Veterans Of Color Film Titles

This is a rough animatic of my story boards for Veterans of Color the audio behind it is scratch.. its along the lines of what Im looking for but the bugle call is the wrong color. I  like the idea of pulling back and including the discipline and cadence of troops marching as a audio backdrop for the titles.

Description of Title Sequence: Veterans of Color

Decorated in colors that represent country,freedom,sacrifice and service, our military veterans proudly display these symbols on their chest. The excitement and energy of the colorful pattern and color is offset by the quiet and clean white copy on a black name tag which carries an implied meaning using only the soldiers last name. This title treatment explores using this simple visual relationship as a means to style the credits. Meanwhile the color of the wardrobe cycles through from navy, green to black representing the change and breadth of experience African Americans and people of color have experienced while serving in the United States Military.

I have done some visual research to try and find the aesthetic for my title sequence options for the film Veterans of Color.

opt 1: Fatigues / Military Dress:

This concept uses the format from military dress name tags and uses colors and details of decorated veterans uniform through out the intro title sequence as background / tactile imagery.

Opt 2: Enlist

This option would utilize camera depth of field in after effects to highlight the copy within this title sequence as if information had been written on a military enlistment application.

Susan Bradley Title Designer

In a PBS short Susan Bradley comments on the influence of her honest respect for typography and its use in film title sequences.

Watch Susan Bradley; Title Designer - Pixar on PBS. See more from INTERVIEW.

Susan Bradley's Film Titling Contributions
yup... she is pretty prolific.

(Here is just a short list as seen on her website)
http://www.susan-bradley.com/film.htm


WALL-E Andrew Stanton, Pixar
(Academy Award: 2009 Best Animated Feature)
LA LUNA Enrico Casarosa, Pixar
CARS 2 John Lasseter, Pixar
INDUSTRIAL LIGHT & MAGIC: Creating the Impossible Leslie Iwerks, Starz
WINSTON CHURCHILL: Walking with Destiny Richard Trank, Moriah Films
TOY STORY 3 Lee Unkrich, Pixar
(Academy Award: 2011 Best Animated Feature/Original Song)
DIRTY OIL Leslie Iwerks, Babelgum Productions
UP Pete Docter, Pixar
(Academy Award: 2010 Best Animated Feature/Best Score)
BURN-E Angus MacLane, Pixar
THE PIXAR STORY Leslie Iwerks, WD Studios Motion Pictures
RATATOUILLE (Production Graphic Design/Title Design) Brad Bird, Pixar
(Academy Award: 2008 Best Animated Feature)
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH Davis Guggenheim, Participant Productions/Paramount
(Academy Award: 2006 Best Feature Doc)
THE MATADOR Richard Shepard/Pierce Brosnan, Irish Dreamtime/Miramax
NUMB3RS (TV: Production Graphics/Efx Animation-SeasonOne)
Ridley & Tony Scott and Brooke Kennedy, CBS
TWO FOR THE MONEY D.J. Caruso, Morgan Creek/Universal
DARK WATER Walter Salles, Touchstone
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES Walter Salles, Focus Features/Universal
(BAFTA: 2005 Best Foreign Feature, 3 Cannes Awards: 2004)
OUT OF TIME Carl Franklin, MGM
MONSTERS, INC. Pete Docter & David Silverman, Pixar
THE FIRST YEAR Davis Guggenheim, The Getty/PBS
FOR THE BIRDS Ralph Eggleston, Pixar 
(Academy Award: 2002 Best Animated Short)
AMERICAN HIGH R.J. Cutler, Fox Television
EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE Mark Dindal & Randy Fullmer, Disney
THE BLUE DINER Jan Egleson & Natatcha Estebanez, Independent
TOY STORY 2 John Lasseter, Pixar
GOSSIP Davis Guggenheim, Warner Bros.
RUNAWAY BRIDE Garry Marshall, Paramount/Touchstone
THE BIG KAHUNA John 
MURDER IN THE FIRST Marc Rocco, Warner Bros.
QUIZ SHOW Robert Redford, Hollywood Pictures
THE LION KING Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff, Disney
REALITY BITES Ben Stiller, Universal
THE THING CALLED LOVE Peter Bogdanovich, Paramount







Ratatouille: 2008 Graphic Design

Susan Bradley has a wealth of experience in title design, graphics and direction in the movie industry. She was manager of Walt Disney Studios’ Title Graphics Department for six years before moving on to design titles for a number of live action films. In 2006 she teamed up with the Pixar gang and was involved in their animated success, Ratatouille.

