Film and Television
Title Sequence Specialist
Discerning, cinema-literate Producers value the storytelling power of a title sequence.
Good titles use the precious opening moments of your project to engage audiences with the tone, mood, style and narrative themes of your story, using carefully selected imagery to create immediate viewer immersion with artful impact.
Tony Olsen Pictures collaborates with filmmakers to create striking, highly memorable titles that reinforce their vision from the very first frame and resonate long after the final Fade Out.
Minimalist Bass-like graphics open this thriller about a driving instructor who may be an active serial killer. The symbols and limited colour palette of road code signage and lighting dominate, while credits utilize an official international traffic font. The flashing lights of law enforcement appear throughout against an ominous music track, immediately reinforcing a feeling of expectant unease – the exploding main title card a solid clue to the mental state of the main protagonist.
Medium: Film
Genre: Crime Thriller
Vibe: Retro 70s
Duration: 2:00 mins.
Isolated black & white stills of everyday objects symbolize characters or set pieces from this classic 1963 eco-thriller: repeat viewers will instantly recognise their context, whereas first-time audiences are left to ponder their significance until they arise, contributing to slow-burn suspense.
Medium: Film
Genre: Eco Thriller
Vibe: Classic 60s
Duration: 1 min. 46 secs.
As with the titles finally approved by Alfred Hitchcock, this original alternative sequence for ‘The Birds’ is subtle and understated, retaining the same credit font, text blocks and colours, in addition to the justly famous electronic ambient soundtrack by Remi Gassmann and Oskar Sala.
Cutout flowers create Floratopia, a hidden, fantastical floral realm, in this unusual four-part television documentary series – a hybrid of fantasy and education that highlights the more incredible aspects of various flower species, including bioluminescence, flight – even music and dance!
Medium: Television
Genre: Documentary
Vibe: Educational/fantasy
Duration: 1 min. 35 secs.
Medium: Television
Genre: Police Procedural (French)
Vibe: Retro 60s
Duration: 2 mins. 12 secs.
The limited resources of many 1960s television series often prevented elaborate, staged title sequences and many productions resorted to montages of character stills and graphics filmed on an animation rostrum, using combinations of both the vertical camera column and horizontal compound table to give movement to the artwork.
‘Gagnants et Perdants’ (Winners and Losers) takes this cue and wholly creates the world of a small Parisian Brigade Criminelle – colloquially, a homicide detective squad, using black & white photo collage: from the cluttered work office of the detectives to period street photography, with contemporary French/Italian film stars as the cast. In addition to introducing the tone of the series and evoking the everyday activities of the hero investigator in particular, the titles are also a mini narrative with a beginning, middle and end.
An homage, ‘Buffalo Spring’ restricts its general palette to typical ‘desert’ tones, with bright colours like blue and red muted to conform. Unless present in original reference material, no attention is paid to shadows or highlights, instead relying on high-contrast artwork to create consistent, flat graphics. Animation is kept simple and cyclic, with some rotoscoping to add stylized realism in short vignettes.
Classic Westerns often featured elaborate static title cards, but animated titles wouldn’t be associated with the genre until the seminal spaghetti-Westerns of Sergio Leone in the mid-1960s with their idiosyncratic titles by Iginio Lardani.
Medium: Film
Genre: Western
Vibe: Classic 50s
Duration: 2 mins. 28 secs.
Imagery taps historical motifs associated with the early American belief of Manifest Destiny and the attendant westward expansion: goldminers, wagon trains, pioneer settlers, the subsequent railway network, encroachment on Native American homelands, and frontier towns for the ever-increasing flow of immigrants. Buffalo Spring is both a time, and a place, where anything can happen – just like the Wild West.
Medium: Short Film
Genre: Sci-Fi/Comedy
Vibe: Retro/lo-fi kitsch
Duration: 30 secs.
Client: Little Hero Pictures
EMBARGOED UNTIL FILM RELEASE
‘Space Chai’ is the short-film sequel to the award-winning sci-fi/comedy feature, ‘This Giant Paper Mache Boulder is Actually Really Heavy’, both affectionate nods to B-Grade science-fiction/fantasy film and television shows of yore, with deliberate no-budget production values and lo-fi effects.
When filmmaker Christian Nicholson commissioned a fond tribute to the famous card and opening crawl of the original ‘Star Wars’ titles by Dan Perri, Tony Olsen Pictures were delighted to emulate it – opening titles just don’t come any more famous!
“Kia Ora/Hello, I’m Tony Olsen. I created my first title sequence in 1995.
Meet the Filmmaker
It was a Maurice Binder inspired piece that energised the opening moments of my film festival award winning debut short film. Having prepared the artwork, I had the honour of Academy Award nominated animator, Bob Stenhouse, photograph the backlit sequence on an Oxberry animation rostrum (remember those?). Stenhouse also filmed my ‘Technicolour Zebra’ mascot, which continues to herald my creative projects to this day.
I’m a lifelong fan of film motion graphics & television title montage. I’ve always insisted on attention grabbing, story supporting title sequences in my own short films, the last of which was released in 2021 and honoured with 21 international awards.
I’ve long noticed how so few filmmakers pay attention to crafting great film titles to enhance their storytelling. I now contribute my expertise to fellow filmmakers, applying my comprehensive knowledge of cinema, animation, montage, typography and design. I encourage you to be bold and dynamize your project titles.
I’m here to help.”
Contact Me
If you want to elevate the quality of the titles on your film, series, documentary or short film, get in touch.