Saul Bass's work on the title sequences for North by Northwest, Psycho and Oceans Eleven set the tone for the whole movie. He uses music that he believes will give the viewer a feel of what is to come. Like in Psycho, where he uses upbeat and suspenseful music, since Psycho is a horror film. His graphics all have their own theme, but once that theme is established, he does not stray far from it. Like in Ocean's Eleven, the whole story is about robbing a casino, so Bass saw it fit to make all the graphics out of the bright lights you see in casinos. The type is the part where you have to be careful. The names of the people who made the movie happen is important, and the whole reason for the title sequence in the first place, so it is important that there is some readability to it. He really did not play much with the text except how it entered and exited the screen, which I thought was a very nice way of handling it. The two title sequences that I thought played off of each other a lot was North by Northwest and Psycho because they both had a grid they followed and it was mostly line work and how the text came into the screen. The Ocean's Eleven sequence strayed a bit because it was more flashy and involved than simple lines. They all fit their movies character though. The moods were suspenseful and eerie, grand and rushed, and sneaky and upbeat. Bass had a pretty minimalistic theme when it came to his title sequences, except for the graphics in Oceans. The music in all of them though, was pretty minimal, just a series of staccato notes played in a pattern.
Mariene McCarty has an interesting style of her own. She uses real life video scenes from the film as her title sequence, in most cases at least. In some cases, like American Psycho, the first minute or so has the red liquid dropping down the screen, but it still goes into the beginning of the movie, while the credits are still running. This is an interesting way to go about it, because it takes a little bit of the focus away from the names, because the viewers are trying to see what is going on in the movie, while also looking at the names. She does a good job about remedying this though, with the placement of the text on the screen where the viewers would most likely be looking, and also having whatever seen she is playing not have a lot of dialog playing at the same time. The music she plays seems to have a lot more instruments involved than Bass's sequences, which makes it a fuller sound, but does not necessarily take away from the impact of the way the music makes us as the viewer feel. The moods very, like I feel disgusted when I see the American Psycho trailer, but the Safe video I feel more melancholy and a little lost. She does a great job of picking opening scenes that portray what the movie will be like, but wont give anything away.
For my own inspiration, I chose Monsters Inc.'s Title Sequence. I absolutely love this opening because the music is upbeat, the words and graphics follow right along with the beat and the transitions are seamless. The graphics in here are so fun and quirky that you can't help but to get excited about this movie. I really like how it jumps around from scene to scene, but it does it in a way that you can follow the entire scene and not wonder how one screen jumped to another. Granted, this is also one of my favorite movies, so that could make me bias to this opening too :)
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