people... I'm sure that there are lots of title sequence creators who perhaps these days can do it with a much smaller team or sit and do it on a laptop - especially if it's animation - but that's not the way I approach it.

When I look back to GoldenEye, I look back quite fondly 'cause it came out quite close to how I'd imagined it. Some of the later sequences, when technology had moved on, they were more difficult for me to work on. I was less happy with the end results. I felt I never actually got it - it was like wading through technology. It was like threading a needle with boxing gloves on.

I also wanted to ask really quickly about the typography and your choices there. It seems like with the credits, you go back to the type style that Binder had used.
DK: Yeah. I'm not sure if the face has stayed the same all the time. I made my best stab at making it seem similar. But basically, I'm not a title sequence director. The only title sequences I do are James Bond. I'm not sure how other title sequences work, but on the Bond films, things like the sizes of names are a legal matter. So I work everything out from the height of the main title card, then the lead actors would be, say, 79% as big, and then you go down the crew and names get smaller. That's all legally contracted. So I can't do anything too snazzy like have wiggling type, because I can't prove that that is legally 50% of the size of the main title, if you see what I mean? I have my hands tied a little bit. GoldenEye, the logo as it appears in the posters and all that stuff, is given to me. I don't design that at all, because that's part of their promotion.

So that logotype already exists before you come in.
DK: Right. Exactly. The logos are given to me as a fait accompli to use and I just slap 'em on! [laughs] I've never been in love with typography or typefaces so I just try to keep it as absolutely simple as possible. As long as it's legible and doesn't distract, I don't mind. I apologize! I'd have no names on it at all if it was up to me! But then there'd be no point in the sequence whatsoever! [laughs]

I think of doing the Bond titles as like a big music video. It's a strange thing to do but I must say I really enjoy it. Partly because it's Bond and partly because it's probably the most famous title sequences of all time. It's an iconic thing and it's a responsibility but it's great fun to do. I'm lucky to carry on the heritage of that. And it's rather nice when you go to the opening of the movie and it's an enormous cinema and you see your work projected hundreds of feet across. It's quite a buzz.
View the credits for this sequence

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From the first notes of the synthesizer in the opening gun barrel sequence, a sense of smooth suspense takes hold. The barrel sequence is familiar and yet different. Shinier than before. Brighter, faster, and on the move. Its target as always is James Bond, but this is 007 as we'd never seen him before.

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générique : Daniel Kleinman

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In the last interview before his passing in 1991, longtime Bond titles director Maurice Binder observed that Bond sequences were the likely precursors to the modern day music video, in that they blended experimental filmmaking and pop culture into a format perfectly suited for pop music. From the '60s onwards, the Bond theme song, and its title sequence by proxy, have become synonymous with rock n' roll's biggest (or sometimes, trendiest) acts, and in doing so lent credibility to the MTV-led music video explosion of the early-to-mid-'80s.

In only a few years' time, music videos had Bond title sequences beat at their own game, with the popularity of the format attracting first-string talent, new ideas and technologies. Fierce competition between record labels, increasingly eccentric musical acts and unprecedented album sales afforded directors heavy creative license and control over their product. Acknowledging the format's reach, Bond's production company EoN joined the circus, commissioning videos for their theme songs independent of the film's title sequence, often loaded with scenes from the film itself, thus doubling as trailers.

Ironically, their first such venture was a title sequence itself: For Your Eyes Only in 1981, directed by Binder, featuring Sheena Easton performing her theme song from within Bond's world. EoN's first proper music video was Rita Coolidge's All Time High, the theme song for (1983), beginning a trend that would become a cornerstone of the franchise's marketing campaign.

It was on Binder's final Bond film, License to Kill (1989) that EoN commissioned Daniel Kleinman to direct the video for Gladys Knight's theme song of the same name. A veteran music video director with over a hundred videos under his belt, Kleinman's experimental techniques and affection for technology seemed a perfect match for the job, and while he never met Binder while working on the video, his influence was very apparent, employing several telltale 007 title sequence tropes including window mattes, scale-independent compositions and sultry femme fatales.

