Sep 02
Inspiration series: Movie credits
2008 at 06.17 pm posted by Veerle Pieters
For our next part in the inspiration series we point our direction towards the big white screen. For long time opening credits where just a boring obligated part. Luckily people start realizing that more was possible in the late 1950s and it became a form of art. There is one graphic designer that made several credits mini movies a work of art and his name is Saul Bass. He is solely responsible for a turning point in the movie credits world. What follows is a small selection of what I found inspiring.
North By Northwest (1959)
West Side Story (1961)
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
Panic Room (2002)
Thank You For Smoking (2005)
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Juno (2007)
Doctor No (1962)
Casino Royale (2006)
Seven (1995)
The Return of The Pink Panther (1975)
Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
Delicatessen (1991)
Lord of War
Euro Trip (2004)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Worked up an appetite?
If all this beautiful graphic design work for movies worked up an appetite there is good news for you. There is a book called 'Uncredited' by Gemma Solana and Antonio Boneu that has 312 pages that show you more movie openings credits.
75served
1
Very very nice! Thx for sharing this.
2
There are a few classic movie titles here, and some rather unexpected ones. “Lord of War” was not only an excellent film but the intro was well done and clever given the subject matter. However, you missed one of my all-time favorite movie intros (even if it failed to live up to the book), “Sphere”. While I don’t have a direct link, I do have two links you should add to this story in an update, one of which might have the intro credits:
Imaginary Forces
Prologue
Kyle Cooper helped found IF but he no longer works there. His work is an excellent study in motion graphics. At least one of the film titles you mention was his, “Se7en”.
3
Eurotrip is one of my favourites :) It is really a dumb film, but is extremely funny :D
And my favourite is the starting with the credits which is very well done.
Also thanks for the list Veerle! I enjoy your posts!
4
Really great list, I love Juno and Thank you for smoking
5
Talk about comprehensive! Thanks for this, Veerle. I love great title sequences.
6
For those into infographics, the intro to Stranger than Fiction is also a must see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLPUmYiVgbw
7
If you ever decide to do a list of tv intros, you gotta include Dexter.
I just love that music and the cinematography.
8
Stranger than Fiction also has a very good opening credit sequence.
9
Yes! I love the EuroTrip credits. I have watched just the credits many a times and taken away many ideas to experiment with in Flash. Glad to see it made the list.
10
The Kingdom has a great set of opening credits, and is actually educational at the same time.
11
Wow! This is quite a variety of graphical styles. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at it for the typography, photography or illustration, there’s a lot of inspiration to be gleaned from each frame. Thanks, Veerle.
12
Very interesting post! There are so many well-designed movie credits out there. My favorite in this list would have to be Thank You For Smoking. The credits for Ocean’s Eleven are quite nice too.
13
This is a great list, you should also check out the intro credits to Four Rooms. Great stuff.
14
Thx for this post! Title sequences were the subject of research I did back in art academy. I am still finding loads of inspiration in these, nice to find a kindred spirit in you Veerle. North by Northwest is one of the greatest titles ever created if you ask me. I’d recommend taking a look at Bass’s later work like Casino and Goodfellas as well. Another masterpiece I’d like to add: the opening credits for To kill a Mockingbird. Subtle and intrigueing design by Stephen Frankfurt, which adds to the story for those who watch closely.
15
Wait until you see the credits of Wall-E !
Most amazing credits I’ve ever seen.
16
Yay! - fantastic post.
“Casino Royale” is one of my favorites - mostly because the song is SO darned good, but I really like the end credits for “The Incredibles” - and recently I saw “Domino” which has a really inspiring title sequence too.
My two cents away…
17
I’m very surprised you didn’t include “Charade” :) which is a very good movie, by the way. And the opening credits are just SOOOOO 60’s :)
18
I remember marveling at the Casino Royale credits when I saw them in theater :)
These are really beautiful, what a unique place to get inspiration. Thanks for sharing.
19
Hi Veerle,
Thank you for sharing that! Love it!
20
Wow. Some of my fave films in there - and some of my fave title sequences. Especially Lord of War and North by Northwest! Inspired!
21
I really love the opening credits for “Stranger than Fiction” see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iWbAw-L1lg
22
nice !!! Love it..
You can find more of them here…
The Art of Title Sequence
23
I love all these movie credits. I think the more it is well done the more you want to watch the movie and you remember it later.
Catch me if you can’s one is awesome !
24
Nice List, remember ripping Saul Bass a few times at college! Just thought I would add an intro hat I like
Hostage
Also not strictly an intro but a nice dvd menu is for sin city
Sin City DVD Menu
Keep Up the good Work Veerle
25
Lovely list. I didn’t know all those really great sequences were out there. The best sequence I’ve seen is the closing credits to “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”. The graphic style of the whole movie is quite inspirational; however (from what I’ve seen) it’s probably not exactly to your taste.
26
Great list. The Bond films always have very interesting credits and are worth watching.
Some of Pixar’s credits are also worth checking. The start to Monsters Inc. and the end credits of Wall-E immediately spring to mind.
27
Great selection there.
Really makes me want to go and watch some of those again right now :)
28
I remember when I saw the credits for Casino Royale in the theater, I immediately did some digging to find the studio that put it together and fired off an email to them. I obviously wanted to know if they had used Illustrator for any of it. The response I got was along the lines of “we don’t use toys like Illustrator—we created it using Inferno”... :)
29
For the typelovers amongst us check this list of fonts that have been used in ‘thank you for smoking’
nice research Veerle!
30
one of the best is the Ginger Snaps intro
31
Dead Man on Campus has always been one of my favourites.
32
thanks for posting this! very cool
33
Best intro ever made: Lord of war!
