For all its efficiency a guillotine isn’t easy to erect. Sometimes you have to swing an ax. The pulse quickens and the reverberation connects those on each end. These four title sequences take a little off the top and open films that put a lump in your throat.

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Sisters [1973]
Brian De Palma, what hath thou wrought? Snapshots of a devil-fetus(es), the aural anxiety brought to us by Bernard Herrmann in a style reminiscent in tone of his work on the opening titles for Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”

“What the devil hath joined together let no man cut asunder.”

Click to Watch

Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×400 | Size: 14 MB | Running Time: 1:33

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Riget (The Kingdom) [1994]
I’ve come to know the title sequence of Lars von Trier’s “Kingdom” well; I’ve read the subtitles enough times to know the narration to its core. I will on occasion watch it without subtitles to bask in the black. There is death in every visual, even the water seems dead. Then, those hands. Not to mislead, but anyone raised on Romero smiles at that moment.

What happens next is perhaps the most jarring occurrence in title sequence design; this lushly cinematic sense of sheer dread is halted by spastically edited Dogme 95 footage that was shot on sub-standard video and scored to music fit for a late-in-the-episode SNL skit. All this as an introduction to one of the best television series in history.

Click to Watch with subtitles
Click to Watch without subtitles

Direct Link with subtitles | Direct Link without subtitles | Format: QuickTime H.264, 640×480 | Size: 30 MB | Running Time: 2:32

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The Changeling [1980]
An absolute thing of beauty where the sheer gravity of the action between the titling becomes the film’s constitution. As the opening sequence resumes we get the aftermath of too-great an emotional weight. And we know, most of us from personal experience, the doorman’s perspective; he wants to help but there is nothing to be done.

Click to Watch

Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×400 | Size: 54 MB | Running Time: 4:53

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Onibaba [1964]
Fields of whipping reeds that house an abyss. What emerges? The jazzy paranoia of Hikaru Hayashi’s percussive score jolts one from uneasy contemplation while the frame remains remarkably disciplined -the music is allowed to do its job. We see patterns in the wind. There is movement there. And it is chaotic and hungry and wholly uninviting. An opening to a cinematic masterpiece that is the very embodiment of a most fearsome artifact, the Noh mask.

Click to Watch

Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 703×288 | Size: 25 MB | Running Time: 1:56

Click to Watch

Who envisions a throat slit crescentic to a curving world, all its ephemera owned by one of the most famous cocaine dealers in Latin America?

Smog’s Moises Arancibia, spoke with Art of the Title: “‘El Don,’ is a television series inspired by the life of notorious Chilean gangster known as ‘El Cabro Carrera.’ The creation of the title sequence required a marked visual identity for the series; we took cutthroat cues from the wild west and James Bond and the entire project took us three weeks.”

Cutthroat indeed. Blood flows, drips, is fired from gun (in one example the splatter is wonderfully conceptualized as an entry wound), saturates sultry backdrops, is squeezed from a handshake and seeps from a not quite dead body before it explodes and finally, blood blots the frame.

Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×480 | Size: 18 MB | Running Time: 1:39

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Created by Smog
Art direction: Moises Arancibia
2D Animation: Moises Arancibia. Luis Suarez. Miguel Gonzalez
3D Animation: Rodrigo Sepulveda

Click to Watch

Inspired by the true story of a New Zealand businessman battling the Inland Revenue Department, filmmaker Jonothan Cullinane optioned the book and made the film (see his blog “How to Direct a Film“).

Art of the Title discusses the opening sequence with Cullinane; “The story covers a five year period and we wanted some sort of transitioning effect to indicate the passage of time. A very clever friend of mine, Anthony Farac, came up with a graphic device that was so good we thought it was wasted as a transition but would work really well as a title sequence. Originally we planned to do the titles with type over picture because we had little money - the film’s budget was just over 2 million (NZ$). Ant came up with a way to do the sequence that established the topic and the tone of the film very clearly for the princely sum of $7000.”

Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 848×480 | Size: 18 MB | Running Time: 1:44

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Created by Anthony Farac, Firehorse Films

Click to Watch

Whereas Romero’s original film was in part a metaphor for American consumerism, the title sequence for the updated Dawn of the Dead touches upon the idea of Holy War as harbinger to the apocalypse, and details the consequences for the media when it decides to ask tough questions as the feeding is already upon us (they are shot).

