Research into a Title Sequence Designer: Richard

Morrison

By Beatrice Fatusin

Who is Richard Morrison?

• Richard Morrison is one of the world’s most principal title sequence designers of the film industry. He has created over 150 title sequences in his career across three decades. He has created title sequences for some of the industry’s most influential film producers and directors. He started his career on the Bond series with Maurice Binder. Richard Morrison is one of Britain most prominent film title sequence designers.

Richard Morrison’s Work…

• Richard Morrison has been involved in in the tile sequence of some of films most famous films. For example ‘Batman’, The ‘Golden Compass’ and ‘Sweeney Todd’. Sweeney Todd is a 2007 musical film directed by Tim Burton. It is an adaption of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Tony Award- winning 1979 musical. It re-tells the Victorian melodramatic tale of Sweeney Todd , an English barber who murders his customers with a straight razor.

Interview with Richard Morrison• He talks concerning his profession being

a title sequence designer:“I’ve evolved more now

to consider the story, or a set of events in the background, that will

link you into the film, so the whole thing becomes like a seamless

link,” he explains. “You’ve got a typical opening sequence, which

is three-and-half minutes of blank space, so you might as well fill it

with something creative. When the lights go down, before it even

starts and people are rustling around with their popcorn, they’re not

really paying attention, so you need to grab their attention within

three minutes, or even a minute. A lot of people I’ve asked have said,

‘It’s great because we can almost judge if we are going to stay with

the film based on those first three minutes.”