Fantasy TV intro--"Little House on the Prairie" alternate opening

Another bit of sentimental, nostalgic dorkery using iMovie, its trusty Ken Burns mode, and a load of carefully selected images from Google.

Here's the premise for this one:

Since this is really Laura Ingalls' story (she wrote the books, after all), WHAT IF Melissa Gilbert had top billing? (Don't worry, Michael Landon has the equally important "and starring...as..." bottom billing as well as an exec producer credit.) The result is a very simple--and radically different--reimagining of the opening credits of this timeless show. I think my version has a much more contemporary (ie early/mid '70s) visual style than the real thing, which although pretty seems stuck about ten years earlier. It's as if, in a bid to insure its new historical drama's success, NBC had hired the titles designer from "The Waltons".

This is what I liked about this experiment:
• the closeups of the characters' faces (especially little Carrie...all you ever saw of her in the real opening was her falling down, here you get to see her hauntingly pretty little mug full on); I feel the tight closeups and slow zooms make them all larger than life--mythic
• the very careful timing of all the elements vis-a-vis the music, including the cuts, the titles fading in and out, and that slow fade between the house and the family portrait
• the faux-antique sepia tone; in hindsight, I probably would have "aged" the photos a bit more via higher contrast and more "film grain"
• that shot of the eponymous house
• little period details like the copyright notice on the title card
• at least here on YouTube, the downsampling of the video gives it a very convincing "film" look without using any hokey digital effects (especially in full screen mode...try it!)

That's a lot of blather for a dorky minute-long video. Well, at least *I* like how it turned out. I hope you like it too! :-)

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Little House on the Prairie
• opening
• intro
• credits
• alternate
• fake
• imovie

[Gabriellandon]

Michael Landon is my Idol and he is the main person in the tv serie.. :D

[mishelly38]

I liked it good job.