SECRETS OF THE TITLE
TV and movie titles are now works of art in and of themselves, and we hear from the designers of some of TV’S most dazzling and creative sequences
elevision title sequences have been enjoying a kind of heyday in recent years; we’re seeing a proliferation of remarkably beautiful, lavish sequences that are works of art in their own right and aesthetically distinct from the material they’re introducing – instead of simply using show footage, they’re built entirely in CG, and many feature paintings and other natural textures that have been brought into the 3D space and manipulated.
“Title sequences typically come with challenging budgets and schedules,” says director
“With These advancements, complex and photorealistic results are possible With Smaller Teams and Tighter deadlines” Alan Williams, director/art director
Alan Williams, who has worked on titles for Black Sails, Gypsy and
Anne with an E. “In the past this limited studios’ ability to do heavy CG jobs, but with advancements in hardware and software, as well as growing pools of artists familiar with these programs, complex and photorealistic results are becoming possible with smaller teams and tighter deadlines.”
While he credits the evolution of CG tools as having “emptied almost all excuse and limitation for finding a creative solution”, and created “a trust in my artists and the tools that they use that our ideas, as abstract and complex as they may be, can
“openings Should bypass Trends for The Sake of becoming Timeless” Alan Williams, director/art director
be brought to life,” he warns that the capabilities of CG tools should never be allowed to drive the creative vision.
“The perfect equation for a title to feel dated quickly is to force the unique vision and tone of a show into a particular aesthetic because we now have the technology to do so. The problem comes when we let these advancements in technology direct our storytelling instead of the other way around. Unlike commercials that may be here today and never seen again, TV shows and movies deserve openings that bypass trends for the sake of becoming timeless.”
A notable moment in terms of the evolution of CG tools’ impact on title design came in 2014 when Williams art directed the titles for Starz’s pirate adventure Black
Sails, which features intricately carved, ornate porcelain figurines, which, remarkably, never existed outside of a computer – they were all rendered in CG. “Modelling high-density mesh sculptures with photorealistic texturing and lighting wouldn’t have been budgetarily possible years prior,” says Williams. “To have permission to design that sequence as intricately as I wanted, with the confidence that our team at Imaginary Forces was capable of producing it, is a creative’s dream. Budgetary warnings from my producers to dial back my ideas have become rare, and I give the advancement of technology so much credit for that.”
Anne with An e
More recently, Williams worked as creative director on the title sequence for Anne with an E, a TV show based on the novel Anne of
Green Gables about an imaginative
girl who loves to immerse herself in nature. It premiered in 2017. For this sequence Williams sought to bring the natural texture of real paintings into the 3D space. “Looking outside the standard pool of Photoshop artists in NYC, we wanted to find an authentic, handpainted style that would speak to the humanity of this character,” says Williams. The work of artist Brad Kunkle was selected for its depth and realism and also its use of gold and silver leaf, which creates interesting reflections.
“We were always trying to find a balance between retaining the beauty of Brad’s artwork and introducing dimensionality, moving reflections and dynamic lighting through CG,” Williams tells us. Brad Kunkle created additional paintings especially for the sequence and also served as art director, helping the team to ensure that his style was preserved.
“Our CG artist used Cinema 4D and Maya to sculpt geometry that matched the contours of the objects in Brad’s work. Once modelled, we then projected these painted elements onto them. There was a bit of digital painting needed to fill in portions of the paintings due to the addition of camera movement,” Williams explains.
“It was our CG teams’ ability to practise restraint that I am most proud of. Yes, we could have had the camera move more
dynamically throughout each scene – and we tried – but very quickly Brad’s perfectly composed scenes felt off, fighting against the overall authenticity and cohesiveness of the piece. We even rigged and animated our Anne character but found it no longer read as a painting, feeling digital and uncanny.”
The result of this restraint, plus the presence of Brad Kunkle as art director, is a 3D sequence with beautiful movement and light that preserves the natural feel of the original works.
