Directed by Edgar Wright
Title Sequence Design by Shynola
Concept designer and lead storyboard artist Oscar Wright
Main title graphics by VooDooDog
Visual Effects by Double Negative
Title directed by Andrew White
Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is a 2010 film based on the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Mally.
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world/
• Originally there wasn’t any title sequence, until Quentin Tarantino suggested to add one to prepare the audience and set the mood and energy for the whole movie
• A rough mock-up of a title sequence was made with AVID Media Composer
• Immediately, Edgar Wright could tell the title sequence helped break up the intro scene and the next plot-progressing scenes
Title Shot• Title shot was planned
thoroughly before the day of shooting
• It was boarded and edited into an animatic along with the track from Beck to see if it would work with the music
• Double Negative then created a pre-vis animation of the shot to sort out the nuances of the title shot
Title shot
• Shot on an extended set on a really long carpet with a 50 foot technocrane
• Took about 20 takes to get a perfect shot
• Oscar Wright worked closely with studios VooDooDog and Double Negative to create the 2D graphic elements
• They wanted to find a way to keep the original spirit of Bryan Lee O’Mally’s comic through the use of the 2D graphics
Title Sequence
• The separate title sequence was handed off to the London-based studio, Shynola
• Shynola has done many music videos, and they also did the title sequence for the The IT Crowd
• They are seasoned experts when it comes to synchronized music and visuals
• The main idea for this title sequence was to visually represent how cool Knives thought Sex-Bob-omb was in that opening scene
Initial Briefing• Edgar Wright told Shynola he
was looking for something like “2001: A Space Odyssey meets Sesame Street; a marriage of the mindf*$% of the Stargate sequence with the early childlike animation of the Children’s Television Workshop.”
• he also showed them the opening to Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill
Animation References
• Shynola drew reference from classic experimental animators Len Lye, Oskar Fischinger, Stan Brakhage, and Norman McLaren
Brainstorming Ideas
• Shynola’s first pitch was a lively, in-your face barrage of 8-bit colors and pixel-y graphic VFX
• Edgar Wright liked the energy but thought it related to computer games too much
Scratch Film• This is when
Shynola came up with the idea to reflect the grungy, garage-band feel of Sex Bob-omb by doing scratch film animation
• They did some small tests that were going in the right direction
• Settled on visually representing each character
• They ended up filling this colorful and energetic sequence with subliminal messages about the characters and events to come later in the movie
• In order to have maximum control over the timing, the sequence was doped out on the computer to ensure the visuals were perfectly synced to the music
• Instead of scratching onto film, they ended up painting and scratching onto sheets of acetate
• Around a second of animation on each sheet• Kicked the sheets around on the floor to pick up dirt, imperfections, scratches, etc…• Went into a high resolution negative scanner• Once in the computer, they chopped the sheets up into the separate frames to use in
the animation
Animation Process
sourceshttp://www.artofthetitle.com/title/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world/
http://www.artofthetitle.com/studio/shynola/
http://www.voodoodog.com/work/film/title-sequences/scott-pilgrim
http://www.dneg.com/projects/scott_pilgrim_vs._the_world_255.html
http://www.ccp.org.au/flash/2009/10/len-lye/
http://www.oskarfischinger.org/
http://www.bmoca.org/2012/06/stan-brakhage/
http://kimthompsonauthor.com/norman-mclaren-great-canadian-animator/
http://www.sesameworkshop.org/our-blog/2013/02/13/the-story-of-j-sesame-streets-first-animation/
http://library.creativecow.net/kaufman_debra/magazine_29_Douglas-Trumbull/1