License to Kill 's theme song was a hit in the UK, and Kleinman's video saw heavy rotation on MTV and elsewhere. Perhaps more importantly, it gave EoN a glimpse of what a post-Binder Bond sequence could look like; in 1995, Kleinman was nominated as the new Bond title director, beginning with the Brosnan-fronted franchise reboot .

Kleinman upheld the tradition of the Bond sequence as set down by Binder and Robert Brownjohn (1963's From Russia with Love and 1964's Goldfinger), but his background in shortform direction and modern post-production introduced the format to an entirely new bag of tricks. While only six years had lapsed between Binder's last and Kleinman's first sequences, it was a millennia in digital years; the tech revolution had overgrown Hollywood, leading to a steady flow of visual effects-heavy blockbusters inching ever further into Bond's turf. By fate or design, however, the hiatus proved an ideal time for the franchise to reinvent itself for the post-Cold War digital age, and Kleinman's fresh eye on the titles would further EoN's cause.

As Bond titles are as much a product of their time as they are a visual statement about the film, Kleinman's Goldeneye sequence was very much aligned with the new direction of the franchise: modern, relevant, big. It was by all accounts a more ambitious effort than past sequences, taking full advantage of new production tools and adding a third dimension to the template, giving Binder's trademark scale differences a spatial relationship though parallax. Kleinman's successive titles further evolved the format, trading chemicals for pixels as new technologies allowed.

Unlike the sequences of Binder and Brownjohn, which were largely founded in craft and euphemism, Kleinman's additionally incorporated a narrative element, albeit as abstract as their visual compositions. As such, his sequences often address the emotional currents of the film more directly and reflect its danger more literally. His settings are darker, his use of weapons largely stripped of their innuendos and presented as instruments of actual danger. Also unlike his predecessors, his sequences are increasingly framed by Bond's own conflicts and psyche, first apparent in his torturing in Die Another Day (2002), and again in Casino Royale (2005), in which gambling becomes a direct parallel to 007's trajectory as a freshman MI6 Agent.

In Skyfall, Kleinman's sixth outing with the franchise, the viewer is completely immersed within the mind of Bond as he sinks to the bottom of a riverbed after being shot by friendly fire during the film's climactic cold opening. Set in the depths and ruins of his own private thoughts and memories, the sequence is a combination of many analogies: his past and current emotional state, his uncertain future, his many indistinguishable misdeeds and duties flashing before his eyes. It is the first Bond sequence, and the first Bond film, to dig into 007's psychological past, both using his childhood home as an emotional safehouse and a prison, giving his character greater depth and a vulnerability more in step with creator Ian Fleming's incarnation of the gallant, yet flawed, superspy.

While the content and construction of the Skyfall titles are novel, darkening the tone significantly from past sequences and employing a Z-oriented digital camera without brakes, it is nevertheless an apt continuation of the Bond title tradition, apparent both in the patience of its delivery and use of familiar visual tropes and typography. Kleinman even reintroduces the female form, missing for the first time ever in his previous sequence, Casino Royale. Adele's Academy Award / Golden Globe / BRIT Award-winning theme song channels early Bond crooners like Shirley Bassey and Nancy Sinatra, giving the sequence a dreamlike quality, acting both as a counterpoint to the abrasive subject matter and a complement to its murky underwater tones.

It is a persistent irony that Bond titles are expected to be both new and classic at once - a creative corner into which Binder and Brownjohn voluntarily painted themselves and, by extension, their successors. But this apparent double standard also fuels the core of the tradition, pairing artistry with technology through the unique spectrum of 007. If Binder and Brownjohn's contributions were the format itself and its general contents, then it has become Kleinman's corner to challenge their model from within, redefining its boundaries in keeping with the times, his own creative direction and Bond's ever-evolving on and off-screen persona. Skyfall is a deliberate and graceful balance of all the above, both indisputably Bond yet somehow not, just as it should be.

