The Old Times

Motion Graphics
Nick Gellatly
BA (Hons) Digital Media Production, Year 2
Module: Motion Graphics (MOD009754)

Image: Graphics in Motion ( The spiral nods to Vertigo, which ties the image to the workshop)

First day back to Cambridge for year 2 and this is the first post of my Motion Graphics module.

Task 1 – Setting up your blog

Over the next twelve weeks I will be making an animated title sequence for an existing film or TV series. It will run between thirty seconds and two minutes, and it will bring together animated text, abstract moving visuals and sound. Its job is to capture the story and the genre of the title before a single line of dialogue is spoken.

I’m sure I am not alone in having watched title sequences without really seeing them. As a longterm Sky TV subscriber, I often watch recorded programmes so that I can speed past both the titles and the adverts. This module asks me to make something nobody would want to skip, which feels like a fair challenge.

I will be learning Adobe After Effects, though my experience with Adobe tools is both limited and unhappy, so this is a program I have so far avoided. Alongside it I expect to use Illustrator and Photoshop, and perhaps some stop motion, which appeals to the ‘Zines’ part of me that still enjoys cutting things out and sticking them down.

As with every module, this blog will record what I try, what works, what doesn’t and what I learn along the way. Let the credits roll.

Image prompt

As with other posts this year, I created the title image with ChatGPT, starting from a style prompt. I will use other image generators as models improve and evolve. See my learning manifesto post for more details: https://theoldtimes.co.uk/2026/09/22/my-learning-manifesto-year-two/

Style prompt: A bold mid-century graphic design style inspired by classic film title sequences of the 1950s and 1960s. Flat cut-paper shapes, strong geometric forms, a limited palette of warm red, off-white, black and a single accent of deep violet. Visible paper texture and slightly uneven edges. Landscape 16:9. No lettering, logos or text of any kind.

Image prompt: An abstract composition suggesting movement frozen mid-frame: a spiral unwinding across the page, a strip of film curling into a ribbon, overlapping circles like a lens coming into focus, and a scattering of simple rectangles falling like credits caught in motion. A single figure seen from behind, a mature man with a notebook, stands small in the lower corner looking up at it all. Energetic but uncluttered, with clear space on the left for a title to be added later.

Task 2 – What is a title sequence for?

At its most basic, a title sequence tells you what you’re watching and who made it. Early cinema stopped there. From the 1920s to the late 1940s, most films simply laid their credits over a largely still background for anything up to five minutes, which is roughly the cinematic equivalent of reading the parish notices before the sermon.

A good title sequence does far more. It sets the tone before a word of dialogue is spoken. It tells you what kind of story you’re in for, hints at the characters and themes, and, crucially, changes how you feel. By the time the first scene starts, you should already be leaning forward, or gripping the armrest.

In short, a title sequence has three jobs: to credit, to introduce and to set the mood. The best ones do all three at once, and make you want to watch them again.

Example 1: Vertigo (1958)

Designed by Saul Bass for Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo is probably the most famous title sequence ever made. It opens on extreme close-ups of Kim Novak’s face, moving from her lips to her eye, before spirals begin to turn out of the pupil. Art of the Title credits its lasting power to the combination of Bernard Herrmann’s haunting score, Bass’s pairing of close-ups with spiral imagery, and the way the three work together.

The spirals, technically known as Lissajous figures, came from John Whitney, a pioneer of computer art who had worked at the experimental animation studio UPA. On paper, abstract geometric shapes have little to do with a detective story set in San Francisco. On screen, they are the story: obsession, dizziness and a mind being pulled into something it can’t escape. That is exactly what this module asks of us, abstract imagery that captures the essence of a narrative.

Example 2: Alien (1979)

Richard Greenberg’s titles for Ridley Scott’s Alien are almost the opposite of Vertigo: no faces, no spirals, no colour to speak of. The camera drifts over a planet while fragments of white type appear, piece by piece, gradually resolving into the film’s title. The typeface is a broken-up Helvetica Black, with the gaps between the letters doing much of the unsettling.