Susan Bradley was responsible for designing a custom typeface for the Beginning and End credits on Ratatouille.



The hand-drawn cursive in the beginning credits was a variation on some sketches from field studies in Paris.







The serif typography in the end cards was rendered in pencil inspired by a slab serif typeface Rockwell. Then images were scanned and re-painted in photoshop.
The Matador: 2005

Turns out that Bradley couldn’t show any blood in the bullfight footage. The bullfights were beautifully shot in Spain, but they are intense so that was a challenge.

 Producing this over the holidays Bradley found herself locked in the Studio with some eggnog for a week hammering away on this powerful sequence.











Bradley's Influences:

John Lasseter

Harold Adler: who trained Bradley in calligraphy also shared his hand-lettering and production experience with Saul Bass and Hitchcock.

                   

Film Titling Inspiration

Watchmen:

The Watchmen Opening Titles por ypsilon2 no Videolog.tv.

Thank You for Smoking:


The use of vintage packaging to showcase the titles is a great approach. This title sequence resonates with me because of its attention to great graphic design and attention to detail with the transition from one title frame to another.


Dr. Strangelove:


The combination of U.s. Military footage and the long lined hand-rendered text is a great contrast. I love the juxtaposition of innocent orchestral music paired with the footage of flying through the air and re-feuling a bomber. This is a classic for a reason.. it rules.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang:


The strong graphic approach and attention to transitions keeps this one at the top of my list. I admire the retro approach to reinforce the influence of film noir on the story and feel the titles really set you up to understand the direction of the film.

Final Pitch for Sarasota Film Festival Intro 2012

THE PALMS | Welcome you to Sarasota : by Kevin Passmore

Sarasota Film Festival project brief:

Project:  Sarasota Film Festival Open Creative Brief                                                                           

Client:  Sarasota Film Festival

Contact:   Tom Hall – Artistic Director    

Date: 9/26/11

The Project Objective  

To create an engaging :30 promo/open for the 2012 Sarasota Film Festival that reflects the best of the Sarasota community that we as an arts organization represent. The animation should increase the interest of the audience to want to come back to see more films, and it should speak directly to sophisticated, art-loving audiences.  The open sets the tone for the viewer’s festival experience. This animation becomes the official identity of the festival for all those attending.  

Our idea is for teams to take the “Why I Love The Movies” theme and to conduct audio interviews of the people of Sarasota, which reveal something special and personal about the individual’s love of film/movies. These interviews, done in a documentary style, will form the concept of the individual trailers.  Each team will use the words spoken in the interviews as the concept for their piece, but teams have the freedom and are encouraged to be as imaginative as possible when animating the interviews. The idea is to have a “documentary” soundtrack, but for the images on the screen to be as fun and imaginative as possible. 

To be clear: Teams will have to identify their own interviewee, and ask their own questions, based on the theme "Why I Love Movies."   They would have to edit their own audio track and animate to their own audio edit. 

The Target Audience  

The Sarasota Film Festival serves two audiences; International and independent film enthusiasts who enjoy both foreign and domestic independent films, and the international film business community, which features directors, producers, actors and distributors who attend the festival each year to present their films to our audiences.   Audiences range from high school and college students 15-25 years old through to active, art-loving seniors, to the filmmakers themselves. All share in the appreciation of intellectually stimulating and creatively expressive filmmaking.  

The Target Emotional Response / Tone  

The tone of the final project should reflect the special feeling of discovery, of something very personal about why we love movies It should reflect the professional quality of the films playing at the festival. 

The Communication Strategy  

The animation will be used in the theater to welcome people to the SFF   It can also be used as a title for a highlight reel for the year.  It will be seen on the big screen in film festivals, on the SFF Website, and possible use for television advertising for the event.

Technical Specifications / Deliverables

Each animation will be 18 seconds in length.  The final animation must be rendered in a 16:9 ratio, at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 lines.

Must include audio track.

Final render as a QT movie.  H264 Compression. 

We would like the animation to be built as part of a :30 trailer/commercial that will run on local television, be placed online, and played in front of each film at the festival. 

