Pre Production - Research into Title Sequence Part II

One of the most important things I am working on during this term is the opening Title Sequence. I have worked a lot on title sequences for the past couple of years, but more importantly I am very very passionate about them. I watch a lot of soap operas in spanish, which have very passionate titles that show you though emotion and music what the show is about. I judge shows on title sequences, specially the ones that are longer that 30 seconds. I think a title sequence is a very important element of every production because is one of the first thing that the audience is going to watch and it could potentially be a catch for someone not to change the channel or stop watching. Usually when I see a title sequence with a very bad song or not very appealing visuals (not necessarily visual effects), I decide not to carry on watching or just go and find another show in the meantime. 

Titles sequences are such an important thing for me and if there is an opportunity for me to show that I can make one with all these years of judging so many of them, is right now with this project. I have looked into some intros that have elements that I would include in the one for our show and based on that, I have come to the conclusion that of the main ideas is to create an opening credits with real life action instead of being full of visual effects. This is a bit of a challenge for me as well as I haven't created one like that before, but I believe that part of being an editor and part of learning, is not only getting better at what you already do, but also expanding your knowledge and learning to some other things as well that will make you more useful in the industry. I looked at over 30 title sequences, from the ones I thought had nothing to do with the style like Hannah Montana, Lost, Secret Life of the American Teenager, Arrow, Seinfeld, Lizzie McGuire and others, to some of the ones that actually gave me some ideas or made me realize that they had something good in them but that it didn't work for me. Here are some of those examples.

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Parks and Recreation

This is a series I haven't watched before at all, but I did love the introduction a lot. It is very simple, casual and comical, but more importantly it has the "windows" or "squares" element that can help a lot in our opening credits, because we want to show both the football and the social life aspect of our characters and with the help of something like these "windows," we could achieve that from the very beginning of each episode. 

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

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Friends is another series I haven't watched as much, but that it has been very successful. The title sequence music was to successful as well. that it was on the radio the other day, we are talking 11 years after the last episode aired. It is a very unusual thing for a song from an opening to become famous for that long. but I guess F.R.I.E.N.D.S is F.R.I.E.N.D.S. 

I particularly liked this style of intro, because it showing me already without watching a single episode, that there is a bonding between this characters and also it stands very much to the name of the show, which is a bunch of friends having fun. Although the concept of a bunch of friends doing something together suits perfectly what our story is based on, the intro is not really what I am looking at, since we want to show more aspects of our characters lives. 

Dawson Creek

This one here from Dawson Creek, is very similar to F.R.I.E.N.D.S but it still doesn't suit what I have been looking for. It does show as well some friends having some fun and doing things together, but its still doesn't help me transmit to the audience all I want with the one for Sunday League. I particularly didn't like the shaky camera technique in this one, although I get that they trying to show that one of there characters is actually behind this handy cam, I still thought it was a little bit distracting, but then again that is only my opinion.

La Malquerida

La Malquerida is a Mexican soap opera with 102 episodes. I watched it completely and I did like this intro a lot. The majority of these mexican soaps have very similar characteristics for their intros, which are a lot of saturation, the use of green screen and the appearance of all the main characters from the show, which are accompanied by a very particular song that will remain as the main theme for the whole run. This type of intros I like a lot and are the ones I would like to create in a future as I love the drama, passion and class that a lot of them transmit. 

In comparison to what I am looking for for our show, sadly this type of intro doesn't work as much, because it more serious and dramatical, plus it doesn't really show that much from each character. I would like to maybe take this on board for a future project or an experiment at some point to see if I am able to create something similar but at the moment it will not work as much in our project as I would like to. 

Captain Tsubasa

Better known as 'Super Campeones' in Spanish, this is a Japanese anime that features a couple of friends that play professional football, which includes, teams like Barcelona and playing for the national team of Japan in the World Cup. Although it is an anime, Captain Tsubasa has a lot of similar elements in comparison to our project; football, friendship and the desire to win. Even though there are similarities, the show lacks something (that in my opinion doesn't need as it is very good), which is more development on the characters life outside the pitch, as pretty much every episode is a match and more and more football. 

The title sequence for this show is different because of course it has a lot of animated elements, but more important is that it still gives you an idea of some shots that can be used in case of adding football scenes to it. I don't think it is an amazing introduction, but then again it very football based.

X-Men

We all know X-Men and this was a TV fan made title sequence with footage from a movie, that to be honest was pretty nice made apart from the quality of the image. The concept of this is very simple but also quite smart looking. On one side you have a picture, art, profile or any other name you want to put it from a character and on the other you have some clips from the movie where the character appears. I like having some headshot and profiles from characters edited into some sort of art, but more importantly is something simple that can establish the name of the character and/or actor, plus some footage of them that could be relevant. This is an idea I have as a backup plan, but I thought it would be nice if I make it suit with what we need.


EDIT: Enjoy of part I following this link http://waterflu.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/pre-production-research-into-titles.html