60s Spy Title Sequence 60s 间谍片头

The Velvet Cipher·44s·Lemo-Opuscarby Lemomo

A cut-paper, four-ink opening title sequence for a film that never existed: silhouettes move through sets built out of the credits themselves, every brass stab is a cut, and a title is assembled from the pieces.

The demo: Opening titles for an imaginary 1964 spy film: a chase for a stolen key until the shapes lock into the title.

Title sequencesEvent openersTrailers

Style prompt · STYLE.md

A cut-paper, four-ink opening title sequence for a film that never existed: silhouettes move through sets built out of the credits themselves, every brass stab is a cut, and a title is assembled from the pieces. References (grammar only): Saul Bass's titles for North by Northwest, Anatomy of a Murder and Vertigo (flat opaque inks, abstraction down to silhouettes, type as structure); the 2002 homage by Kuntzel + Deygas for Catch Me If You Can (a cut-paper chase through graphic sets, lateral tracking). Not a gun-barrel opening, not a tiptoeing cartoon panther, not a copy of any real title's logo, lettering, characters or shots.

1. Essence, and what it is not

Flat, opaque inks on paper: four colours, no gradients.
Hand-cut edges on every shape; pieces layered with cut gaps and small paper shadows.
Abstraction down to silhouettes: figures in profile, all acting in outline and timing.
Typography is the picture's structure: credits are architecture, props, vehicles.
Music cuts the picture: brass stabs are edit points.
A title sequence is a story in itself: one goal, a few locations, one reveal.

Not flat vector motion graphics (the edges are cut, the paper is physical), not a halftone print style (no dots), not a Swiss grid (diagonals, jaunty type, playful), not a spy parody with gadgets and gun barrels.

2. Materials & rendering

Scissor-cut edges: every polygon resampled every ~9–10 px and displaced along its normal by low-frequency noise (amp ~1.2–2.2 px, larger for bigger shapes) plus a rare 1–2 px notch. Cut the edge once in the piece's local space and cache it, so a moving cutout keeps the same edge, exactly like real cutout animation (screen-space edges crawl).
Paper layering: separate pieces are separated by a ~2.4 px cut gap in the ground colour and cast a small paper shadow (offset a few px, blur ~5, alpha ~0.3). Whole figures get the gap as an outline, so a black figure reads in front of a black letter.
Paper texture: one full-frame texture multiplied on top (mottling + faint fibres), a sparse "ink void" speckle on dark ink, faint squeegee streaks; film grain in the mux (~6).
Silhouette figures: tall stylised adults (~7 heads), identity by hat, coat cut, shoes and one colour accent that doubles as a motion indicator (a tie or scarf streaming back when running). Pieces merge into one outline inside the figure, with only thin slits at shoulder, elbow, hip and knee. Hands are sharp wedges; no faces except an eye slit in close-ups.
The object of the chase sits on a black backing (an ink keyline) so it reads on any ground; it is the brightest thing in frame.
Type: a condensed OFL display face (e.g. League Gothic) for credits, glyph outlines extracted (opentype.js) and re-cut per letter (edge noise, ±0.8° rotation, ±1.5 px baseline jitter). A title in custom geometric cut glyphs (straight cuts + arcs, uneven weights, staggered baselines), never a real title's lettering.

3. Colour logic

Four inks: ink black, paper cream, one hot colour, one warm secondary. Darker "shadow paper" variants of those inks only for depth.
One dominant ground colour per scene, changing with the location; figures and type in the other inks.
The hot colour is reserved for one accent on the hero and for danger; the secondary marks the object of the chase.
Background props go in a darker version of the ground, never in black, or they read as letters.
Examples: black #1b1714 / cream #efe4c9 / red #d23a22 / mustard #e2a52a; ink #161a22 / bone #ece6d6 / teal #1f8a8a / orange #f07a28; black / pale pink #f3d6cc / cobalt #2a46b8 / lemon #f0d23a.

4. Type & subtitles

Credits live in the set, never in the subtitle band: one line per location, fully readable at some moment. Credits are fictional roles only, never real people's names.
Subtitles on a narrow paper strip (scissor-cut ends, slightly tilted) bottom-left, a small glyph from the film as bullet, a geometric OFL sans (e.g. League Spartan 600, ~44 px). Light strip on dark scenes, dark strip on light scenes; slides in from the left in ~0.18 s. Hold ≥ max(1.8 s, speech + 0.6 s).
Hold each credit long enough to read alongside a subtitle.

