Kyle Cooper: Title Sequences

While researching Title sequences in The Art of the Title for inspiration, I stumbled across a few notable designers, most notably Kyle Cooper who has a track record dating back to the late eighties for creating some of the most iconic title sequences for some of the biggest hollywood films of the past 20 years. Cooper's philosophy is that a film's title sequence can be 'an integral part' to the setup for a the context of a movie, setting up the title of the film as well as communicating the names of the people who worked on it, though sometimes they can be treated like a throwaway or an afterthought. A title sequence, Cooper believes, sets up an expectation for the film the audience is going to see, designed to pull the audience in and get them excited for what is to come.

Over his career spanning nearly 30 years Cooper has collaborated on vast array of different projects, from big hollywood blockbusters such as 'X-Men First Class' and 'Iron Man' to video games such as 'Metal Gear Solid'. In an interview for the 2004 documentary 'The Look of Saul Bass' Cooper explains how Saul Bass inspired and informed his work on title sequences. According to Cooper, Bass took what was typically a formulaic illustrative style of title cards in a more modernist, typographic direction.

Kyle Cooper on Saul Bass

These influences really come across in Cooper's design for the 2005 film 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' with it's retro modernist aesthetic that owes a lot to the stylistic trappings and aesthetic of much of Bass's work, from the noir tinged colour palette to the modernist architecture and costume design, however with a more modern approach utilizing 3D space and computer animation.

Cooper is probably most well known for his title sequence to the 1995 David Fincher classic 'Se7en' starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. The title sequence takes us through the demented scribblings of the film's antagonist, setting the dark tone for the film to come with a montage of disorientating close ups, a sort of video scrapbook set to an unsettling industrial score.