Dystopia Title Sequence (sci-fi adventure series)

Orbital Sound Pictures

Video Link: http://youtu.be/V5OePLd_fCI

A one minute title sequence for a sci-fi animation.

In the twilight of the twenty-first century, the Earth has a population exceeding one billion. For many, the technological dreams of the past have become a reality that has emulsified industries, cultures and spiritual systems into a complex network of world order. It is an emergent period of peace, prosperity, and safety that is maintained by the Guardians and their nano-robiotic body and mind enhanced Shadow Dancers. For Djawu Qaletaqu, a twenty-one-year-old steam punk musician in the recently formed global capitol city of Nu Jeru, this new order means compulsive world service duty for indies like himself compelling him to break into the corporate music scene to avoid conscription in the upcoming lotteries.The accidental discovery of a secret terroristic data threat hidden within the hottest nightspot on the planet catipults the brash, impetuous sitarian slinger into a series of adventures and political intrigues. Accompanied by a child-sized human assister robot and a beautiful and powerful Shadow Dancer, Djawu challenges the plans of a mysterious and sinister figure.

FirstBastion

Interesting start, but I must say, the reverse scroll of the opening narrative was hard to read, because of both the font choice and the speed of the scrolling. Plus the reverse scroll is inherently opposite to how we usually read text. That's probably why Starwars uses the more standardize scroll. Still the actual writing and the content of the story sounds interesting.

3WC

FirstBastion said:

Interesting start, but I must say, the reverse scroll of the opening narrative was hard to read, because of both the font choice and the speed of the scrolling. Plus the reverse scroll is inherently opposite to how we usually read text. That's probably why Starwars uses the more standardize scroll. Still the actual writing and the content of the story sounds interesting.

I agree, nicely done, but hard to read. Also, "at the twilight of the 21st century...population exceeding one billion"? What happened to all the people? Or is that part of the story?

Orbital Sound Pictures

FirstBastion:

Thank you for the critique and comments. Your point is taken and will be considered for changes. The options were to either quickly summerize the prologue from the novelization of the script in scroll form or to go with the following qoute: "It's just a matter of time before the Guardianship's control over the capital will turn the Republic into a Shadow State." `Nebu Chad, former POTUS

Both the font and the reverse scroll (a twisted nod to Star Wars) were chosen for a dystopian look and to support thematic considerations that underly the work. The story is being animated in cinemascope for that epic look and feel. It will be interesting to see how the font and pacing work out when previewed on a full-sized theatrical screen. So, it is quite possible that the scrolled image will be tweaked and used for the directors cut version and that the short quote will replace it for viewing on smaller screens.

Again, thank you for taking the time to comment as your critique has been very helpful to to production. Take care, ~JW

a-sennov

I once had an idea of doing something like this with text that could be read from both ends :) I dropped it 'cause I'm not that good at writing and generally people will not read the text that long :)

Orbital Sound Pictures

wwes:

Thank you for taking the time to post. Your critique is welcome and will be weighed against the conceits of the story and its presentation.

One of those concieits was to dump the viewer into this foreign near future world with very little explanation - at least up front at first. The inital feedback of the script was that the storyline was understandable with this approach.The font was chosen for its stylistic but near alphabetic look;. so as to be readable, but challenging - akin to a tourist's first day in a new place. The speed of the crawl will be adjusted for intelligibilty after it is examined during a large format preview. It may be determined that the crawl will better serve a director's cut version - but willing to discuss.

In regards to the population number, the Dystopia storyline begins by following an unknown indie class musician in the aftermath of a (The) Global Conflict. For plot reasons, the prologue containing the explanatory Global Conflict and it's culminating battle scene will make up the last episode of the series.

Rather than try to predict the future (and badly), the story takes a backwards looking historical approach. Civilization is refocused where it started in the fertile crescent region and beginning again politically.

This backstory assumes that Chindia has a sizable population left but no longer poses a military/ corporate threat to the new Republic (its currency, the Chin Yen is considered blackmarket.) The EU was dismantled and subsumed by the World Republic voluntarily. The US was reduced to a shell of its former self after Washington fell and remains a loose collection of independent states ruled by governors and to some extent overlorded by the Republic. NYC is an international no fly zone; the UN has been relocated to Dubai and the last POTUS is considered a terrorist threat to the Republic as an underground leader along with his most trusted generals, of a growing separatist army, the United Continental Marines. The continents of Africa and South America with the exception of Brazilia, are back to their natural states and Australia is once again a penal colony.

a-sennov

What's the POTUS?