5. Motion quality

Puppets on twos (12 fps): poses and positions of figures, hands, letters landing, vehicles. Camera, credit slides and grid growth on ones (24 fps): a stepped camera judders.
Run cycles of ~8 drawings, one step per beat, a strong lean, the accent flying back. Walks one step per beat, coats swinging.
Credits slide in along grid lines and stop dead on the beat (short ease-out); letters land with a paper slap.
Stop-time: at a stab the whole picture freezes (background scroll included) for a couple of beats in total silence, then resumes.
Shattering: a scene sliced into strips parallel to a cut line that slide off alternately along the diagonal.

6. Camera grammar

A vocabulary, not a route. Graphic, flat, decisive. Opening and ending come from the topic.

Move	What it expresses	Can serve
Wide on a full credit line, then truck in	reading, then action	any location built from type
Lateral tracking, one screen direction	pursuit; momentum	a chase; a race; a delivery
Hard cut on a brass stab	punch; a new location	montage; a reveal; a gag
Graphic match cut (same shape, same position)	rhyme; acceleration	wheel → coin → pupil → moon
Locked single shape on a flat ground	mystery; an icon	a cold open; a clue; a logo
Silhouette against a giant circle	the hero moment	a catch; a triumph; a stand-off
Diagonal split into a grid	fragmentation; many at once	a split screen; a conspiracy; a team
Vertical pan down a column of type	descent; a list	a building; a roster; a countdown
Push into a letter until it fills frame	a letter becomes a place	a door; a tunnel; a window

Framing: strong diagonals (~30°), big flat grounds, figures small against type. Match cuts keep circle centres and sizes identical across the cut. No dissolves.

7. Sound palette

1960s spy big band: stacked staccato trumpets and trombones in octaves with crash (the stab), surf guitar low-string twang through a spring reverb, walking upright bass, brushes or sticks, bongos and shakers, vibraphone, flute, organ stabs, harpsichord. Minor keys, chromatic lines, dotted rhythms. Original motifs only: avoid the famous chromatic crawl of the most famous spy theme and its minor-major-ninth ending chord.
Stabs = edit points: place staccato brass ~8 ms early so the sample's peak hits the frame.
Techniques (options): a cut interval that shrinks as a chase accelerates; stop-time silence; a big chord for the title followed by a short button; a solo instrument alone for a quiet scene.
Foley follows the material: paper (cut "shh", slides, card slaps for letters landing, blind flips, a tear), metal (keys, chains, locks, clicks), tape (click, hiss). Environments only hinted: a jet pass panned, train wheels in tempo, roulette ticks slowing, wind, a phone ring, footsteps on stairs.
Silence: true zero, reverb tails included; a single tape click or hiss may remain.
Mix: music ducks ~7 dB under voice; a peaky mix needs a few dB into a limiter before loudnorm to reach −14 LUFS.
Voice: a briefing through a tape chain (band-pass ~220–5200 Hz, soft saturation, slow wow, hiss rising under the voice); a few very short lines.

8. Native moves

A menu: use the ones your story needs.

Type is the set. Each location is one line of credits and that line is its architecture (letters as pillars, words as carriages, a letter as a lock). Fits content like: a conference programme as a city; a menu as a restaurant; team names as a stadium.
Credits are rhythm. Credits land on beats; stabs are cuts. Fits content like: a product's features; a festival line-up; an award's nominees.
Graphic match cuts. Shape rhymes, the interval shrinking as tension rises. Fits content like: a coin → a planet → a clock; a gear → a wheel → a sun.
The diagonal grid. A diagonal cut multiplies into a grid, and the pieces later fly back along it to assemble something. Fits content like: a puzzle solved; a team forming; a logo assembled.
Silhouette puppets. Profile cut-outs whose acting is outline and timing. Fits content like: a heist; a courier on a deadline; a detective.
Stop-time gag. Freeze on a stab, silence, resume. Fits content like: a near miss; a double take; a price reveal.
The object of the chase is the title. What everyone pursues becomes the last thing assembled. Fits content like: a product launch; a book's name; a birthday name.

9. Pitfalls of the medium

Every internal piece outlined with a gap looks like a mannequin diagram → merge pieces in an offscreen layer, cut only joint slits (destination-out), outline the whole figure.
A clear() that resets the transform silently kills the camera.
A figure fully hidden behind a letter reads as "nobody there" → let hat, nose and accent stick out. A stiff streamer reads as a tongue → multi-segment ribbon with a travelling sine.
A credit only ever seen partially is uncomfortable → always open wide on the full line.
Black background props read as letters → darker ground colour.
An object in the same ink as its ground vanishes → black backing.
Circular props dropped into a word cover neighbouring letters → lay the word out around a gap.
Match cuts fail if circle centres move across the cut.
Flat inks + grain make huge files at low CRF → a higher CRF looks the same.