34
Very intresting post as always. Thank you Veerle for sharing this.
35
Excellent post. I too loved the Casino Royal credits. Such a breath of fresh air. The song suited them too. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is another favourite and I’d completely forgotten about those Panic Room credits.
36
I remember going bonkers when I saw the titles for “Catch Me If You Can” since I thought no-one did titles like that anymore. The TV show Heroes (US) displays show titles in interesting ways, such as floating on water or wrapping around a roofline. Too bad they always stick to “comic book” type for it and don’t use any animation, but it’s cool nonetheless, especially since it’s TV and not the movies.
37
Thanks for taking some time to give some due “credit” to the designers of opening credits! They really do create some fantastic ‘mini movies’ themselves.
Don’t forget closing credits, too. Some have some fantastically beautiful closing credit sequences.
Van Helsing’s closing credits are the first that come to mind, but there are so many out there that do such a wonderful job.
38
Lots of Saul Bass references in a lot of them - he was the king of intros - really made them an art form. Kyle Cooper (Se7en) was a great inspiration to me during my time at Uni. Good post :)
39
wow…great list…all the elements covered…typo,illustration…photography….great…thnx
40
Great list and feedback… following the links in the comments will keep me busy for an afternoon :) I love film title design… here’s a link i visit regularly: Forget the film, watch the titles.
http://mmbase.submarinechannel.com/titlesequences/index.jsp
41
Thanks for sharing this once again Veerle. This serie is not my favorite one, but def. interesting. I like the “kiss kiss bang bang” the best.
Looking forward to the next inspiration serie!
42
Hello Veerle, good post (again).
I’m a web designer/developer and it’s always refreshing to read your posts - I’ll often pick up great tips or find inspiration here!
Glad you included the Eurotrip intro - and looks like others have spoken for me about Dexter. The bond films always have good intros, it’s a cool tradition :)
Good job
43
Perfect blogpost: thanks
44
North by Northwest and Seven give me chills each time I see them. Great, great post.
45
Beautiful article this :)
Did you do the screencaps yourself, veerle?
46
e-man said:
Yeah I did with Snapz Pro X (except for the catch me if you can one). This article took a while to get together :)
47
I can imagine :)
I’m impressed with the quality of the screencaps though, will have to give Snapz a look. Thanks for sharing as always!
48
I love the special movie credits and intros of the 007 serie. Great stuff, thank you.
49
A great alternative to Snapz Pro X is the Jing project from TechSmith see here: http://www.jingproject.com/
Also I Really like the intro from Superbad
50
The best titles is the one off napoleon dynamite honestly you should get it all the names are written out in food !
51
Wow, one of the most inspiring posts ever. I think I’m going to watch the Return Of The Pink Panther, so many memories.
Once again, amazing post!
52
I have really enjoyed your Inspiration series and am looking forward to the next installment.
53
Nice to see ‘Delicatessen’ pop up here. I’ve always thought of those credits as really epic.
‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ looks charming too though.
54
Thank you for the inspiration as usual. I am so glad to see Casino Royale up there. I remember that too and I felt VERY inspired after seeing that.
55
Yes, this is really really inspiring, thanks Veerle for this idea, and thanks for the guys who comments new links. Awesome.
56
Nice inspiration, I love motion graphics!
Btw, congrats on the article in today’s newspaper!!! :)
57
Don’t foget Carnivale :)
58
Grtz, I just saw you on the news :D!
And this post is excellent like always :D
59
Thank you for the inspiration. I have to say the Bond films are very inspirational!
60
Great list.
One could add Lemony Snicket’s Unfortunate Series of Events maybe?
check it out here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR2rkMPAF90
Allegedly made by this company
http://www.axiomdc.com/
61
Love the Seven one, I was going to mention it if you didn’t have it in your article.
Was it done by Sagmeister?
62
Oh come on! You have Dr. No- and others- but not “The Royal Tenenbaums”?!?
63
I think ‘'fight Club ‘’ Credits were also perfect and Spiderman also prepare the audiences to film.Thanx every body who made that movies credits so good.
64
Delicatessen intro is my all time favorite
65
Hi Veerle,
I only discovered your site this week thanks to the newspaper interview. I’m amazed that I’ve have been missing this for years! Looking in archives and see that I have a lot of reading to do!!!
Now back to the credits: Also fun credits: Dumbo!
66
This is a great list, very inspirational…some other recent favorites:
300 end credits
Ratatouille
67
An awesome post! Very, very entertaining and informative. Bravo!
68
I agree with a previous poster - the Fight Club credits are great…
I thihnk Se7en is the best of the ones you have listed.
69
Very nice Post
70
Check out this site: http://mmbase.submarinechannel.com/titlesequences/
It has a collection of really good trailes. And has updates on weekly basis
71
I love the classic Pink Panther stills. The font still looks cool, and the cartoon figures are great. Delicatessen is one I’ve never seen, but I like effects of the fonts on the differnt things like paper, camera, etc.
Another movie that had some really neat features was the musical “Chicago.“ I don’t remember exactly what the opening/closing credits were like, but the movie itself used a lot of artistic stage settings with neat graphics, fonts, costumes and lighting.
72
Very impressiv. Must have been quite some work.
And an own art-form for itself. I wonder what impact they have on judging by movie-watcher…
You could probably make a whole own web-site/service showing credits/intros. “themtube” would be perfect :)
73
Thank you for including the two Pink Panther movies. I vividly remember being captivated by those opening credits when I first watched those movies.
Your other selections are right on, as well.
74
Its great. Good pic. Doing well, Keep it up.
75
I know they’re not movies, but rather recent TV Shows. Still, the opening credits of Dexter (not the cartoons) and House MD are some of the best, especially Dexter.