If you haven’t seen Blur’s opening titles for David Fincher’s rendition of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, now would be a good time to climb out from under your rock and check them out (above).
In addition to listing the top-billed talent in a film, the role of a good opening credit sequence is to mentally prep the audience for the ensuing film. In that regard, Blur’s titles are an exemplary specimen — perhaps the best from 2011. When the final frame flickers past, your heart rate will have doubled and your pupils will have fully dilated. Consider yourself ready.
Blur’s Tim Miller was kind enough to give us some background on the titles and share some making-of videos with us. Make sure to read on past the jump for all the goodies.
I don’t typically think of Blur as a designer of film title sequences, but it seems you guys are making a push to be regarded as much for your design chops as for your animation skills. Is that a fair assumption? What’s the plan?
We’ve always had an inhouse design group, it’s just not a large as the animation/FX side. So we’ve always been in the game. As for movie titles, I would say this was more a project of opportunity than part of some uber-plan. We’ve done other projects with Fincher in the past, and we have several on-going film development projects with him. For what David had in mind for this title, we were just a natural fit.
But with that said we would like to capitalize on the work. We enjoyed the process, and we like to mix it up and do different styles of work. So hopefully there will be other opportunities for us like this. It’s nice to do something that doesn’t have a big explosion, aliens or gunfire for a change. Though, of course, we love all that stuff!
Art & Graft worked with Spectrum, a leading provider of autism services based in Cornwall, to create a complete visual rebrand including printed material, signage, digital presence, and this film.
Real-world projection mapping was all the rage in 2011. Many a building was seen breaking apart or getting filled up with geometric shapes. This technique is executed similarly to how projection mapping is done in 3D software: A flat animation is created that, when projected onto geometry, wraps around the nooks and crannies for added believability.
One of the most important details in projection mapping is knowing where your audience or camera is going to be and how much they will be moving around. This is because there is often some corner-pinning or other trompe l’oeil trickery involved. As a result, most projection mapping projects either deal with a limited amount of camera movement, or some amount of baked-in perspective that doesn’t necessarily match your viewing angle. This isn’t a bad thing; it’s just an aspect of the technique, like the difference between creating a craggy cliff through projection mapping vs. true 3D — unless you’re going to fly right by that cliff, no one’s going to notice the difference.
So, what’s the point? Well, a group by the name of Marshmallow Laser Feast (Memo Akten, Barney Steel and Robin McNicholas) has figured out one way around this issue. If you are able to link the camera’s position to what’s being projected, than any tiny movement the camera makes can be reflected in real-time. This technology has been used previously in immersive VR CAVEs that are mostly in universities and research facilities. MLF was able to recreate it using consumer products like the Playstation Move.
If nothing I have said makes sense (fair enough), the meaningfulness of this technique can be seen in the ad above. Traditional projection mapping would be able to handle the image at 0:37. It would just be a grid projected directly on the wall. The camera could move around and it would make sense because the texture maps directly to the wall. It would NOT be able to handle what happens at 0:40 and forward. This stretching out to infinity is an illusion that can only happen if the perspective of all the projections perfectly matches the camera.
Another “we live in the future” moment comes from Design I/O (Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille). Their Puppet Parade is an interactive installation that allows children to use their arms to puppeteer larger-than-life creatures. This time, it’s the Kinect that serves as the consumer hardware helping get data into the computer. I love how intuitive the puppeting motion is. It makes it seem perfectly natural that you’re able to control the head of a ten-foot-tall creature with the flick of a wrist, when in fact this is pretty much magic.
All this tech is still pretty bleeding edge, but there are two aspects of these projects that I think are important for the future. First, the ability to interact with graphical worlds on set allows for more spontaneous performances. The actors and cinematographer can see what’s happening and react to it, trying out new performances or camerawork that wouldn’t have come up otherwise.
Second, as these tools get more developed and accessible, a wider range of visual artists will be able to contribute their styles to interactive artwork. Eight to 10 years ago there was a motion graphics boom where a wide range of visual styles, especially illustrated styles, were explored in full motion for the first time. I think in the coming 10 years we’ll see a similar boom in designers and illustrators teaming up with interactive teams to create unique visual worlds to explore.
Two great tastes that taste great together. A phrase that applies to the Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi musical collaboration “Rome,” to Jack White and Norah Jones’ vocals, and to “Two Against One” music video co-directors Anthony Francisco Schepperd and Chris Milk.
In a wrap up of this year’s Motionographer Holiday Catalog (see Part 1 & Part 2), here’s the third and final post saluting story, tradition, history, and method. Enjoy!
UPDATE 10/27/11: Added a last-minute arrival to the holiday scene. See below!