What I found most useful was Greenberg’s explanation. He said the idea came from wanting something “unsettling”, and that his team translated the feeling of an off-putting sound into typography. He also agreed with the designer Steve Frankfurt that “sound is 50% of a film”, which I shall be quoting back to myself when I reach the audio stage of this project. The whole sequence is just text and space, yet it builds dread before anything has happened.

What I take from this

Between them, these two sequences cover the three ingredients of our brief: animated text (Alien), abstract moving visuals (Vertigo) and sound (both). They also show that there’s no single formula. Vertigo seduces you; Alien makes you uneasy. What they share is that every design choice serves the story.

Alien is on our list of titles, so it’s already a contender for my own sequence. I suspect the challenge will be to honour Greenberg’s work without simply copying it. I may choose something I like personally but Nur was not sure if the task has to be drawn from the list in the session notes.

Links
https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/vertigo/
https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/alien/
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/movie-opening-credits/

TASK 3

1. Research the list of titles
2. In your blog list out possible titles you might want to use.
3. In your bog create a mood page of initial thoughts and images for each one (see examples).

I have picked three films from the list in the session notes and I have created mood pages in the same format as the Godzilla and Midsommer examples: nine keywords in three groups (look, subject, treatment), plus a list of images to gather for the collage.

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This week’s third task was to research James’s list of fifteen titles, pick out the ones I might use, and make a mood page of first thoughts and images for each.

I’ve chosen three from the list and, three of my own in case the choice is unrestricted. All three of my personal choices are British queer films about love found in hard, unglamorous places. I have ‘d like to ask James whether any of them might be allowed, and I explain why at the end.

My shortlist

From the list:

1. Moonlight (2016)
2. Midsommar (2019)
3. Alien (1979)

My own choices:

• My Beautiful Launderette (1985)
• Beautiful Thing (1996)
• God’s Own Country (2017)

1. Moonlight (2016, dir. Barry Jenkins)

I have not watched this film so for my own understangding read a synopsis here: Moonlight (2016) – Plot – IMDb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4975722/plotsummary/

Chiron’s life in three chapters, boyhood, adolescence and adulthood, in Miami. A quiet film about masculinity, tenderness and becoming yourself when the world would rather you didn’t.

• Blue light
• Water
• Warm skin tones against cool shadow
• Three names, three ages
• The ocean at night
• A hand on the back of the head
• Chaptered titles
• Slow dissolves
• Chopped and screwed sound

First thoughts: three chapter cards dissolving into each other like tides, with the type rippling as if seen through water. The film earns its tenderness by holding back, so the titles would need to hold back too.

Mood board image

2. Midsommar (2019, dir. Ari Aster)

Similarly, I haven’t seen this film so read a synopsis here: Midsommar (2019) – IMDb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8772262/?ref_=fn_t_1

A grieving young woman travels to a Swedish midsummer festival that turns out to be something much older and much worse. Horror in broad daylight.

• Bright white light
• Pastel folk painting
• Flowers
• Runes
• Ritual and sacrifice
• The May Queen
• Painted panels that tell the story in advance
• Petals that breathe
• A calendar turning

First thoughts: this is a rites of passage film in the most literal sense, and ritual is something I know a little about. The film already opens on a painted panel that foretells the plot, so I’d build the sequence as an unfolding folk mural with the credits stitched into the embroidery. The challenge: James used Midsommar as his own example, so I’d need to go somewhere he hasn’t.

Mood board image

3. Alien (1979, dir. Ridley Scott)

I haven’t seen this film either and so checked it out using imdb here: Alien (1979) – IMDb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/?ref_=fn_t_1&newac=true

The crew of a cargo ship answer a distress signal and bring something back with them. I looked at Richard Greenberg’s original title sequence in Task 2 and have included it here for ease of reference.

• Black
• Cold white type
• Deep space
• The egg
• Biomechanical ribs and tubes
• Machinery that breathes
• Broken letters
• Slow drift
• Silence punctured by sound

First thoughts: Greenberg’s sequence is so iconic that copying it would be pointless. One route is to go inside rather than out: wet, pulsing, organic textures that slowly reveal themselves to be letters, the opposite of his cold mechanical fragments.