10. Engine

In demo/: paper.js (four inks, cached scissor edges, cut gaps, paper shadow, texture, silhouette layer with joint slits), glyph.js (League Gothic → opentype.js outlines → re-cut letters), chars.js (silhouette rigs, poses, run/walk cycles), title.js (custom cut title glyphs, diagonal split), story.js (tempo grid, single source of timing), film.js (timeline, acting, cameras, subtitles, sound events). ?sheet=1 renders a model sheet, ?frame=<scene> a style frame. File list and build steps: DEMO.md "Build notes".

11. Variation space

You decide what is pursued, by whom, the locations (as credits), the inks, the opening and the ending. All far from our demo:

Structures: no chase: a countdown (ten credits, ten locations, a bomb-clock number built from type in each); a heist in reverse (the object is returned, location by location, to where it belongs); two agents, one frame (split diagonally, each side a different ground colour, until they meet).
Openings: a full-frame title that shatters into the sequence (the reveal moved to the start); a telephone rings in a single cut-out room; the hero already falling through a column of type.
Endings: the title never assembles, one piece missing, the hero walking off with it; a slow pull-out showing every location was one giant credit page; a stop-time freeze on the final stab, held.

How our demo was made (story, shots, score, end card, build): DEMO.md. Read it after your treatment exists.

# 60s Spy Title Sequence — Style Prompt

> A cut-paper, four-ink opening title sequence for a film that never existed: silhouettes move through sets built out of the credits themselves, every brass stab is a cut, and a title is assembled from the pieces.
> References (grammar only): Saul Bass's titles for *North by Northwest*, *Anatomy of a Murder* and *Vertigo* (flat opaque inks, abstraction down to silhouettes, type as structure); the 2002 homage by Kuntzel + Deygas for *Catch Me If You Can* (a cut-paper chase through graphic sets, lateral tracking). Not a gun-barrel opening, not a tiptoeing cartoon panther, not a copy of any real title's logo, lettering, characters or shots.

## 1. Essence, and what it is not

- **Flat, opaque inks on paper**: four colours, no gradients.
- **Hand-cut edges** on every shape; pieces layered with cut gaps and small paper shadows.
- **Abstraction down to silhouettes**: figures in profile, all acting in outline and timing.
- **Typography is the picture's structure**: credits are architecture, props, vehicles.
- **Music cuts the picture**: brass stabs are edit points.
- A title sequence is a story in itself: one goal, a few locations, one reveal.

## 2. Materials & rendering

- **Scissor-cut edges**: every polygon resampled every ~9–10 px and displaced along its normal by low-frequency noise (amp ~1.2–2.2 px, larger for bigger shapes) plus a rare 1–2 px notch. **Cut the edge once in the piece's local space and cache it**, so a moving cutout keeps the same edge, exactly like real cutout animation (screen-space edges crawl).
- **Paper layering**: separate pieces are separated by a ~2.4 px cut gap in the ground colour and cast a small paper shadow (offset a few px, blur ~5, alpha ~0.3). Whole figures get the gap as an outline, so a black figure reads in front of a black letter.
- **Paper texture**: one full-frame texture multiplied on top (mottling + faint fibres), a sparse "ink void" speckle on dark ink, faint squeegee streaks; film grain in the mux (~6).
- **Silhouette figures**: tall stylised adults (~7 heads), identity by hat, coat cut, shoes and **one colour accent** that doubles as a motion indicator (a tie or scarf streaming back when running). Pieces **merge into one outline** inside the figure, with only thin slits at shoulder, elbow, hip and knee. Hands are sharp wedges; no faces except an eye slit in close-ups.
- **The object of the chase** sits on a black backing (an ink keyline) so it reads on any ground; it is the brightest thing in frame.
- **Type**: a condensed OFL display face (e.g. League Gothic) for credits, glyph outlines extracted (opentype.js) and **re-cut** per letter (edge noise, ±0.8° rotation, ±1.5 px baseline jitter). A title in custom geometric cut glyphs (straight cuts + arcs, uneven weights, staggered baselines), never a real title's lettering.

## 3. Colour logic

- **Four inks**: ink black, paper cream, one hot colour, one warm secondary. Darker "shadow paper" variants of those inks only for depth.
- **One dominant ground colour per scene**, changing with the location; figures and type in the other inks.
- The hot colour is reserved for one accent on the hero and for danger; the secondary marks the object of the chase.
- Background props go in a darker version of the ground, never in black, or they read as letters.
- Examples: black `#1b1714` / cream `#efe4c9` / red `#d23a22` / mustard `#e2a52a`; ink `#161a22` / bone `#ece6d6` / teal `#1f8a8a` / orange `#f07a28`; black / pale pink `#f3d6cc` / cobalt `#2a46b8` / lemon `#f0d23a`.

