[music] KARIN FONG: I think title design's like a curtain.
Like when you're in the theater, when the curtain gets up there is a moment of anticipation.
And I think it draws you from your everyday into this fantastic world.
JIM HELTON: It's a movie inside of a movie.
And it's always been something that's fascinated me.
BEN CONRAD: I mean, it's such an important time.
The movie starts, and that's a very precious little moment there that really can't be wasted.
PETER FRANKFURT: I think a good title sequence is just a show of respect to the audience.
It says we're really going to actually try as hard as we possibly can to invite you in and to entertain you.
KARIN FONG: A key component of our design is just the concept work.
We hope, you know, something is very aesthetically striking, aesthetically memorable.
But hopefully the reason why it resonates with you is because it's so true to the story it's telling.
PETER FRANKFURT: The project that really launched our company was the title sequence to David Fincher's SE7EN.
What Fincher needed was a formal expression of what he was going for, not so much to mirror his style, but rather to reinforce his style but in a completely different language.
KARIN FONG: You hope that a television series last years and years and that whatever sequence you're coming up with would have a lifespan that encompasses the bigger ideas within the story.
PETER FRANKFURT: Mad Men is a perfect example, right.
What happened is that show became part of the culture and the title sequence became part of the culture.
And that final image of Don Draper with his arm draped over the back of his chair became the iconic image for the show.
KARIN FONG: We're not out to duplicate what the director is doing in the film.
Sometimes it's wonderful to have that contrast at play.
PETER FRANKFURT: The sort of highest compliment is that the title really is of the movie, and that the movie can't exist without the title sequence and vice versa.
And that's always really what we're going for.
BEN CONRAD: Building the anticipation for the audience at the beginning of the film before they've seen anything is so much fun.
In Zombieland, the challenge was really about bridging design and filmmaking.
It was directed by Ruben Fleischer.
And he was taking an approach that we understood in terms of bringing type into the film in a real integrated way.
We were responsible for the whole intro.
So the whole beginning required a lot of design thinking.
Eventually everything clicked that this was going to be these beautiful slow motion shots of zombies all around the country killing people and then integrating the type in the same way, so having them move in that beautiful balletic style.
So you have this grace to it, and at the same time it's horrific.
I think from the beginning Ruben also wanted to have the rules be typographically featured within the film.
So the solution for that was to have the type interact and be part of the scene, and so in a sense become a character.
What we really discovered is that we didn't want to overpower the image.
The images were so fantastic.
And so we didn't want to have the font do so much of that work, and say, like, hey, I'm funny, I'm a funny font.
It didn't need that.
It didn't need to be sort of slapped in your face.
I remember seeing it in the theater and people laughing at the way that the type behaved.
That was just a really gratifying moment, to see that type could entertain in that way.
JIM HELTON: I've always loved title designs.
I've always loved title making.
It's a really cool thing to entertain.
It's like, how do you make something stick with someone?
How you put it in a context so that they'll feel something?
With Blue Valentine, in particular, it hits people.
It was very honest.
It takes you places that are really hard to go.
One of the things I wanted to get across in the title sequence was that there was love.
That it did exist.
And that even thought it was harsh, and it was a hard thing to watch them lose their love, it still existed.
And it didn't devalue that.
They had always planned to have fireworks at the end.
A DP shot the fireworks.
You know, Derek just kept on saying, I want more out of focus, more out of focus, more out of focus.
And so finally they just took the lens off the camera.
And so the real beautiful bouquets, I mean, it's just the camera.
And it looks magnificent to me.
I edited that by itself.
And I found the music, and I did something that was a rhythmic ode to the film.
But it was purely rhythmic.
We had one of our test screenings, and right after it the writer came up to me and she said, you gotta do something with the end that's nostalgic.
And we had these fantastic stills that Davi Russo, our set photographer on Blue Valentine, took.
And it was funny, because as I was watching it, at that moment I was seeing them inside the fireworks.
Right after that I went back in the studio and put something together.
Those aren't necessarily stills that were taken while the shooting was happening.
There's a connection.
He had time with them.
And they collaborated with him.
He really got the actors to give to him.
I think that's one of the reasons why the photos are so resonant and powerful.
Putting images inside of darkness and lightness and revealing them is an experimental technique.
And especially to put something like that in mainstream cinema was really exciting for me.
And those moments of, almost ecstatic moments of filmmaking are really magical.
BEN CONRAD: That moment of mystery at the beginning of the film, that's your only opportunity to really get the audience in into the story.
PETER FRANKFURT: Images in motion, they're by necessity a story, because they're happening over time.
JIM HELTON: For me, the first explosion is like, I'm going to tell you a story.
It's not going to be in words.
But it's still clear that there's a story happening.
PETER FRANKFURT: When everything all falls into place and becomes sort of part of your experience of the show, that's when design becomes filmmaking, right, storytelling.
JIM HELTON: Watched all of Saul Bass's stuff.
I used to make mixed videos of like all his title sequences.
PETER FRANKFURT: He's the pope, come on, he's Saint Saul.
KARIN FONG: You know, he was showing filmmakers to not be literal.
And it's OK to challenge your audience a little bit.
JIM HELTON: He's the best.
I mean, it's not just title design.
Any major logo that I grew up with was probably designed by Saul Bass.
PETER FRANKFURT: He elevated the form.
KARIN FONG: Yeah.
PETER FRANKFURT: He just got people to pay attention to title sequences beyond simply the information that they were conveying.
JIM HELTON: It is mind-boggling how much that guy contributed to the visual world, the graphic world that we live in.
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