Use of text:(Title, Credits, animated captions, stings, idents, interactive menus, web banner)

Title Sequence

Brief description:What do you see?

As there was no videos available of the title sequence by itself, I instead had to use a video which started with the opening scene before going into the title sequence. The title sequence fades in at 2:10 when the camera tracks up to the top of the ocean from underneath after Marlin discovers that only one of his babies has survived from the shark massacre, vowing to protect his son and calling him Nemo. Behind the text the water is slightly wavy, then as the text (Walt Disney Pictures present) is about to fade away it also begins to become wavy. This is a good technique as it fits into the background and also fits in with the film as it is a story that is set in the ocean. This happens again when another piece of text appears (a Pixar Animations Studio film). The background changes, again in a wavy motion, as the footage of the ocean habitat almost comes towards us. The film’s title/logo then appears, also in the same fading wavy motion. The sequence then fades to black as the film begins. All this happens with a very emotional piece of background music, which sounds like a violin, which suits the scene and film itself to a tee.

Techniques used:Animation, Visual Effects, Colour Rendering, Graphics, Movement

Obviously the film was made using CGI but as animation has progressed over the years, and Finding Nemo is still a relatively new-ish film, it looks quite spectacular. Although aware that the film is animated, and also predominantly aimed at children, during the title sequence the animation is that good that it almost looks real. The lighting of the scene is also used very well. With most of the fades and transitions, a big bright light appears and is very eye catching. The colours are perhaps the best use of a technique in the title sequence. As the film is set in the ocean the animators would have had their work cut out in trying to recreate the vast amount of colours that appear under the roof of the ocean water, but they do it very well and it looks amazing. There is barely any movement other than the tracks and the wavy fades. I think this is because the scene before the title sequence was very frantic, panicky and quite scary (especially for an 8 year old –which is how old I was when the film came out) so the very little movement of the title sequence suggests that the film is trying to calm the audience and itself down a little bit.

Advanced techniques:Blur, Sharpen, Distortion, Rotation, Opacity

As mentioned before, the film attempts to calm itself down with the title sequence. The use of the blur with the fading wavy motions is an example of this. The background with the top of the ocean is also blurred. It looks like the ‘camera’ is quite far down in the ocean, pointing up. Also mentioned before was the quality of the animation, which the sharpen technique proves. We could go from a blurred image to a really crisp one and it still looks visually pleasing.

Technical comments:Video format, Screen ratio, Resolution, Frame rate, Compression

The video is played through YouTube;

Screen ratio: 16:9 (standard for widescreen)

Video format: 360p

The codec is Codec: H.264, which is also known as MEPG-4 AVC. Pros:H.264 delivers incredible video quality at data rates one-fourth to one-half the size of previous video formatsH.264 offers dramatically lower bit rates and better picture quality than MPEG-2, MPEG-4 or H.263+It is 2X times more efficient than MPEG-4. and file size is 3X times smaller than comparable MPEG-2 CodecsIt is easy to integrate and covers wide range of picture format. Hence used in large application segmentCons:H.264 requires longer encoding timeIt is certainly not constricted and low-bandwidth friendlyMore Hardware overhead is also one of the limiting factorLicensing agreements are complicated.