Chohole

a-sennov said:

What's the POTUS?

The Prez. (President Of The United States)

a-sennov

Oh?.. Thanks, didn't know that.

Ruphuss

who made the music ?
are you allowed to use this music ?
for critical review I would mute it because the impact on the watcher is to big

you tell nothing about how you made it
what programs
2D or 3D

Orbital Sound Pictures

ruphuss:

Thank you for taking the time to watch and comment. I appreciate your response, as it is nice to have a set of fresh eyes and ears from the Daz forums to help make this project the best that it can be.

The music is royalty free and most of it is cleared through Smart Sound, a company that provides incidental sound clips often times for Hollywood films and independents.

The video link should direct to the YouTube player which has both a mute button and a volume slider in the lower left hand corner.

I used the following software to complete the title sequence:

Carrara 8 Pro
Avid Media Composer 8
Avid FX 6
Boris Continuum Complete 9
Fusion 7
Sorrenson Squeeze 8 Pro
Pro Tools 10 LE
Sonic Fire 5 Pro
~ Btw, if anyone might be interested, there are storyboard production stills posted under the orbitalsound moniker over at ShareCG concerning the project..

Orbital Sound Pictures

a-sennov:

I appreciate your taking the time to watch and comment.

Did you ever post an example of the text idea you were working on? I'm trying to visualize what it would look like. Was it that a sentence read from left to right and then again right to left as some languages are written?

I find it fun to play with language. I have a minor spin-off character in the storyline, a DR01D named Halcyon 5000 (a nod to Hal in A. C. Clark's 2001) that eventually gets pushed into a high voltage junction box by WorlPol (the world police) to destroy it. While the robot is frying, the electrical damage manifests itself in a series of hallucinatory adventures that incorporate the character. Textually, the internal damage is shown by combining numbers and letters within the robot's speech. Example: C4N U R34D 7H15? While not everyone can read this, it will serve as a great visual representation of Halcyon's damaged state.

I figured that in the future people would refer to the last US President simply as the POTUS. Likewise, the leader of the World Republic is refered to as the POTUN - President Of The United Nations - as both acronyms are easier to text or speaktext as the case might be in a future society that process digital information very quickly.

` btw, the Daz Forum Spell Check is terrible: I misspelled "working" with an errant i, and "sentence" with an a insted of an e and both errors were not found. Too funny.

a-sennov

OSR said:

Did you ever post an example of the text idea you were working on? I'm trying to visualize what it would look like. Was it that a sentence read from left to right and then again right to left as some languages are written?

Idea was simple: in the beginning text flow is like in Star Wars - from viewer and bottom of the screen into far away in the middle of the screen, then text ends and flow changes to the opposite - from distance to the viewer and to the top of the screen. Lines of text are the same but now they have to be read from last line to first and that should form some additional meaning :)

But for effect to be 'effective' you need relatively long text, again like in SW so the first line of text would become blurred while the last is red. And effect will double it's length so viewers have to have patience to read it :)

And I'm not a good writer so I've dropped it after two attempts because I myself have found it too boring to read :)

OSR said:

I find it fun to play with language. I have a minor spin-off character in the storyline, a DR01D named Halcyon 5000 (a nod to Hal in A. C. Clark's 2001) that eventually gets pushed into a high voltage junction box by WorlPol (the world police) to destroy it. While the robot is frying, the electrical damage manifests itself in a series of hallucinatory adventures that incorporate the character. Textually, the internal damage is shown by combining numbers and letters within the robot's speech. Example: C4N U R34D 7H15? While not everyone can read this, it will serve as a great visual representation of Halcyon's damaged state.

Yeah, you may change any letter in words to any symbols (even alien ones) but leave first and last letter and text will still be readable. For robots, digits are surely the right choice.

I figured that in the future people would refer to the last US President simply as the POTUS. Likewise, the leader of the World Republic is refered to as the POTUN - President Of The United Nations - as both acronyms are easier to text or speaktext as the case might be in a future society that process digital information very quickly.

Politics ahead,do not read!

I didn't know that abbreviation but funny part is that for Russian POTUS sounds like 'поц' and that means 'shmuck' or 'dick' when translated back to English and this whole chain of translations finely reflects our attitude to the current POTUS :)

Orbital Sound Pictures

a-sennov:

Oh, I get what you did now. Cool idea. To bad our attention spans are so short. I wonder if even the Star Wars crawl will become too tedious to read in the future by all except the superfan. Hmm...

Potus - lost in translation. It's good to learn a little Russian, though. Thanks.