A Conversation with Michael Riley, Creative Director of Shine about Kung Fu Panda Titles
Interview by Michele Yamazaki, VP Marketing, Toolfarm Inc.
My good friend Dru Nget is my former student and has done well for himself. He is working at Shine in Los Angeles, CA, who animated and produced the title sequence for Kung Fu Panda, DreamWorks blockbuster summer film starring Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman and Angelina Jolie. I spoke with Michael Riley, Dru's boss and Creative Director at Shine, about the Kung Fu Panda titles.
Hi Michael. Thank you for talking with me today. For readers who are not familiar with Shine, can you talk a bit about your company?
Shine is a creative design and branding studio in Hollywood. We design and produce film and television main titles, network branding packages, entertainment branding, and commercials and commercial graphics.
You have done several television and film title sequences. How did you get into title design?
In college I interned for Tibor Kalman at M&Co. in New York City. He was a creative director whose work crossed into different media, which was really inspirational to me. I remember when I saw a music video he did for the Talking Heads. He used moving typography in such a meaningful, beautiful, and emotional way. It really opened my eyes to the idea of time based design.
After I graduated from RISD, I started working at R/Greenberg Associates in 1991, with Kyle Cooper. We did lots of movie titles, commercials, and other broadcast work. The L.A. office of R/GA split off and became Imaginary Forces, where I was a partner and creative director. Shine was born in late 2005. Bob Swensen, Executive Producer, and I, have had a lot of great experiences working together at Shine.
What are some of the favorites that you have designed?
Early in my career I designed a title sequence for a movie called Gattaca for a director called Andrew Niccol. I also liked working on Band of Brothers for Steven Spielberg. Last year, we did one for a Fox show called Standoff which was a favorite around here.
The titles for Kung Fu Panda are just beautiful. I know that your company starts the process with the storyboards. How do you set a mood and capture the audience's attention before the film begins?
Thank you for your kind words. We try our best to listen to the director when we first hear the brief. We are like any other department on a film, in that ultimately we are designing toward the end of serving the director's vision. We conceptualize and present many ideas. Rather than trying to hit the nail on the head with one idea we approach the design process as a conversation. We present ideas, the director responds, then we respond in return. It's an organic process.
Director Mark Osbourne, John Stevenson and producer Melissa Cobb were very articulate in their brief without constraining us creatively. They had been working on the film for four years, so they knew their story and characters inside and out. That served us well. They let us think freely, and asked us to present a range of ideas. We read the script and saw a rough cut of the film. Through face-to-face conversations we were able to develop a design that the filmmakers responded to and ultimately chose.
I love your use of depth in the title design - the misty mountains in the background and such. The zooming calligraphy/landscape effects are fantastic. I read that you used After Effects extensively. Can you take us through the process of creating the the open title sequence?
Thank you. The concept that we produced was based on the idea of a dimensional, animating scroll. The scroll is a big part of the story in Kung Fu Panda. We tried to make it feel big and cinematic, and true to the feel of the film. Production Designer Ramone Zibach and Art Director Tang Kheng Heng are both incredible artists. They had an enormous amount of process elements that we used as elements for our design.
The titles really are an innovative collaboration of designers and animators. Can you talk about your collaboration and workflow with Shine, James Baxter Animation and DreamWorks? How do you achieve visual continuity with the film?
Shine's concept included reprising the film’s main characters in cell animations by finding them hidden in a gigantic Chinese calligraphy character. This mix of disciplines required a tremendous collaboration between Shine, James Baxter Animation and the DreamWorks Animation team of animators, production designers and directors. We had a lot of interactions with the filmmakers, on the DreamWorks Animation campus. Spending time in-person is exponentially better than a conference call, an email, or video chat. At Shine, we think that in-person interactions between creative people are where really interesting creative things happen.
Your end titles are not the usual scrolling text over black. It's such a unique layout. I love it. What sort of challenges did such long title sequences bring? We're you locked into a certain time frame for the opening titles?
Thank you for your kind words. The scroll idea had it's challenges. Yes, we were locked into the 8 /12 minute length from the start. That duration seemed right creatively to everyone involved. During the production, Shine designer Dru Nget came up with some very inventive scripting solutions that helped the workflow in After Effects. The title sequence was by far the longest we've ever created. The core team was 400 and there were over 970 people to credit.
The Chinese caligraphy - I read that someone on the project who is fluent in Mandarin translated them and created them all for you.
We took a lot of care in ensuring that the Chinese translations were accurate. Original calligraphy was created using a traditional brush on rice paper which was backed on linen. We scanned the calligraphy and used it as elements that moved in 3D space. Accuracy in translation was our biggest issue.
I have heard that there are rules about the size of the text and the duration that they are on screen. More famous actor = bigger titles. How does this effect the design of the titles?
When you make a title list, you receive a title list. Title sizes are never defined in terms of point size, but instead they are set in relation to an anchor title, usually the director's credit, or the name of the film. Talent title sizes will typically be required to have a title height not less than that of the director. Supporting talent might have a credit size requirement that's not less than 75% or 50% the size of the title for leading talent, and so on. In the case of Kung Fu Panda, it was much simpler. The filmmakers decided that we should make the title sizes all equal. Often title designers will do that regardless.
How does the approval by DreamWorks take place? Are there multiple approvals involved?
There were many presentations and revisions during the process. The directors said, "Show us when you have something that is ready to show." That didn't mean it needed to be finished, but it meant that we needed to regulate ourslves as to when feedback would be most appropriate and productive. I think the version we finished was version 129.
We pitched and were awarded the project in August 2007, and the project delivered in late April 2008.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me and best of luck on future projects.