In depth Description of the opening sequence of 'Catch Me If You Can'

Mr Barton has given me the task of observing the Imagery, Style, Visual effects, Font, Animation and the Editing for the film 'Catch Me If You Can' below is my report for this.

Catch me if you can title sequence in depth description

Image used in the title sequence

The imagery used in the opening to ‘Catch Me If You Can’ uses a variety of colours which are used in the sequence to show people of importance and important objects that describe what the film is about. For example the animated cartoon man continually changes colour in his form as well as objects he is in (such as the taxi cab being yellow and a following car being blue and white, while all other cars are gray) this shows the importance of 2 animated men (Leonardo Dicaprio and Tom Hanks) which in turn tells the audience that these men are playing a game of ‘cat and mouse’ through various locations and causes curiosity in the viewer through the change of colouration making the audience curious to watch on in the film.

Style used in the title sequence

The style used in the title sequence of ‘Catch Me If You Can’ is cartoon style, it differs however from other cartoon styles as it is a silent cartoon that has only a mysterious music playing through that builds up as the man first shown in the sequence is almost caught by the other man who is chasing him leading to suspense in the opening scene the drawing style of the cartoon characters are a ‘sketchy and gritty’ style that is also mysterious as it can give the viewer the opinion that these men are like this because they may be sketchy or shady people.

Visual effects used in the title sequence

The visual effects used in the opening sequence of ‘Catch Me If You Can’ are quite simple in design (for example each cartoon mans movements appear to be simple animations apart from the two key characters who are given unique movements there are also constantly changing environments throughout the sequence which show that the film is set in a variety of unknown and mysterious location for example we see that the two men are in an airport, but why are they in an airport? and where is this airport? We are also given a lot of visual styles in the way opening credits are presented, every time one is presented it drops a line, turns into another object etc which is an effective way to include opening credits while not taking concentration away from the opening sequence cartoon.

Font used in the title sequence

The font used in the opening sequence of ‘Catch Me If You Can’ is a a very calm looking font as to say that the film is a calmed environment, however from the rest of the opening sequence we can see that it is not as it seems as the film appears to be a desperate and frantic chase of a man by another man we get the image from the font however that the location is also constantly changing for the two men as with every font change a new location for the cartoon is introduced possibly meaning the colours and the font hold a connection to the part of the storyline.

Animation used in the title sequence

The animation used in the title sequence is varied for the less important cartoon characters it is simple walking and swimming motions (showing that these are basically ‘filler’ characters that are made to represent normal everyday people) whereas two characters that stand out as important characters are given a lot more in depth animations (for example they move their heads from their arms, read newspapers, open doors, change clothes etc) The animations clearly show that the main characters are of importance as they are given these animations and are constantly changing from one environment to the next.

Editing used in the title sequence

The editing that is used in the title sequence of ‘Catch Me If You Can’ is a lot of separately done cartoon scenes cut, shortened and then meshed into one longer opening film this is done because it is a lot easier to make several smaller clips and put them together into a larger one as you can cut out content that you do not want (or to increase the ‘flow’ of the opening sequence) or to see where each ‘piece’ should be placed for the best effect. The other forms of editing used in this sequence can be seen on certain parts of text for example the fading of part of the title when the title ‘Catch Me If You Can’ comes on and part of the word fades like a cloud. Another type of editing used in the sequence is the constant colour changes that occur throughout the opening sequence that are placed to give a mysterious outlook to the cartoon sequence.