## 4. Type & subtitles

- **Credits live in the set**, never in the subtitle band: one line per location, fully readable at some moment. Credits are fictional roles only, never real people's names.
- **Subtitles** on a narrow paper strip (scissor-cut ends, slightly tilted) bottom-left, a small glyph from the film as bullet, a geometric OFL sans (e.g. League Spartan 600, ~44 px). Light strip on dark scenes, dark strip on light scenes; slides in from the left in ~0.18 s. Hold ≥ max(1.8 s, speech + 0.6 s).
- Hold each credit long enough to read alongside a subtitle.

## 5. Motion quality

- **Puppets on twos** (12 fps): poses and positions of figures, hands, letters landing, vehicles. **Camera, credit slides and grid growth on ones** (24 fps): a stepped camera judders.
- Run cycles of ~8 drawings, one step per beat, a strong lean, the accent flying back. Walks one step per beat, coats swinging.
- Credits slide in along grid lines and **stop dead on the beat** (short ease-out); letters land with a paper slap.
- **Stop-time**: at a stab the whole picture freezes (background scroll included) for a couple of beats in total silence, then resumes.
- Shattering: a scene sliced into strips parallel to a cut line that slide off alternately along the diagonal.

## 6. Camera grammar

A vocabulary, not a route. Graphic, flat, decisive. Opening and ending come from the topic.

| Move | What it expresses | Can serve |
|---|---|---|
| Wide on a full credit line, then truck in | reading, then action | any location built from type |
| Lateral tracking, one screen direction | pursuit; momentum | a chase; a race; a delivery |
| Hard cut on a brass stab | punch; a new location | montage; a reveal; a gag |
| Graphic match cut (same shape, same position) | rhyme; acceleration | wheel → coin → pupil → moon |
| Locked single shape on a flat ground | mystery; an icon | a cold open; a clue; a logo |
| Silhouette against a giant circle | the hero moment | a catch; a triumph; a stand-off |
| Diagonal split into a grid | fragmentation; many at once | a split screen; a conspiracy; a team |
| Vertical pan down a column of type | descent; a list | a building; a roster; a countdown |
| Push into a letter until it fills frame | a letter becomes a place | a door; a tunnel; a window |

Framing: strong diagonals (~30°), big flat grounds, figures small against type. Match cuts keep circle centres and sizes identical across the cut. No dissolves.

## 7. Sound palette

- **1960s spy big band**: stacked staccato trumpets and trombones in octaves with crash (the stab), surf guitar low-string twang through a spring reverb, walking upright bass, brushes or sticks, bongos and shakers, vibraphone, flute, organ stabs, harpsichord. Minor keys, chromatic lines, dotted rhythms. Original motifs only: avoid the famous chromatic crawl of the most famous spy theme and its minor-major-ninth ending chord.
- **Stabs = edit points**: place staccato brass ~8 ms early so the sample's peak hits the frame.
- **Techniques (options)**: a cut interval that shrinks as a chase accelerates; stop-time silence; a big chord for the title followed by a short button; a solo instrument alone for a quiet scene.
- **Foley follows the material**: paper (cut "shh", slides, card slaps for letters landing, blind flips, a tear), metal (keys, chains, locks, clicks), tape (click, hiss). Environments only hinted: a jet pass panned, train wheels in tempo, roulette ticks slowing, wind, a phone ring, footsteps on stairs.
- **Silence**: true zero, reverb tails included; a single tape click or hiss may remain.
- **Mix**: music ducks ~7 dB under voice; a peaky mix needs a few dB into a limiter before loudnorm to reach −14 LUFS.
- **Voice**: a briefing through a tape chain (band-pass ~220–5200 Hz, soft saturation, slow wow, hiss rising under the voice); a few very short lines.

## 8. Native moves

A menu: use the ones your story needs.

