(Vid) Angel:After the Fall opening credits
A while ago I put together an opening credits sequence for Buffy Season Eight, and it seemed like a good idea to do the same for Angel: After the Fall. And so here they are.
For maximum enjoyment, I recommend turning the volume up and playing this vid before reading each issue of the comic. :-)
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Director's Notes
I deliberately avoided images that would reveal the big spoilers of the series so far, in case anyone comes across these credits before reading the comic.
I used the Season Five credits as a template - that includes trying to match up similar clips, such as the image of Angel being thrown through a plate glass window which happens at the same timecount in both versions. :-)
Geek trivia note: in the 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' credits, those actors who appear earlier in the sequence have their names on screen for a longer time. However, in the 'Angel' credits everybody, even David Boreanaz himself, gets exactly 2.75 seconds. Assuming I keep to that standard myself, it puts a fixed limit on the number of people who can feature in the credits...
...And because of that, I included Angel, Spike, Illyria, Gunn, Connor and Wesley as the people who so far have had the most on-page presence and the most dialogue. I was very tempted to include Betta George with a credit "as himself", but he's not really done enough yet to warrant that - and then there's the question of do I include Gwen? or Nina? What about Lorne when he appears? Or the notorious mystery man? So I stuck to the six main cast regulars in the end.
There were some technical challenges doing these credits which I struggled with, because of all the fancy animation in the original. I did manage to get something fairly close to the moving coloured border effect. Unfortunately, Ulead VideoStudio doesn't seem able to match the animation effect that appears on the actors' names, where the words slide sideways across the screen, so I had to compromise there.