In summary and in this order, the animation should follow this format:

:18 second animation

:04 second credit card as follows (including the larger font for SFF motto):

WHY I LOVE THE MOVIES

Created by Team Member 1, Team Member 2, Team Member 3, etc.

Ringling College Of Art and Design, Department of Motion Design

:08 seconds of black

:30 of audio running throughout (interview + Music, or whatever works for your piece)

Hero Audio Clip:

Its time to get this project in front of Artistic Director Tom Hall from the Sarasota Film Festival.

If all goes well ( fingers crossed) this concept may be chosen as one potential direction for an opening sequence at next years 2012 Sarasota Film Festival.

You can view a short PREZI on my concept here:

SFF The Palms Welcome you To Sarasota on Prezi

Some Inspiration:

The O.G. my grandpa C.J. used to say "saw'right" to me  all the time impersonating Señor Wences, I've always thought this puppetry to be hilarious and everytime I hear it, it reminds me of him clenching a pipe between his teeth and the smell of that sweet pipe tobacco. 

As a tribute to this and other great acts of puppetry we are using this type of character  and its inherent construction in a natural and accessible way. Combining Photoshop, After Effects and some Cinema 4D we are able to bring these characters into a new animated and potentially interactive experience.

Board-A-Matic numero Uno: 
This is just to illustrate how the story boards and audio will start to sync up.

Take 1:

Final Boards:

Inspiration: Jamie Lidell on Maschine

As we are getting into our final audio edits and storyboards, I just happened on some great footage
of Jamie Lidell composing using imaschine and an iphone to to lay down an audio sketch.
So touching on inspiration again... man.. Jamie Lidell will never let you down.

This guys always blows my mind.

He is a maniac on stage and a simply brilliant artist.

Enjoy!

SFF Process.. Audio and Sketches

After Another round of review and revision I am getting much closer to having these boards in a good direction. Only 1 day to do til the client pitch. Going to put the polish on this project now... lets see how shiny we can get it by tomorrow afternoon.

So after the initial review there was some support for the hand-puppets,Life in the shadows and the Café au lait chalk animation directions. In an effort to simplify the direction and distil these in to a simpler concise idea I think I will try and combine a concept and portray it using two of these directions.
Life in the Shadows and Hand Puppet conversation.

The overall concept Im going to reinforce visually is that you can learn a lot about the world  through your experiences interacting with others and watching film / cinema. You can learn about yourself and others by watching how you react to a variety of emotional stories and situations. Viewers can  be exposed to other alternative views and other ways of life around the world in the matter of minutes. Other cultures are something that can be understood and in a subtle way simply thorough immersing oneself in a unique cinematic experience. Individuals can transport themselves in an instant to another reality, or new way of thinking just by closing their eyes they can transcend reality and create a new one  only using their mind.

1. Living the Dream, Just go in your mind.

If we close our eyes and just slow down we can learn a lot about ourselves and the world.
Highlighting moments in time and slowing down our observations the simple actions we take shape our experiences with others  increase our level of cognitive awareness. As we tap into shared streams of consciousness, through the sharing of stories and our life experiences we learn what it means to be connected and  find strength in our interactions with others within our community.

2. Talk with your Hands / Conversation:


Before this film starts, lets talk about why we love coming out together and sharing in these cinematic experiences. There is nothing like the anticipation of waiting for a movie to start, as the local ads and trivia questions pass by we snack on popcorn,sip our soda and we talk about the events of the day. As the lights dim, the room grows quiet and we turn out attention to the screen as images begin to flicker and we are soon transported into another dimension.




LISTEN 20 TIMES more more more.. still not convinced this is the best audio I can use but will work for now.

Movin On :
Where my mind goes while under the influence of this audio, and cold medicine...seriously.. ive got the sickness.


Café au Lait,
Moustaches,
Eavesdropping,
Ocean,Birds,
Crowds,
Traveling
Soda Pop,
Polyester,
French Hand Puppet with others in Theatre,
Leisure suits,
Grandmas beach house,
Shadow Boxing,
A Life in the Shadows,
Texture Ribbons of Light,
Closing your eyes,
Taxi Ride, Dreaming,Seaguls.

Well It Got my mind churning on some different directions Here are some of the cherries.