A discussion with Main Title Designer DANIEL KLEINMAN of Rattling Stick.
Bond title sequences obviously carry a huge legacy and they often present the themes and settings of the film they precede. What's the starting point for a new Bond sequence? The script? A cut of the film?
The starting point for me is always the script; I am usually brought into the process before the film has started shooting or at least in very early stages of production. I read the script and get a sense of the main themes of the movie, perhaps start to have a few ideas, brainstorm with myself a bit, write lists, get excited, look for reference, and start sketching. Next I meet with the producers and the director of the film to get a clear idea of the vibe of the film and be aware of any input or requirements for the title sequence. Then, I explain how I see the tone of the titles perhaps with rough sketches and reference. I rarely see a cut of the film until quite late in the process but I do see some individual scenes particularly the ones that lead into and out of the title sequence. There is a back and forth process.
The opening scene of the film is a terrific segue for these titles. Talk about your initial concepts and discussions with Director Sam Mendes.
It's difficult to glean from the page just how spectacular some of the action scenes may be, but it's kind of a given that the opening reel of the movie is usually a tense and bravura action sequence, and Skyfall was no exception. It ended with Bond being shot and falling - perhaps fatally shot - into a river. The script left Bond sinking and that is where I pick up the story. It was a great chance to make a moody transition into the titles.

I read a study that showed that people who were familiar with a story before being told it enjoyed it more and perhaps, in a subtle way, the titles perform that function.

I spoke at length with Sam about the titles and my first drawings showed women's hands pulling Bond under. I felt this signified how badly injured he was and that it was a woman that had shot him, that the order to shoot was given by a woman, and that to an extent Bond's vulnerability as a character came from a woman's betrayal. Sam immediately liked this, and he was keen that the sequence be a bit like Bond travelling into the underworld, a trip to Hades, an idea I really picked up on.

I went away and elaborated on that and came up with a board that had key images and ideas that Sam liked, but he wasn't keen on the flow of the narrative, he felt it had to be more first person, a kind of POV travelling forward. At first, I was a little disappointed that my first stab wasn't 100% loved, but I came to see what he meant and how it made sense in the context of the story. The titles became a sort of "life flashing before your eyes" experience. Also, that conceit gave me the chance to create some new visuals that suggested out-of-body experiences in which Bond sees himself and his own mortality. It helped the scene in a hall of mirrors, the camera as Bond sees his own reflection and shoots at it, a reference perhaps to his own self doubts and also the fact that I saw his nemesis in the film as being a Bond dopplegänger, the yin to Bond's yang, a dark reflection of 007.
Was the song by Adele already written when you started? How did the union of audio and visual happen?
I hadn't heard the track when I first started having ideas. I went to Pinewood sometime after the film had commenced shooting and Sam had a rough demo of the track he played for me. The demo helped me lock down some of the images and sync them occasionally and loosely to the lyrics, but it took considerable time to get a final mix and even longer to get an edit of the track. It was cut down from five minutes to just below four minutes. The track was a tightly kept secret and I didn't share it with anyone - not even my own team - so they were in the dark as to the tone, mood, and speed of it until quite late in the process. The final marriage of finished track and edit to the visuals happened only a couple of weeks before the sequence had to be finished.

"Graveyard" VFX breakdown

This might be the most complex sequence you've done so far. Can you describe the production process?
In many ways it is the most complex sequence but in others it was one of the easier ones for me to create! The reason for this is that the technology has improved immensely since the era of Goldeneye. The images can be created more swiftly, processed and changed, tweaked and massaged, something I was never able to do in the past due to the mind-numbing slowness of the digital compositing machinery. It could take days to render just a few seconds and then it was impossible to watch it back at full resolution in real time and difficult to see it in sync with the music. The layers of imagery may have been simpler in the past but the process was much less user-friendly.

