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shortly before the cannes film festival last year we were asked to create the title sequence for a film called aftersun. caspar was headed home to england for a bit after having been robbed of his computer and camera in paris, when the email from pastel came in: would we be able to make titles for a film on its way to cannes in just four or five days? caspar picked up a new laptop in london and we asked to see the film. those who have seen the film can imagine what it must have been like to consider whether to work on it or not, even with very little time to do good work. the film is a remarkable thing by any stretch of the imagination, and one that touched caspar particularly for a number of reasons.

caspar sent the director, charlotte wells, some typeface ideas based on the film’s overall mood and his experiences of growing up in the 90s. charlotte picked the typeface—base mono—that you see here:

caspar then began work on customizing and animating the typeface in a fashion that charlotte and he felt appropriate to the tone of the film; dissolving the sharp edges of each letter and making them flicker in and out of focus as if light was coming at us from behind each word; all the while treating it as if our eyes could not quite focus on it because it was too bright. meanwhile caspar’s brother josiah got to work on creating the end crawl, and needless to say we made the deadline. caspar then headed to cannes to see the work on the big screen.

art of the title is a remarkable website run by lola landekić, that’s dedicated to celebrating film title sequence design and animation. in fact here’s director david fincher (se7en, fight club, zodiac, the social network) talking to lola on the subject:

“I love the site. It’s really beautiful. I would much rather have anything and everything about the title sequence be on Art of the Title than in USA Today or any publication like that. Your site is the proper context for this conversation.”

we’ve referenced title sequences in the extensive and beautifully presented art of the title archives many times in our work, and to see that yesterday the aftersun titles were posted to art of the title was incredibly moving, not to mention flattering.

thank you so much to adele romanski, charlotte wells, lola landekić and everyone else at pastel and a24 films. we remain endlessly thankful for these opportunities to work on such beautiful films.

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it’s been a while since we updated this blog thing. it occurred to us that we really need to make a record of our gradual move into the world of film title sequences. unfortunately the way this website is constructed means that it’s hard to highlight this kind of work, and so we hope this article gives you an inkling of what we’ve done and hope yet to do in this field.

over the last few years we’ve been asked to do an increasing amount of motion graphics work for films, and whilst the work is often relatively rudimentary in terms of graphic design, the projects have certainly been respectable. in this regard it’s worth noting what kind of films we’ve worked on and observing the more subtle compliment a thing as simple as a typeface choice or type placement can offer a film. which isn’t to say we wouldn’t rather do something more explosive graphically, but more often than not a film doesn’t need that. not at all.

anyway, after a while in this business you realize that you need to just let the work speak for itself, rather than doing a whole lot of talking about your process or whatever. so here are a series of title cards and stills from various film productions, where you can see our motion graphic design work at play.

 

light up the night
co-directed by matt sundin and caspar newbolt. featuring drawings by john delucca and animation by josiah newbolt.

 

entertainment
directed by rick alverson.

 

dark night
directed by tim sutton. featuring in-film poster design and ‘google maps sequence’ compositing.

 

take what you can carry
directed by matthew porterfield.

 

live cargo
directed by logan sandler.

 

memphis
directed by tim sutton.

 

the convention
directed by jessica dimmock.

 

pavilion
directed by tim sutton.

 

muito romântico
directed by distruktur.

 

stay tuned for more work from us for jonas carpignano’s a ciambra, matthew porterfield’s sollers point and ari gold’s the song of sway lake.

cheers.

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in the last days of 2013 whilst on a longish trip back to england, i sat down with my brother to watch a film called call girl. we didn’t know anything about it – in fact i’d picked it up because i liked the typography used for the film’s logo. it was close to midnight, we filled our whiskey glasses and slung the disc into the playstation. i said one word during the entire viewing. in fact i said that one word twice. the word was ‘fuck.’

call girl came out in 2012. it’s basically unheard of here in the US, and even harder to get a physical copy of. heck it was tough enough to find a pressing of the soundtrack that anyone would ship to england, let alone new york. whether this is to do with the controversy that surrounds the film, or simply because for some reason it failed to pickup a good distribution deal, is unclear.

call girl documents a political catastrophe in the 1970s that is still such a sore matter for those involved in sweden, that the film had to be heavily edited after it’s festival screenings in order for it to make the public domain. without going into the story, i’ll add that it’s one of the most beautifully written, shot, edited, scored, acted and packaged films i’ve seen in a long time. after watching it i immediately picked up a copy for a friend in england, and have since screened my copy for as many friends as i can in new york.

soon after returning from england i began to steal an hour here or there amongst my regular projects, to piece together notes, take screen snapshots and cut together various layouts. a day or so ago a much larger film related project landed – one that would truly require every second i had left in each day – and i had to save the files, export them and put this particular aside to rest.

there’s no real need to go into why the posters turned out the way they did, but they certainly follow my long-running ethos that the artwork supporting a film or record should in every capacity echo the tone, message and overall aesthetic value of that work. i hope you enjoy each of the 10 editions i’ve put together in different ways, and ultimately take the time to see the film (and buy the soundtrack) as soon as you can.

my gratitude to daniel carlsten who’s typographic work on the film drew me to it. my congratulations to mikael marcimain for such masterful directing, to hoyte van hoytema (let the right one in) for a level of cinematography the likes of which i wish every film could be blessed with, and lastly to mattias bärjed for an incendiary soundtrack. one i am still trying to get on vinyl.

for more information about the film click here.

cheers.