The SNL Title Sequence

Over thanksgiving break I had the glorious opportunity of joining some friends to a rehearsal screening of SNL (after sleeping overnight on the streets of New York waiting for tickets).

There's plenty I could say about the impressive studio performance, or how they managed to cram 5 separate stages in to a room just over half the size of a football field, but what I'm sharing today involves the one part of Saturday Night Live that is in fact not live – the title sequence.

My interest was sparked when I found a blog post by the creator of the title sequence, Alex Buono, just days after attending the rehearsal. Entitled "HOW WE DID IT – SNL TITLE SEQUENCE".

The full article has really useful information, including his stylistic techniques which were mostly (and most impressively) done in camera.

A few key points stuck out to me however:

1. Custom bokeh

Ah yes, that soft Japanese word we use to define the out of focus area of a photographic image. And to my latest discovery, how the out of focus light shines in to the camera can be manipulated into anything you want!

Bokeh is actually a reflection of the shape of the iris of the lens itself, which is usually why we see it as circular. In in its simplest terms, if you create a filter that's smaller than the diameter of the iris, the out-of-focus bokeh will magically take the shape of the filter in place of the iris. For Buono, the result came out something like this:

To have an effect like this coming strait into camera is just eff-ing cool.

2. A cool toy called "pixelstick"

Last year a company called Bitbanger Labs started a rather successful Kickstarter for their new product, "pixelstick". The page has so far brought in 571% of the initial goal...

...and for good reason, the capabilities of this device are incredible:



By slowly walking across screen several times, he accomplished this stop-motion clip that would be near impossible to accomplish with such accuracy just a few years ago.

In action:

Buono goes into great detail about how he accomplished the SNL title sequence, covering a range of equipment, lenses, and devices that gave the sequence its unique tone. I highly recommend it for any experimental or technical-oriented filmmaker.

Also, as this my last blog post for the class, I say adieu. It's not over yet, but this has already been an incredible experience. 

Moonrise Kingdom Open Title Sequence

The opening sequence of Moonrise Kingdom is an absolutely brilliant use of cinematic elements that ultimately creates the persona of the film. The use of the pan in the first few shots gives the film a synergy feel as the music and visuals come together to make a playful introduction. A major emphasize I have been focusing on lately is attention to set design, color palates and character appearances, this film does a great job establishing the mood with its opening shots. Additionally throughout the film the focus on screen area, vectors and framing is overwhelmingly apparent. Another interesting aspect of this film is how even the yellow text at the opening was picked due to the location being in New England.  The type of font they chose was an older type than the time being portrayed due to the old school vibe of New England which the production team deemed was not as trendy opposed to a populated region of the country, therefore New England due to its slow changing environment it would take longer to adopt even simple trends such as text. As I am working as the art director in my production team for our short student film I have found that finding references such as this opening title sequence is huge to the success of our films look and feel. I learn so much about small details such as the font example, set design and many other insights from these videos. Lastly these are cinematic techniques that can be manipulated and pieced back together to ultimately play a key role in our student film and future films alike.

click on this link to watch the opening title sequence...
Moonrise Kingdom (2012) — Art of the Title