To start the process, I work out storyboards and do storyboard animatics. This time, I also made a CG animatic to experiment with some of the ideas, then I shoot the elements I require and edit them myself at home into an order with my preferred takes, a bit like an offline. Next, the post-production house Framestore start to create the scenes and effects. I go in regularly to discuss how they are doing and watch the roughs slowly get closer to how I imagined them. The team at Framestore are very creative and I'm happy to get input from them. This post process is the longest part of it, it's very labour intensive, with lots of different techniques and processes. Many a long, late night was had by the team, not many weekends off and much sleep missed.
The titles set up a lot of the events and images that appear later in the film, instilling a sense of déja vu in the viewer. How conscious were you of this and how much did you want to exploit this effect?
The déja vu effect is a happy consequence of me trying to put elements into the titles that are relevant to the story of the film, that suggest a narrative and foretell scenes and action that are yet to occur without giving too much away. I think it sets a mood but is impressionistic rather than literal. I don't want to defuse surprises or story elements that come later in the film. Also, as the audience hasn't yet seen the film some images won't mean that much, but by being suggestive rather than concrete, they stick in the mind, giving a clue as to what is to come without spoiling it.

I also want to create a sequence that rewards repeated viewings. Many people over the years will watch the film multiple times and of course the aficionados and fans will dissect the whole movie, so it's great if on second viewing an image takes on even more poignance or relevance. It's nice to have a couple of "Oh, I get it now" moments as long as they don't detract or confuse on the first viewing. I do think this leads to a déja vu resonance when the relevant scene in the film comes along, somehow enhancing it. I read a study that showed that people who were familiar with a story before being told it enjoyed it more and perhaps, in a subtle way, the titles perform that function.

View 18 images

Hi-res still selects from final sequence

How has CGI changed the Bond title sequence?
I'm not a fan of CGI for its own sake, which may seem surprising seeing as I've used it a lot in the past with greater or lesser success, but I do like to use it to make an idea work. I start with the idea and the image and then work out how to create it, so CGI is certainly a very powerful visual tool which broadens the possibilities for one's imagination and, perhaps even more importantly, it allows a lot of fine tuning. Some of the images - the sinking gun, for instance - are CGI. I could have filmed the gun for real - and in the past probably would have done - but creating it in CGI means I can make it fall at any speed, twist and turn how I want, land as I want, and in effect be controlled to greater extent than actual, locked-in film footage of a gun. So some of the elements that don't look CGI are CGI and are created that way so I can really micro-manage the images. This again is something new because in the past CGI was slow, expensive, and at times much cruder than the aspirations I had for it. It's really come of age now.
Talk about shooting the live-action elements of the sequence. Daniel Craig's 007 is featured more prominently in this sequence than in your last outing.
I needed to have Daniel Craig in the sequence for two reasons. Firstly, the broad idea of the piece is that it's his point of view and the camera and therefore the audience are seeing the action of the titles through his eyes. I needed to be able to explain that so it didn't just seem like a simple journey. The way I did it was to start the sequence by seeing Bond sinking, and then, as he goes into a kind of tunnel - which is subliminally relevant to later elements in the story - he falls forward and sees himself falling away, a psychological effect of an out-of-body experience, something many people report when they are on operating tables or close to death. I hoped that this would underline the idea that the journey was Bond's own. As other clues, I put in the hall of mirrors, where he - the camera and therefore us - looks up and sees himself. The second reason for having Daniel Craig in the titles was to explore the theme of the dopplegänger as villain. Silva is an ex-agent very similar to Bond, who has had similar experiences and a special relationship with M and, in many ways, is the dark flipside of Bond. By having Bond shoot at his own shadow I was alluding to this. Again, it's pretty loosely told but it's there for those that wish to see it.

Of course, there are elements that return again and again, and that is one of the joys of the sequence. It has to be both new and old, paying respect to the heritage but also being fresh and true to the new script.

