When Nathan Dalton approached us with the idea for the opening Title Sequence for Quanta, we jumped at the opportunity. Title Sequences are an aspect of editing that we’ve always loved in television and feature films because they an opportunity to entertain the audience in a creative and visually aesthetic way that has freedoms outside filmed narrative. The brief was this; Nathan wanted a strong opening sequence that would propagate the atmosphere of the film - dark, moody, sci-fi and grounded. Melbourne’s backdrop is instrumental to the film so Raygun wanted a sequence that would connect the city to the sci-fi scenes of the film.

The concept was to dissolve between shots of Melbourne that integrate with CGI scenes of computer/technological pieces, chips, wires that match the city’s structure. Sonair (previously Powderfinger) would provide the gritty, droning ambience to carry the piece. We had creative freedom to research, develop and ultimately build the CGI scenes that could be cut and dissolved with shots of Melbourne. We began with the collection of references of motherboards, computer parts and sci-fi tech as well as exploring Melbourne inside Google Maps to visualise what could work. The early pre-visualisation edit used these Google Maps images with motherboard reference images edited in Premiere Pro. Once the footage of Melbourne was filmed, we collaborated with Raygun to pre-visualise the sequence, creating primitive scenes in Cinema 4D and creating rough edits to the music.

It was a strong process of idea exploration and finding what worked which allowed to develop an overarching aesthetic. We modelled, textured and animated all the CGI scenes in Cinema 4D using the Octane renderer. Any technical problems that would arise at this stage were challenges which allowed us to test, play and push the renderer to get the vision that we were aiming for.

Creating scenes that had a congruent vibe amongst the city also took a lot of attention. Further VFX were done in After Effects; such as compositing the shots, adding tilt-shift, primary colour grading, flares and any gritty texture overlays. Finally, the piece was edited together in Premiere Pro.

It was an absolute pleasure to create the opening title sequence for QUANTA and we encourage you to watch the final product below.