The Shining Title Sequence
Stephen King's The Shining is a psychological horror novel about Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who takes a job as the winter caretaker of the isolated Overlook Hotel. He moves to the hotel with his wife, Wendy, and their young son, Danny. While also possessing psychic abilities, Danny is able to see the hotel's terrifying past and its malevolent paranormal presence. As winter progresses, the hotel's madness encroaches upon Jack. His violence begins threatens his family’s safety, so Wendy and Danny must find a way to escape.
After watching the movie and conducting research on what I saw, I collaborated with
Lauren Mehl to create a sophisticated, yet unsettling title sequence that showcases the passing of time and increasing madness.
Horror movie enjoyers with an eye for sophistication.
To begin our research process, we selected two movies of interest and did a deep dive into the plot, characters, and synopsis. Watching both movies helped us pay close attention to symbolic objects, language, color grading, and composition choices.We then decided to choose The Shining, as we were fascinated by the ways in which madness and time were portrayed throughout the movie.
We then created a visual moodboard that broke down important themes and objects in the movie. We analyzed specific themes and how they were represented through stylistic visual choices. This helped us further understand the composition, color grading, sounds, and unique objects that told the story of madness and time passing.After carefully analyzing the important symbolism, we decided to conduct a round object study. We gathered a series of unique objects representing important scenes and items found in the movie, such as clocks, bike wheels, and typewriter keys.
Next, we created a set of style frames and an animatic that depicted the visuals and motion that we planned to integrate in our title sequence.We used the prominent leading lines of our selected objects to create a unique composition and further integrate our typography.
When gathering our footage, our objects became part of an increasingly maddening sequence that portrayed the stretching of time. Each time that an object was shown in our sequence, the speed and rotation increased while the on-screen duration decreased.These tactics allowed for our objects to appear faster as the video progressed. When each object completed a cycle, time sped up. The subtle changes coloring of our sequence progressed with the speed of objects as well, shifting into a cold, mysterious atmosphere.
After careful consideration of the type in our sequence, I made some personal revisions to add an extra sense of sophistication. I chose a condensed, pointy, serif font for the larger headings and title, paired with a condensed sans serif for the smaller text.I also experimented with blending modes to create a sense of transparency and enhance the color of the text. These changes helped the type feel more integrated into our scenes and matched well with the sophisticated filming tactics in our video.