Could you talk a bit about Bond's gun barrel entrance? The traditional kickoff to a Bond title sequence is noticeably absent in Skyfall. It makes sense for the character at that point in the movie (and the sequence does make an appearance at the end when 007 is back in fighting form), but was it tough to abandon such an iconic element of the series?
The position of the gun barrel entrance wasn't finalised until after the movie had finished shooting and there was a rough cut. I tried a few experiments of how the gun barrel would transition into the first shot of the film as is the tradition but Sam quite reasonably felt there was a double action. The first scene of the movie is Bond dramatically stepping into shot from the dark, in a corridor holding a gun. If this had come from the gun barrel when Bond steps into the shot holding a gun it might well defuse the drama of the first shot of the movie and seem repetitive. So it was his decision to place the gun barrel at the end of the film. The added benefit of this was that the film ends with Bond sort of returning to being the Bond we know of old - he's back and ready for action, no longer the disillusioned and weary character he has played in the movie. So, the gun barrel gives a "He's back!" kind of rush and allows the audience to cheer. I thought it a really good decision and I'm fairly sure the gun barrel will resume its former place in later films.
Do you feel married to the characteristic female silhouettes of past Bond sequences? With each new film there seems to be a departure from this.
Personally I love them, they are a lingua franca for Bond, a worldwide recognisable icon symbolising adventure, glamour, and the exotic. They were a device introduced by Maurice Binder and I'd happily keep using them as shorthand for 007's world. However, they are not always appropriate! I prefer making the idea of the titles work and then working in the classic images and themes of Bond but not forcing them if they don't fit. Also each sequence doesn't have to be the same; it just needs to be true to the spirit and heritage of Bond. Like the barrel, I'm sure the silhouettes will return whether I do more sequences or not.

"Skullbed" and "Blood, Heart, Skull" VFX breakdowns

What were some of your stylistic influences?
I have very eclectic tastes! I trained as an artist and designer, so I love painting and film. I collected comics as a boy and was drawn to Aubrey Beardsley, Gustave Doré, Eduardo Paolozzi, Peter Blake, Saul Bass, Windsor McKay, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Magritte, Bosh, Géricault, George Grosz, Hokusai, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Holbein, Dürer, Arthur Rackham, Heath and Charles Robinson - actually the list is fairly endless!
Can you talk about some challenges you encountered - either creatively, technically, or with personnel?
Really, it was a very smooth process. There was a bit of a stumble over Daniel Craig's eyes at the end of the sequence, which were meant to be a reprise of his young eyes from earlier on, witnessing something we know not what, yet. The problem was that although I filmed Daniel himself, many people didn't recognise the eyes as his! I think he is not often filmed that close and he has very distinctive features that if not seen altogether can cause a bit of confusion. So I had to artificially widen the shot to see a bit more nose, ears, and mouth to make sure everyone knew who it was.
What was the schedule like - how long did it take from the first meeting to the finished product?
We met and talked before Christmas 2011 and then delivered finals September 2012, so it was a long process although I didn't work on it every day of course. There are moments of waiting for things to happen, "Go" buttons to be pressed, and things to be arranged - also long nights of intense work!
What was the hardware and software you used to put it together?
I used Final Cut Pro to edit the footage shot on an Alexa. Framestore composite on Flame and Inferno.

"Chinese Dragons" VFX breakdown

Were there any concepts or pitches for earlier Bond sequences that ended up being integrated into subsequent films? Or do you consider each new film a fresh start - a clean break from its predecessors?
I always think of it as a fresh start. I take the script as the match and start burning the midnight oil to craft the sequence to work with that particular concept or story. Of course, there are elements that return again and again, and that is one of the joys of the sequence. It has to be both new and old, paying respect to the heritage but also being fresh and true to the new script.
What are some of your favorite Bond title sequences?
I've always admired the sequence in You Only Live Twice as the mixture of colours, Japanese imagery, and music seemed to really meld well. Some of Maurice Binder's stranger flights of fancy I also have a soft spot for, like The Spy Who Loved Me with the naked girl in a Russian hat - so we could tell she was a spy! The stroking of the Golden Gun in Man With the Golden Gun always makes me chuckle.
What are some of your favorite title sequences in general, whether film or television?
As a child I loved the opening to The Man From Uncle. The way Napoleon Solo stands behind the bulletproof glass being shot at perhaps subliminally influenced my mirror scene in Skyfall. Get Smart was a good one. Man with the Golden Arm was a great visual. Oddly, I've never really taken a great deal of notice of title sequences. I didn't set out to do them and I don't do any other than Bond, which I do for fun. I'm really an advertising director and therefore shoot a lot of disparate types of things. I suppose I don't think of myself as a title sequence director.
View the credits for this sequence