JESSICA Jones
Director and motion graphics designer Arisu Kashiwagi was lead designer on the title sequence for Marvel’s Jessica Jones, which, like the Anne with an E titles, uses paintings brought into the 3D space to convey something of the essence of the show’s protagonist.
For the initial concept design, Arisu and the team at Imaginary Forces sought to depict the nature of Jessica’s work as a private detective, sneaking around and peeping through the windows of Hell’s Kitchen. “A lot of the compositions are designed to carry a voyeuristic tone,” she tells us. “The vignettes would be blocked by some object in the foreground or enclosed inside a door or window. So you never saw the scene in full; it was always a partial view surrounded by a sea of black negative space.”
Jessica Jones is a dark story of a human psyche damaged by trauma and abuse – Jessica has PTSD and drinks heavily – so the team looked for ways to hint at the vulnerable aspects of her character.
“We asked ourselves, what does PTSD look like? How would the world look through her point of view? From there, I explored a direction where layers of paint were smeared across various vignettes in Hell’s Kitchen. Paint became the driving visual
“paint became The driving visual metaphor for Jones’ blurred visions” Arisu Kashiwagi, motion graphics designer
metaphor for Jessica Jones’ blurred visions, and acted as a transitional element between the scenes. Incorporating negative space was intentional – it symbolised pockets of her blackout.”
Smaller TEAMS
Yongsub Song is a motion graphics designer who has worked on titles for various Marvel shows, and for him, a major advantage that has come with the advancement of CG tools is the shrinking of team sizes and the effect that this has on the work. When creating title sequences, the design concept is always the most important thing, he explains. “It is easier for the design concept to be compromised when you have many players on board. A smaller team means a simpler pipeline, and it’s easier to stay true to the concept.”
Karin Fong, a director and designer whose work includes titles for Boardwalk Empire, Black Sails and Rubicon, also finds small teams advantageous. “I like to have the same people around from concept to finish, so you can explore the vision together and make discoveries as a team. The fact that more and more can be done on the same machine, and the processes aren’t sent out and specialised, is a creative advantage.”
Like Alan Williams, Fong sees the Black Sails titles in 2014 as a milestone in terms of the capabilities of CG tools. “So many people thought we shot that sequence, which was extremely flattering,” she says. “When we first concepted it we drew these elaborate baroque statues and we considered getting craftspeople to make them, or printing them with a 3D printer and shooting them. But we worked with an amazing team of lighting and modellers and were able to get those details just right in CG, which I don’t think even a decade ago would have been as realistic or feasible as it was for us just a few years ago.”
Counterpart
Recently, Fong directed the title sequence for the new Starz show
Counterpart, a science fiction espionage thriller in which a UN bureaucrat discovers his agency is guarding a crossing point
to a parallel dimension. Fong tells us that it was important to the show’s creators that, despite the sci-fi themes, the sequence felt grounded in reality, so it was important to capture the essence of the real-world setting – which was a mundane government office in Berlin. Once again, bringing natural textures into the 3D space was the key to creating a sense of authenticity, so Fong and her team photographed the set.
“I love being able to take what is photographic – textures and real things from the analogue world – and merge it with the digital world,” says Fong. “We were able to shoot textures – the wood, the brass, the concrete – that sort of typify that Eastern European style bureaucracy, and bring them into the CG environments we were building that were more metaphorical.”
The sequence brings natural textures as well as motifs from East German architecture into a surreal space in which figures move past each other on different planes, perhaps interacting, perhaps not.
“[We had] the production designer from Mad Men so every detail of colour and texture was considered on the set,” she tells us. “To be able to bring that in and work with those same very tactile things within CG was amazing. Our lead modeller and animator Jake Ferguson was able to concept up spaces with different materials and lighting quickly, and in a way that was very fluid – that’s getting better and better all the time.”
“i love Taking What is photographic from The analogue World and merging it With The digital World” Karin Fong, director/designer
Find out more at www.imaginaryforces.com