Mood board image

4. My Beautiful Launderette (1985, dir. Stephen Frears)

Unlike the previous three films, I have seen the next three and these are among my favourite films – although I should say that I don’t watch many films, perhaps two or three every year – for those who have not seen it, here is a synopsis: My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) – IMDb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091578/?ref_=fn_t_2

The title sequence is not available on YouTube but to give a flavour of the film, this video is a trailer for the it from Rotten Tomatoes:

Written by Hanif Kureishi. Omar, a young British Pakistani in south London, takes over his uncle’s run-down launderette and rebuilds it with Johnny, an old school friend drifting with a gang of National Front skinheads. Race, class, family and a love affair, all under Thatcher.

• Neon
• Soap suds
• Glass shopfronts
• Spinning drums
• Money changing hands
• Brick terraces and graffiti
• Circular motion
• Steam on glass
• Things coming out clean

First thoughts: the washing machine drum is a ready-made spiral, a domestic cousin of Vertigo. Credits could tumble like laundry and come out folded and clean, with a sly point about a society that wants to launder away what it doesn’t like.

Mood board image

5. Beautiful Thing (1996, dir. Hettie Macdonald)

Even if this film is not one you’d normally choose, the soundtrack includes Mama Cass’s finest music and is worth watching for this alone: Beautiful Thing (1996) – IMDb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115640/?ref_=fn_t_1

Adapted by Jonathan Harvey from his own play. Jamie and Ste, teenage neighbours on the Thamesmead estate, fall in love over one hot summer, while next door Leah plays Mama Cass to anyone who’ll listen. It ends with the two boys dancing in the courtyard in full view of the estate.

• Summer heat
• Concrete walkways
• Balconies and doorways
• First love
• A bottle of peppermint foot lotion
• Neighbours watching
• Warm light on grey concrete
• Walls that open up
• A dance in public

First thoughts: the estate’s grid of doors and balconies could become a graphic grid that slowly softens, with warmth seeping into grey boxes until they open onto sky. The audio would need to evoke that 1960s warmth without borrowing Mama Cass herself. (Note: It is interesting to see how the algorithm adopts a heteronormative approach!)

Mood board image

6. God’s Own Country (2017, dir. Francis Lee)

This film doesn’t have the romance of Beautiful Thing: God’s Own Country (2017) – IMDb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5635086/?ref_=fn_t_1

Again, a title sequence video isn’t available but this trailer from Picturehouse gives a flavour of the film:

Johnny Saxby works himself numb on the family farm in West Yorkshire until Gheorghe, a Romanian worker, arrives for lambing season. A hard, muddy, mostly wordless film that finds great tenderness in rough hands.

• Mud
• Grey-green moorland
• Breath in cold air
• Hands
• Drystone walls
• New lambs
• Wind
• Rough textures softening
• Quiet

First thoughts: drystone walls are built stone by stone, by hand, with no mortar. Type could be built the same way, into walls that hold. This would suit stop motion or photographed textures, and it’s the most naturally abstract of the six.

Mood board image

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Summary

Looking back across both images for all six films, I notice they share more than I planned. Each film is built around a physical material: water in Moonlight, flowers in Midsommar, flesh in Alien, soap in My Beautiful Launderette, concrete in Beautiful Thing and stone in God’s Own Country. Underneath that runs a second thread about people changing: becoming, ritual, invasion, cleansing, being seen and, finally, building something that holds. It seems I’m less interested in spectacle than in bodies and places, and in the moment someone becomes more fully themselves. That suggests my title sequence will be tactile and slow-burning rather than explosive, with type that grows, dissolves or is assembled rather than simply appearing. My three personal choices remain a question for James, and if they’re not permitted, Moonlight gives me a queer story from the list itself, which I’d be glad to work with. The hero images were generated in Canva from prompts developed with AI assistance, and I’ve kept every prompt alongside its image so the process is visible.

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First Contact with After Effects

Being the first day back, with many students on campus, I struggled to get ‘Eduroam’ to work and as a result I wasn’t able to complete the download of Adobe After Effects during the session. Bearing all that I have said above, I decided to experiment for myself and the results are presented below:

Six films, one question for James and my first nervous hours in After Effects. The opening credits are rolling.

Here’s to Week 2!