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Title Sequence
Slow, quiet film titles: one card at a time in the empty part of the frame, letters spacing out as they fade in, a new shot every card or two, grain and a soft grade, a piano note under the title.
Full promptPaste it into Claude Code, Codex or any agent to make the first video above.
Make a video in the Title Sequence style from ultramotion.ai: https://ultramotion.ai/styles/title-sequence/
The style is an open-source Agent Skill. If you can install skills, run npx skills add sunsiyuan/ultramotion first and build it with the title-sequence template (title.js sets the type — tracking that opens without losing its centre, letter-by-letter and wipe reveals, vertical Chinese — lays the cards out in time, dissolves between shots, and draws the grounds — fog, shafts of light, dust, out-of-focus lights, light leaks, film dirt, footage — and the film finish: grade, grain, halation, vignette, letterbox; render.py renders; sound.py scores it on sampled instruments). If you can't, write it from scratch following the description below.
[Deliverable]
- Subject: the opening credits of Winter Wheat, a small independent film set on a North Dakota farm in late October. A new shot every card: the sky, the grain elevator, the gravel road, the stubble against the sun; the title on the widest, emptiest field; night and the first snow at the lit window.
- Landscape 1920×1080 with a 2.39:1 letterbox (picture visible from y 138 to 942), 30 fps, 51.1 seconds, an mp4 with music, saved in the current directory.
- Every frame is a pure function of time t: the camera, the wind in the stubble, the snow and the reveals all come from t, with no state carried between frames. Render with a headless browser frame by frame, encode with ffmpeg, then add the music.
[The cards, on the piano's bars]
- 72 BPM in 4/4, so a bar is 3.33 s. Cards are placed in bars; fades in seconds (1.1 s in, 1.1 s out). Between cards there's always picture alone:
1. 3.33–8.0 s: HOLLOW CREEK PICTURES, with "presents" in small italics under it — centred, at y 470.
2. 10.0–14.67 s: DALE OKAFOR — left, at x 560, y 400.
3. 16.67–21.33 s: INGRID SOLBERG — centre, at y 380.
4. 23.33–28.0 s: "and" in small italics above WALT HENNING — right, at x 1380, y 330.
5. 30.5–42.17 s: the title, WINTER WHEAT — centred, at y 470. Its letters appear one by one in random order, each out of a slight blur, over 2 s; at 32.5 s the last letter is in — that is the moment of the film, and the low note lands there. Through the hold its tracking slowly closes from very wide (0.62 em) to set (0.5 em), slowing all the time, never quite stopping; it fades out over 2.2 s.
6. 43.83–48.5 s: "written and directed by" in small italics above RUTH ANN MADSEN — left of centre, at x 600, y 520.
- Each card sits where its shot is empty — the sky, the dark field — not always in the centre. Never two cards on screen at once.
[Type]
- Baskerville (fall back to Big Caslon), warm off-white (about #f3ece0).
- Names in small capitals, 25 px, tracked wide at 0.3 em. Roles ("presents", "and", "written and directed by") 20 px italic lowercase, close to normal spacing (0.08 em), dimmer (the same colour at about 60%).
- The title 56 px, with a faint warm glow (about rgba(255,200,150,.3)).
- Type is pinned to the frame; it never moves with the camera.
[Shots: one farm from dusk into night, drawn in code]
- A new shot starts half-way through the gap before its card and dissolves in over 1.3 s (at about 9.0, 15.7, 22.3 s); the title's shot comes in through black at 29.25 s (1.6 s); the night shot dissolves in at 43.0 s (1.6 s). Inside each shot the camera keeps pushing or drifting a few percent, with a little gate weave.
- 1 (company) The sky: a dusk gradient from deep blue-black at the top through slate and rust down to orange at a low horizon (y 900), the set sun's glow below it, thin bands of cloud lit from beneath, drifting slowly; only a sliver of black ground. The camera rises slightly.
