Title Sequence vs Visual Music
タイトルシーケンス / ヴィジュアル・ミュージック
Title Sequence comes from Broadcast Design and Visual Music from Experimental Film. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Title Sequence
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A film's opening minutes designed as a work in their own right, with shape, type and music synchronized to state the theme before the story does. Saul Bass redefined the title as a prologue rather than a preview.
Visual Music
Film art that translates musical structure into abstract shape, color and motion. From the color organ through abstract animation to today's audiovisual work, it forms a lineage of listening with the eyes.
| Title Sequence | Visual Music | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1955– | 1920s– |
| Family | Broadcast Design | Experimental Film |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Cut-paper shapes / Type synced to music / The theme compressed / Art independent of the feature | Abstract forms in motion / Chords of color / Counterpoint of sound and shape / No narrative |
| Best used for | Handing over a work's theme and temperature before the story starts · Redesigning the obligation of credits as a piece in its own right | Live performance and installation where the image must lock to the playing · Films that carry a piece of music through to the end without lyrics or story |
| Type | One face only, entrances and exits designed to the musical beat | Use no lettering, or treat any lettering as one more figure |
| Composition | Hand the names to the moving shapes, fix one reading position | Hold the center and build chords from the count and spacing of forms |
| Material | Art built apart from the feature, few colors, one repeated motif | Map hue to pitch and brightness to dynamics when choosing color |
| Caution | Decoration unrelated to the feature is not the form, since only the structure that summarizes the theme survives, and when moving the names becomes the point there is no time to read them. | Wiring shape size straight to volume, which hits the beat and never shows the structure of the piece. |