These year end holidays are Grand Central to me – a time of genuflection for the greatest of toys, and consumption of the breadiest of puddings – but especially because I’m a hard-core sentimentalist. I tend to look at history through really thick rose-colored glasses, willingly. So when there’s a massive thorn in one of those memories (such as when Santa didn’t bring my Christmas wish one year because one of these little bastards screwed up on the job), I try very hard to forgive and forget…and then white-wash it with purple prose. Similarly, there’s a lesson here with this closing video: Let us be tolerant of others’ ineptitude.
And so, with a final sweeping festive gesture, please enjoy this touching holiday story:
Well, that’s it folks – we’ve turned the final page of the 2011 Motionographer Holiday Catalog. Hopefully there was at least one item here to circle and put on your wishlist, or at the very least, get that general holiday blood flowing.
Along with the featured in this year’s series, I’d like to thank all those who submitted amazing holiday-inspired content to our offices. When I was a kid, seemingly every commercial on TV around the winter holidays was celebratory in some way, which was really great. And so, while not everything makes it broadcast these days, it’s incredibly inspiring to see the continual effort put forth throughout the industry – personal and professional, across all media – for such a specific, narrow window each year. Please keep up the great work, and tune in 2012 (assuming no worldwide cataclysm) for more festivities!
Happy Holidays, everyone!
Special thanks to Justin Cone, Michelle Higa, Brandon Lori, Daniel Coutinho, Harm van Zon, Ryan Rothermel, Ash Thorp + all the other Motionographer cast members for help this year!
You may have noticed that Motionographer Jobs now charges a small $50 fee to employers looking to post a work opportunity on our job board. While the service will remain free for those searching and applying to job postings, we’ve levied this price in order to accommodate our costs as a not-for-profit, all volunteer organization. Still, our primary goal of matching the industry’s best skills with the best opportunities remains and we thank each of you for your support and continued participation in Motionographer Jobs.
In a continuation of last week’s post and Royale’s excellent holiday short, this is the second of Motionographer’s Holiday Catalog three-part series, which reviews some of 2011′s better winter holiday-themed ads, PSAs, cards and shorts. Enjoy!
We recently Quickied Keloid, a stunning trailer for an as-yet-unrealized film that the wizards at Barcelona-based Big Lazy Robot hope to produce someday. BLR’s director, J.J. Palomo, was kind enough to shed some light on the project and share some behind-the-scenes goodies.
Where did the idea for this film come from?
We’re very few in our team, so we’re very close and always hear what each other have to say in terms of ideas for possible future projects. Some 12 months ago, one of the animators came up with this idea of mechanical SWAT forces rushing into a clandestine drug lab also operated by robots.
We all agreed on two things: The idea was very, very appealing, but it still needed something else beyond just satisfying a visual appetite. We spent some months reading, surfing the web, looking here and there to build up a solid story.
In my opinion, what we’ve got today is something bigger that the art itself. We are very fond of following our appetites instead of our ideas, and our biggest appetite for this project was to showcase a real fresh perspective on sci-fi panorama.
Is there only the trailer?
The story we want to tell is nothing of an easy one, so we don’t know if a short movie can cover it all. Hopefully, it can.
We have all the characters, script and art ready. I mean, the trailer displays some of them, but there’s much more behind it. We would like, of course, to go for a feature film, but the biggest thing we’ve done so far are commercials, so we need to move slowly here.
We do advertising, mostly: Projects are never too big, the pay is good and it’s a field that’s evolving so much. This allows us to “buy” time to devote to more artistic goals, those we really love. We’re in the middle of a commercial project right now that will keep us busy until next March, so it’s a good while to sit and think.
The main sequence for X-Men: First Class, produced by Prologue, has a special retro/2D hand-made feel and serves as a strong example of how a simple execution can go a long way when put together with well-developed conceptual thinking. Director Simon Clowes kindly shared some words with us.
I saw this as an opportunity to make something that stands out not for its visual complexity or photorealism but for its simplicity and sensibility.
As he puts it, they had the technology and the talented artists to pull off a really complex sequence; however, prioritizing the concept and having to deal with various limitations eventually led them to this stylish and remarkable result.
Football? socialism? amazing motion design? yes, and you should like it before you even finish watching it. Performed by Bill Maher & Directed and Animated by Fraser Davidson
Screen social in London has two events coming up, one Thursday, Jan. 12 @ the ICA and another Wednesday, Jan. 18 @ The Book Club EC2. More details here.
Paul Tuersley’s After Effects scripts have helped me countless times. With OpenSesame, he’s figured out how to make After Effects files backwards compatible. Someone buy this man a beer!
Matijn Hogenkamp of PlusOne directs an epic trailer for the the Amsterdam Museum’s new exhibition: Amsterdam DNA. Read more about the project at the museum site and check out the process/credits at PlusOne.
Posterity is a limited edition series of posters for good. Designed by The Mill’s creative staff and its extended network of artist friends, this poster series has been created as a part of the 50/50 initiative to aid the famine relief efforts in East Africa.
