actually, the "blurring technique" is not some
great technique.
It's simply applying
the blur or gaussian blur in photoshop and
then using threshold or brightness/contrast or mode>bitmap
to achieve varying levels of blurred rounding.

But here the key letters are not identical so
i don't think the final result could be called
a font.

All the titles for Se7en were done optically, on film, by hand. There's a bit of info about it on the DVD itself, if I remember correctly, plus there was an article in either Print or CA when it won some awards. Truly nice work by a really great designer.

you can see the title sequence

http://www.imaginaryforces.com/
http://www.adobe.co.uk/motion/gallery/imgforces/image1.html

Sean, i'm curious if the work was done on an
Avid system ... i'd like to find out more, especially
what is meant by optically, on film, by hand.

Not doubting the info, but just find the information compelling
and would like to learn more.

I saw a Kyle Cooper book at B&N, but did not
have a chance to check it out.

thanks,

bj

Didn't NudE come out before Truth? And isn't Truth a reprocessed gothic font anyways?

I don't know, Yves. Truth looks like it is based on Bell Gothic whereas NudE looks like it is based on Helvetica.

bj, I'm almost positive that the titles for seven were done on film. There's a variety of techniques to do this, but I would guess that the copy (both type and handwritten) was printed negative on photo-composition film, a strong source of light projected on the back, and filmed (16 or likely 35 mm) from the front; using any kind of transparent distorting device (a loupe, a drinking glass, a piece of plastic,...) in front of the lens to achieve the light distortion look.

Filming at different speeds will give you also a variety of effects.

The final touches, I'm sure, will be added in After Effects, where you can composite the filmed stuff whith the digital photoshop rendering of the same type if you want to, and then with the actual footage that, in seven's case, was shot specifically for the open.

You can, of course, do all this in the computer, but there's nothing that can compare to the richness and the randomness of using real film.

As I remember from the article I read, the whole sequence was optically composited, the way it would have been done 20+ years ago. Film positives, negatives, etc were all put together and filmed by the title designer. It may have been color timed on an Avid, but certainly there was no use of After Effects.

I'm sure you could come close to duplicating the effect now in AE, but I still think it's cooler that it was done by hand.

sounds like a sweet science ... thanks for the info ...

Just theBeginning: The Art of Film Titles, by James Counts.

Scroll down a little until Kyle Cooper and Sie7e.
There is also a small bibliography at the end of the article.