Kyle Cooper’s design dovetails what appears to be real war-torn footage with actual human blood as Johnny Cash raises the stakes in newfound context. Remaining shelters have been compromised and the machine we are trapped in is bleeding to death.

Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 734×304 | Size: 30 MB | Running Time: 2:38

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An Unrelated But Very Cool Audio Extra: “The Dead Flag Blues” by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Lee Marvin narrates the apocalypse in a film that never was.

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Created by Kyle Cooper, Prologue Film

Click to Watch

With the backdrop of a high school science text book this opening brilliantly weaves its deliberately cliché-ridden tale, taking every sitcom formula and soap opera stereotype, and crafting it into pure comedic gold. The amazing writing, performances, music, art direction and animation could only lead to one thing - cancellation - which MTV did in 2003 after only 13 episodes.

Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 640×480 | Size: 10 MB | Running Time: 1:09

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Video Extra: Behind the Scenes Discussion with creators Phil Lord and Chris Miller

Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 480×270 | Size: 37 MB | Running Time: 10:53

Website Extra: Clone High USA “Ye Olde Unofficial Interweb Whatever” site

Wiki Extra: Clone High on Wikipedia

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Created by: Phil Lord & Chris Miller, Bill Lawrence

(Video materials courtesy of ITVF)

Opening Sequence

Click to Watch

Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×400 | Size: 28 MB | Running Time: 3:21

End Titles

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The daily routine, broken down to the extreme. Optimized perfectly, perhaps too perfectly.

Direct Link | Format: QuickTime H.264, 720×400 | Size: 22MB | Running Time: 2:27

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Video Extra: Picture a Number: The Evolution of a G.U.I.
A detailed look at the on-screen graphics design process.

Direct Link | Format: QuickTime Streaming H.264, 539×272 | Size: 78 MB | Running Time: 17:13

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Created by MK12

Click to Watch

Repeat to yourself “It’s just a show”…

Note the consistency of design in the title sequences to the Alien Quadrilogy. Note too how they differ. Does each tangent of theme reflect the respective film?

Alien [1979]
Crossing over an eclipsing planet with the title appearing in non-linear, segmented letters. From the outer letters inwards (even the middle swath of the letter “E” is last to appear). Everything pointing to the center because the center is where the parasitic pupae of the Alien comes from; the middle of you. Steady, dark tension.

Aliens [1987]
The sparse, soldiering snare drum opening to an almost digital yet organic titling, like the profile of some never before seen hive. The text, apparitional at first, seems to be gestating; the “I” blooms into a symbol of life and we are in the story with a masterful tilt down on the encroaching vessel. Fairly glorious.

Alien³ [1992]
The last brassy notes of the Twentieth Century Fox theme holds and contorts into the reverberating growl of the film’s soundscape. Then, the familiarity of the abyss punctuated by staccato, mini cut scenes that move the story along. New format, familiar threads…the wrinkle, we begin to understand, will be in the telling. Nothing comforts quite like facehuggers interrupting stasis to earn cinematic trust!

Alien: Resurrection [1997]
The womb-like viscera of human and alien-crossed monstrosities connotes a bastardization.

Alien: Resurrection - Alternate [1997]
Conceptually interesting but perhaps too great a departure. And no one puts bug guts anywhere near their mouth. Not unless they are chocolate covered and never if they’re space bugs. And who fires spitballs at a window needed for navigation? I can’t seem to get past that, even with the now-boilerplate spaceships in space shot.

Click to Watch

An interpretation of the body suit as an exploded technical diagram on acid.
Like Ozzy wails, “Is he alive or dead? Has he thoughts within his head?” Smartly done.

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Created by Danny Yount, Prologue Films
Executive Producer: Kyle Cooper

Click to Watch

Gorgeous, lush, rich and relaxed. A string of nicely woven end titles transition both characters and the visual styles that whisk them (and us) along. Misty windows, smoke, steam, lucrum, bus, and a coming-and-going taxi get us there. Feels like a sensuous snapshot of a film I’ve yet to see.

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Video Extra: Hush Video Interview on Ventilate (03:13, Flash, external link)

Extra: Production Details document (PDF)

Created by: Hush

(Materials courtesy of Hush)