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In the last interview before his passing in 1991, longtime Bond titles director Maurice Binder observed that Bond sequences were the likely precursors to the modern day music video, in that they blended experimental filmmaking and pop culture into a format perfectly suited for pop music.

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générique : DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, Inc.

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générique : Igino Lardani

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The Good the Bad and the Ugly (1966) title sequence

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Marv Newland

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générique : non crédité, Jean-Luc Godard

1972, Tout va bien : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwCA3iPx8eM

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HELP ART OF THE TITLE KEEP GOING. BECOME A PATRON THROUGH PATREON.

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générique : Jean et Jacqueline Fouchet

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"Parachutes... Alligators... Murderers... Women... You think it's easy? Only for a great adventurer like me!"

Movie taglines can often be accused of misrepresenting the films they are designed to market, but nothing could be further from the truth in the case of 1964's That Man from Rio ( L'Homme de Rio). Director Philippe de Broca's globetrotting adventure features all of the above - and so much more - and also happens to star two French film icons: Jean-Paul Belmondo and Françoise Dorléac. Belmondo plays Adrien Dufourquet, a soldier home on leave when his fiancée Agnès (Dorléac) is kidnapped by mysterious thieves and hauled off to Rio de Janeiro. The chase is on as Adrien pursues Agnès and her abductors to Brazil - letting absolutely nothing and nobody stand in his way. Dorléac and Belmondo are a perfect pairing for this high energy caper, with the former proving to be far more than a damsel in distress and latter tearing through the film with the sort of breathless bravado that would inspire countless everyman action heroes.

The scene featuring the multi-coloured curtains.

Set to a fast-paced samba number composed by the legendary Georges Delerue, That Man from Rio's titles are an equally brisk affair. Designed by Jean Fouchet, the opening credits roll on and off screen affixed to coloured horizontal stripes, their rotation synced to the beat of the bateria's drums. The colour scheme is taken directly from a bar scene later in the film that features similarly coloured strip curtains. That Man is a movie that's going places, so the backdrop is purposefully reminiscent of the flap displays still found at departure gates in airports and train stations around the world.

Produced in the wake of the massive commercial success of the James Bond series, That Man from Rio was, by de Broca's own admission, heavily influenced by the work of Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Many of the film's visuals and plot points are ripped directly from the pages of The Adventures of Tintin comics, specifically 1935's Tintin and the Broken Ear ( L'Oreille cassée). With its mixture of humour, action, exotic locales, and archaeological artifacts, That Man was influential in its own right, and is often cited as a key inspiration for one of cinema's greatest adventurers: Indiana Jones. Raiders of the Lost Ark director Steven Spielberg later wrote to de Broca to tell him that he'd seen the film nine times!

SUPPLEMENTARY: L'Homme de Rio (1964) French theatrical trailer

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ldquo;Parachutes... Alligators... Murderers... Women… You think it's easy? Only for a great adventurer like me!" Movie taglines can often be accused of misrepresenting the films they are designed to market, but nothing could be further from the truth in the case of 1964’s That Man from Rio (L’Homme de Rio).

