Title sequence comparison

The Good the Bad and the Ugly and The Island of Dr. Moreau

The similarities between the title sequences of these films are evident in the creation of composites, and the synchronisation of footage, stills, text and animation to music. Both title sequences from these films create a composite by superimposing text and animation over footage or stills, but the methods they used would have varied considerably.

In The Good the Bad and the Ugly, I think Lardani used a rostrum camera to create a travelling matte over some of the Warhol inspired screen prints from frames in the movie. For example where he uses a paintbrush to paint over some glass from the outside in, except he splices the film in reverse order to make it appear as though the paintbrush is revealing what is underneath instead of painting on the glass. He does that twice, except the 2nd time Lardani is blowing/spraying the paint onto the glass, making it look more like dust particles/sand. Rotoscoping is pretty obvious throughout the title sequence in The Good the Bad and the Ugly, especially with the horse riding in the beginning and also with the cannon at the end.

The Island of Dr Moreau uses the same compositing principles except it’s computer generated and superimposes the animated text on (many more) scenes of footage rather than stills. It also uses transitions on both layers (footage and text animations) rather than just the top layer and doesn't use rotoscoping.