Title Sequence

As the title sequence is the first thing the audience is faced with I wanted to set the right atmosphere straight away so the viewer is immediately on the same level as me in terms of emotional depth and engagement required. Rosy and I had an initial meeting to set the tone and to give her some examples of title sequences that I wanted her to take influence from, the main one being The Last of Us:

It encompasses the same kind of aesthetic that I want to achieve, by introducing the underlying main aspect of the story in its simplest form, in this case it is a virus that is spread which causes the events in the game. This is the kind of method I wanted to use.

As well as the Last of Us, an opening title sequence that deals with the same genre of narrative is the Walking Dead, a zombie apocalypse. This title is a bit more in your face with the visuals but captures the TV show well. Unfortunately blogger's YouTube search is different to the stand alone site so I was unable to provide an example in video form but here are some images:

With various effects throughout the sequence from burning to textured text transition, there was a lot to take in with this example but it ultimately had the same gritty ambience that I liked and asked Rosy to explore for my Title. But also the burning effects were a favourite so that was another thing to include along with very subtle particle effects to give the impression of dust or untouched air which fits in with the project due to the annihilation of a lot of England.

The fundamentals were set in the first meeting such as the kind of aesthetic I was going for and the final title for example I wanted to pop up at the end quite dramatically, this was so Rosy had something to work with whilst the project developed. In meeting two there was even more that Rosy could use as inspiration.

The soundtrack artist had just sent me his first draft for the title sequence which I then relayed to Rosy, this was important as animating and creating is much easier and professionally carried out when there is audio to work with, it helps cue in certain changes in the animation and emotional links. 

I also showed her some of the stuff I was expecting off Ben (director of photography) such as texture shots, this then led to the realisation that these texture shots would assist with the creation of the title sequence for obvious reasons, so as I receive content from Ben I will be forwarding them to Rosy for her to use, this will keep the project uniform and not distracting as there is no change in visual direction other than going from real life photos to CGI characters in a CGI world.

This was very important for the development of my project, as stated before, due to the chronological order of content meaning that the title sequence will be first, but after meeting two the ideas and creative ideas were manifested at the same level in both of our heads and Rosy knew exactly what I wanted.