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1971, La première folie des Monty Python 

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1971, La première folie des Monty Python 

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générique : Terry Gilliam

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1972, Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil

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1972, Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil

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générique : Tito Topin et Etienne Yanzy

1975, Chobizenesse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgUFia0iFug

1972, Tes yeux de braise me font merguez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4bLFkSJh6g&t=2s

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générique : Michel Saignes

1981, La Soupe aux choux
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53J95K8WUog

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générique : R/Greenberg Associates (R/GA) / Richard Greenberg

slit scan :
https://vimeo.com/41747091

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Superman [1978] - Opening Titles/Credits Sequence (720p)

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générique : Robert Abel

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The Black Hole - Wormhole Introduction (1979)

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générique : R/Greenberg Associates (R/GA) / Richard Greenberg

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We float over a planet as white forms appear, dismembered. They work their way from the outside in, everything pointing to the centre. That is where they come from - the middle of you. As the pieces come together, forming a word denoting, in the most basic of terms, The Other, we are enveloped in a steady and dark tension.

Ridley Scott's Alien was Richard and Robert Greenberg's second major film project as a company, R/Greenberg Associates. The first, the teaser and opening title sequence to 1978's , gave them a start, but their second, Alien, established them as a creative voice. In this opening sequence, a disjointed version of Helvetica Black is used to instill a sense of foreboding, the letters broken into pieces, the space between them unsettling. This usage of type, in which letters are simultaneously message and medium, a lens through which ideas are both displayed and distorted, as structure and as obstruction, is a motif to which Title Designer Richard Greenberg would return again and again.

Title Designer RICHARD GREENBERG speaks about his work on Alien in this excerpt from our feature article R/Greenberg Associates: A Film Title Retrospective.
So what came [after Superman]?
Richard: Then Ridley [Scott] was doing this movie called Alien that was going to be a B-movie for Fox - he didn't know how big it would be. Ridley had come out of British advertising and his work looked beautiful but he'd had no success with it.
How did you go about designing those titles?
Richard: The titles came from the idea of something "unsettling." It's disturbing to people to see those little bits of type coming on. I think Steve Frankfurt once said to me that sound is 50% of a film and I agree with that. So we abstracted the idea of the off-putting sound but in a typographic way. We wanted to set up tension and as these little bits come in, they seem very mechanical. We wanted to break the type apart using that letter-spaced sans serif, which really hadn't been done in film before. When the bits finally resolve into a word, I think people weren't prepared to read it as a title because of the spacing.

Editor's Note: The typeface used was actually Helvetica Black.

It looks sort of like Futura. Was it a custom typeface?

Richard: It's probably a slight variation on Futura, but it wasn't custom. It was incredibly simple, but it struck a chord. Maybe because it was attached to one of the most frightening movies ever made!

Predator (1987) VFX work

Alien really put Ridley on the map. It made a lot of money for 20th Century Fox, way more than they expected, and that led to other things, like R/GA designing the effects for Predator and our Academy Award nomination. We didn't win because Spielberg had made a movie that year, and effects weren't on anybody's radar. It was the first award they would present at the Academy Awards just to get it out of the way. That's all changed now.
So similar to Superman, the Alien titles grew out of the marketing for the film.
Richard: Yes. Steve and I created a teaser trailer that was just the egg and those letters and it really worked. It created a sense of foreboding. The teaser trailer was the creative touchpoint for the titles. Phil Gips was the art director. The trailer for Alien, just like Superman, had no voice-over. At the end it just had that copy line which is then repeated a million times: "In space no one can hear you scream." That was written by the art director's wife, Barbara Gips.
And similar to the teaser, the opening titles use the motif of the pan across -
Richard: Across the planet, correct. That grew out of the advertising, too. In that particular period of American filmmaking, from the late '70s into the early '80s, there were some attempts by studios to have the graphic nature of the advertising and the titles feel cohesive. That really dissipated later. Marketing has grown to the point where there are separate departments for everything and the process is more complicated. We tried to use techniques that were experimental for the time.

Alien trailer

Read more about Richard Greenberg's work in our feature article R/Greenberg Associates: A Film Title Retrospective.
View the credits for this sequence

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We float over a planet as white forms appear, dismembered. They work their way from the outside in, everything pointing to the centre. That is where they come from - the middle of you. As the pieces come together, forming a word denoting, in the most basic of terms, The Other, we are enveloped in a steady and dark tension.