lee!

from storyboard to motion (part 2)

March 23, 2026

Welcome back to my process for this title sequence animation from storyboard to motion! We shall finish this breakdown with the final shot.

shot 3: shadows

*audio on!

the storyboard notes here from left to right are:

frame 1
- mask circle, radial blur
- blurry light
- camera refocus
- obscure
- (on frame) monochrome
frame 2
- pan down + (visually) arrow pointing down
frame 3
- dual shadow reveal
- (on frame) directed by christopher nolan

frame 1:

mask circle, radial blur + blurry light
1. blurry light behind a person was the concept of the visual- a reminder to myself when designing. originally, to create the effect, I thought of masking out a circle and putting radial blur on it. it didn’t quite create the look I was going for, so I ended up just doing a gaussian blur on a white circle, which seemed to do the trick.
camera refocus + obscure
1. again, just a treatment of the visual reminder for myself
monochrome
1. title of the title sequence.
2. initially framed in the center overtop of the person, but the word would’ve had two different colors to achieve a difference between the white light and the black shadow. I didn’t want a visual incongruence when reading it, so opted to change the word to live in a solid background color.

frame 2:

pan down + arrow

just a reminder for the shot to pan down to emphasize the dual shadows in final frame.

this ended up getting switched to a jump cut zoom in, as the pan down didn’t fit the overall tone of motion.

frame 3:

dual shadow reveal + (on frame) directed by christopher nolan

for visual cohesion, the title moved here(as mentioned earlier), which took the spot of the director’s name.

as the music ends with three chords with the different one sandwiched in the middle, it made the most sense to have the title match the middle chord for emphasis, albeit quickly.

With a solemn long note, it made the most sense to showcase the director’s name by itself with no visuals to mark the finality of the title sequence.