Life in the Shadows:
Life happens everywhere and stuck with us for only moments at a time we have our shadow. Participating in our daily lives through the good and the bad our silhouettes reflect the actions we take, sometimes they are amplified.. other times diminished.

 Close Your Eyes:


Tell me what you see, why you love to dream. This light that you see, it tells stories and shapes our world. Even when we close our eyes and its dark with imagination we can create our own light, shape the world we experience and connect with eachother.

Maybe look at perspective of 1st person, closing eyes and imagining another reality,would love to explore light and the experience of it shaping our experiences through cinematic experience .


Eyes close and ends up traveling inside projector through  ribbons of light. Maybe a cloud of thoughts that the camera is flying through that take on shape of theatre settings or mood of a film?






Leisure Suit Larry: 
What if instead of cotton  polyester was the fabric of our lives?Lets throw it back to the old school,nothing screams Florida more than the eccentric mix-match of flammable materials.
After all that keep your chin up that Leisure suit still looks great on you.

I want to explore Textures and silouettes of all things film and sarasota.When Im at the theatre I for some reason find myself staring at the carpet at somepoint. Always crazy tripped out carpet in most theatres. I think this is just incase someone pukes or the kids spill nacho cheese, it will be easy to cover up.

Explore possibilities of textured concession stand foods, crowd in a theatre, Would love to feel pretty 2 dimensional / flat. Plaid Palmtrees, striped sodas.











Give a Hand






Hand puppets could be amazing! Just something fun that everyone can do. If the narrative is assigned to a character could have a stronger impact and add a fun human element. When done talking to puppets could clap together may be hilarious or may just be a little to dumb, there is definitely a fine line here.

Café au lait.. a Street Conversation
Taking place on a street corner bistro table.. tight shots focused on the subtle movement of food...
cream spinning in coffee,light through ice water,shine of silverware, all animated by hand.
Would love to explore the technique of rotoscoping some video footage of actual re inacted scene to audio.





Man.. its been a challenge to get permission to record any audio in a theatre setting. Trying to be legit about getting access has proven to make it near impossible to get anywhere. Think my only option for authentic recordings is to go gorilla style and capture some live stuff.. or get a part time job in a theatre just for this project.



We had some good success in our initial round of audio interview on St. Armands.. so for now Here is the 18 sec working audio. I still think I can find something that works better... but for now.. this is what ive got going on.



Animation Options coming to mind:

1. Still Life with Moving Shadows:
Images portraying people doing everyday things around sarasota but their shadows will be animated to feel alive.

2.Typical Crowd:
 Pan through Silouettes in Cinema Ending up on Screen.

3.Use your Senses.
What do you Hear, Feel,See, Smell,Love about the Movies?
(Ideally would love strong audio to support this direction)
If audio gets to this point I would love to pursue the senses of cinema.
Abstract representations of Food, Atmosphere, Emotion that you can experience while watching a film.

I would really just like to capture something more charming and authentic.. I like what we have but know deep down that something better is out there.

Ryan Woodward Visits RCAD

Ryan Woodward inspires students explaining his philosophy on sketchbooking.

Ryan Woodwards inspiring visit to Ringling just reassured me that I attend one of coolest schools in existence. So yeah, this was a rough day at Ringling... 9am call time at lido beach, 2.5 hours of figure drawing, plethora of shared knowledge, insight into observational technique and we all had the pleasure of meeting a most humble and prolific artist, Ryan Woodward.

Starting out Ryan discussed his philosophy on  using a sketchbook and obeservation of everyday life. He stressed the value of looking at the world around you and using your sketchbook as a tool to get your ideas out.  The idea of coming back to them later as references and inspiration makes a lot of sense. Woodward kept our full attention  for over 2 hours, it was really a one of a kind opportunity for everyone to hear Ryans words of wisdom.

Later that evening Woodward treated us to a presentation where he shared some of his process and showed us all some case study animatics from previous jobs. He stressed achieving a balance between feeding your creative beast within and paying the bills. He seems to have found this balance and has been able to maintain it for years.  He accredits it to his always keeping pet projects on the back burner, and never getting too attached to an idea on a job. As it the nature of film things can always change.
Its opportunities like this that make Ringling on of the best in my opinion. Above and beyond the everyday challenges put in place in academia, they strive to help students form a connection with working professionals and help us to find inspiration in just about anything.