Like a spider on a thread, a capital ‘A’ crawls down to just about the middle of the screen to form part of the first credit of the Main Title. More ‘spiders’ follow. Green and blue lights nervously flicker in the background.
“The first shot of the film was on a monitor. So we proposed the idea of looking closely at the monitor as a device that would reveal titles,” explains title director Michael Riley. “By simply looking closely at the monitor, we found many colors interacting with each other organically as they refracted across the pixels on the screen. The light makes beautiful rainbows and other colors. We tried our best to capture that.”
Combine those images with the atmospheric background sound and the wiretapped conversation between a woman named Tracy and “Just Jim” and you’ve got just about all the ingredients you need to set the audience up for the mystery thriller that is Along Came a Spider.
Year of production
2001
About Michael Riley
Michael Riley is the creative director of Shine, a design studio in LA. He has been directing and designing film and television main title sequences, theatrical trailers, television commercials and corporate identity packages since 1991.
Full credits
Title designer/director
Michael Riley/Imaginary Forces
Animator/designers
Matt Tragesser and David Clayton
Editor
Tony Fulgum
Producer
Gina Galvan
Executive producer
Peter Frankfurt
Production company (titles)
Imaginary Forces
Production companies (film)
Paramount Pictures, David Brown Productions, Phase 1 Productions, in association with Revelations Entertainment
Director (film)
Lee Tamahori