- 2 (first name) The grain elevator, close: a black silhouette — head house with its cupola, round bins, a spout — against the orange low sky, a small red light on top glowing up and down slowly. A slow push towards it.
- 3 (second name) The gravel road: running straight to a vanishing point in the middle, wheel ruts, stubble along both sides catching a little rim light, a line of power poles going away on the right with the wires sagging between them. A slow push down the road.
- 4 (third name) The stubble from down low against the sun: the sun just above the horizon, every near stalk rim-lit orange, tall stalks standing against the sky, a blur of very close stalks across the bottom, a few lit specks drifting up. The camera pans slowly sideways.
- 5 (the title) The widest, emptiest field: a low dark horizon (y 770), a dim dusk sky, and far off on the right a tiny farmhouse with one lit window. The barest push.
- 6 (written and directed by) Night: a dark clapboard wall and one lit window, warm amber, a cross of mullions, a curtain on one side, a glow around it; the first snow starts to fall (fading in over 3 s), drifting in the wind. A slow push towards the window.
- The stubble moves the whole time, in slow gusts that travel across the field like one wind — never a jitter.
- One world, one grade; only the framing and the light change.
[The finish]
- From black: the picture fades up over the first 2.2 s; at the end it goes to black from 48.8 to 50.8 s.
- A light leak in warm oranges wanders in faintly from the right edge; film dirt (specks and hairs) now and then.
- Grade: blacks lifted a little and slightly cool, gamma 1.05, contrast 0.94, saturation 0.85, shadows teal-blue (about #2c4a5a), highlights warm (about #ffc489), a strong split (0.45).
- 16 mm-ish grain that changes every film frame (0.05, a little coarse), vignette 0.5, strong halation (0.5) putting a warm edge on bright things, slight bloom and a touch of chromatic aberration.
[Sound]
- Solo piano at 72 BPM in E minor, one bar per chord, starting at 0.6 s: E minor 7 (E2 under G3 B3 D4) · C major 7 (C2 under G3 B3 E4) · G (G2 under G3 B3 D4) · D over F♯ (F♯2 under F♯3 A3 D4), round and round. Over it one repeated note on every beat — B4, or A4 on the D/F♯ bar — and on every other bar the fourth beat steps down a tone.
- From the seventh bar (20.6 s) a cello doubles the bass an octave up.
- Before the title the music stops: the last bar starts at 23.9 s and nothing new comes after it, so the title's shot arrives in near silence.
- The landing, at 32.5 s as the title's last letter appears: a low E on the bass and the piano, a rolled chord E3 B3 D4 F♯4 B4, and slow strings on E2 E3 B3 D4 F♯4 that start softly at 32.1 s, swell to full by 33.7 s and fade away by 42.5 s.
- From 37.3 s the piano pattern comes back, quieter (about three-quarters), for the last four bars (D/F♯, Em, C, G); the last one, at 47.3 s, rings on into the fade to black. Nothing builds after the title.
- No drums, no impacts, no risers.
[Check before you hand it over]
- Pull frames at 5, 12, 19, 25, 33, 38, 46 s into one contact sheet; open the 38 s frame at full size and look at the type.
- Two cards on screen at once, or one arriving before the last has gone: leave a gap.
- Credits big and centred on every card: make them small and place each in the quiet part of its shot.
- The title rushed: it gets the emptiest frame, the longest hold and the silence before it.
- A bounce, a pop, a flash or a hard cut: fade, blur, drift, open.
- The picture frozen: the camera, the stubble, the clouds and the snow keep moving, slowly.
- Tracking that shifts a word off centre: open the spacing around the word's centre.
- A bright area under small type: move the card or darken that part of the ground.
- Baskerville not installed: the browser falls back to something that doesn't look like a film title — pick another installed book serif.
Use it
Install the skills, then ask your agent for a video in this style. For example:
npx skills add sunsiyuan/ultramotion