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I still think to this day that the best title sequence in any movie ever is the opening titles to SUPERMAN. Yes Bryan Singer redid it in Superman Returns with amazing visuals but the original concept was in Richard Donner’s version.
For a star field most people would say take a piece of black cardboard, poke some holes in it, back light it and you’re done.
I tried something different, since I needed multiple star fields to zoom in on. I took black corduroy material (the very same stuff my General Zit costume was made out of) laid it flat on the floor with the camera on a tripod looking straight down on it and zoomed all the way out. This is black space. For the stars I used silver glitter, which I sprinkled on the black and lit it with one light. The glitter falls on the black at different angles and when the light hits it, it reflects up at the camera as different size star s. Before I shot, I zoomed all the way in and cleared any glitter that was in the frame, basically clearing a spot in the center of the star field. I zoomed out and started filming as I slowly zoomed in all the way till all I could see was black and stopped filming. This is one star field if watched by itself would look like a group of stars zooming by you till you saw black space.
For a new star field I tapped the cloth several times in different areas to shift the glitter thus creating a new star field. This was shot the same way several times so that you would end up with lots of different star fields. The film was processed and half was put on an “A” Roll, the other half on a “B” Roll and sent back to the lab. This time each star field was given a Fade In. The first star field on the “A” Roll Fades In, half way through the zoom the “B” Roll Fades In (as a double exposure/burn in), half way through the zoom the “A” Roll Fades In again. “A” and “B” Rolls alternate until the sequence is done and you have your effect of traveling through space.
The titles were designed by our Director and Production Designer, Dave Teubner. They were basically black letters printed on a white background. A contact sheet (film negative) was made from this so that the letters were now white on black and could be backlit. A backlit title was mounted vertically in front of the camera. Now to make them smear. This was done kind of stop motion animation style. The titles come in from the top and the bottom of the screen.
The method is the same for both so lets say a title is coming from the top of the screen. With the camera zoomed all the way in I made sure the title was just out of the top of frame so that if you zoomed out the title would come into frame. I marked the zoom out in even increments. The shutter of the camera was set so that as long as the cable released was pushed in the shutter would remain open. For the first frame the shutter was opened and I zoomed out to the first mark on the zoom lens. For the second frame I zoomed all the way in again opened the shutter and zoomed out to the seconded mark. For the third frame I started all the way zoomed in, opened the shutter and zoomed out to the third mark. This continued until the title was all the way zoomed out. To center the title I continued to expose and zoom out on every frame plus crank up one turn on the tripod until the title was center. I then reversed the zoom exposure process to finish the title smear.
The titles were edited together and then burned in over the star field effect to complete the title sequence.