- **Type is the set.** Each location is one line of credits and that line is its architecture (letters as pillars, words as carriages, a letter as a lock). *Fits content like:* a conference programme as a city; a menu as a restaurant; team names as a stadium.
- **Credits are rhythm.** Credits land on beats; stabs are cuts. *Fits content like:* a product's features; a festival line-up; an award's nominees.
- **Graphic match cuts.** Shape rhymes, the interval shrinking as tension rises. *Fits content like:* a coin → a planet → a clock; a gear → a wheel → a sun.
- **The diagonal grid.** A diagonal cut multiplies into a grid, and the pieces later fly back along it to assemble something. *Fits content like:* a puzzle solved; a team forming; a logo assembled.
- **Silhouette puppets.** Profile cut-outs whose acting is outline and timing. *Fits content like:* a heist; a courier on a deadline; a detective.
- **Stop-time gag.** Freeze on a stab, silence, resume. *Fits content like:* a near miss; a double take; a price reveal.
- **The object of the chase is the title.** What everyone pursues becomes the last thing assembled. *Fits content like:* a product launch; a book's name; a birthday name.

## 9. Pitfalls of the medium

- Every internal piece outlined with a gap looks like a mannequin diagram → merge pieces in an offscreen layer, cut only joint slits (`destination-out`), outline the whole figure.
- A `clear()` that resets the transform silently kills the camera.
- A figure fully hidden behind a letter reads as "nobody there" → let hat, nose and accent stick out. A stiff streamer reads as a tongue → multi-segment ribbon with a travelling sine.
- A credit only ever seen partially is uncomfortable → always open wide on the full line.
- Black background props read as letters → darker ground colour.
- An object in the same ink as its ground vanishes → black backing.
- Circular props dropped into a word cover neighbouring letters → lay the word out around a gap.
- Match cuts fail if circle centres move across the cut.
- Flat inks + grain make huge files at low CRF → a higher CRF looks the same.

## 10. Engine

In `demo/`: `paper.js` (four inks, cached scissor edges, cut gaps, paper shadow, texture, silhouette layer with joint slits), `glyph.js` (League Gothic → opentype.js outlines → re-cut letters), `chars.js` (silhouette rigs, poses, run/walk cycles), `title.js` (custom cut title glyphs, diagonal split), `story.js` (tempo grid, single source of timing), `film.js` (timeline, acting, cameras, subtitles, sound events). `?sheet=1` renders a model sheet, `?frame=<scene>` a style frame. File list and build steps: [DEMO.md](DEMO.md) "Build notes".

## 11. Variation space

You decide what is pursued, by whom, the locations (as credits), the inks, the opening and the ending. All far from our demo:

- Structures: **no chase: a countdown** (ten credits, ten locations, a bomb-clock number built from type in each); **a heist in reverse** (the object is returned, location by location, to where it belongs); **two agents, one frame** (split diagonally, each side a different ground colour, until they meet).
- Openings: **a full-frame title** that shatters into the sequence (the reveal moved to the start); **a telephone rings** in a single cut-out room; **the hero already falling** through a column of type.
- Endings: **the title never assembles**, one piece missing, the hero walking off with it; **a slow pull-out** showing every location was one giant credit page; **a stop-time freeze** on the final stab, held.

---

How our demo was made (story, shots, score, end card, build): [DEMO.md](DEMO.md). Read it after your treatment exists.

Director's notes for the demo film

One example among many. Don't reuse its story, arc, shots, props or timings.

Demo: The Velvet Cipher (44 s) · spy-titles.mp4 · source in demo/

A 30–60 second film: an agent chases a courier and a stolen key through sets built from the credits, and the key turns out to open the film's title.

Story & structure

The graphic grammar of late-1950s / 1960s title design (Saul Bass's North by Northwest, Anatomy of a Murder, Vertigo; the 2002 homage by Kuntzel + Deygas for Catch Me If You Can): flat, opaque inks on paper, hand-cut edges, abstraction down to silhouettes, and typography that is part of the picture's structure. A title sequence is a story in itself: one goal, one chase, a few locations, one reveal — and the reveal is the title.

It is not a gun-barrel opening, not a tiptoeing cartoon panther, not a copy of any real title's logo, lettering, characters or shots. The credits contain only fictional roles ("A LEMOLAB PICTURE", "STARRING THE AGENT", "MUSIC BY THE SAMPLER") — never real names.

Pick stories that are a pursuit of something that turns out to be the film itself. The demo used all five native powers, the strongest (the diagonal grid assembling the title) at the peak:

Native power	Story use
Type is the set	Each location is exactly one line of credits, and that line is the architecture: letters as colonnade pillars (the hero hides behind the I), words as train carriages (he leaps the gaps between words), the O of a name as a roulette wheel, an em-dash as a roof ledge, a letter as a lock. At some moment every line must be fully readable.
Credits are rhythm	Credits land on beats. Brass stabs = hard cuts. Hold each credit long enough to read it alongside a subtitle.
Graphic match cuts	Abstraction makes shape rhymes cheap and powerful: wheel → roulette → pupil → moon → keyhole. Cut on the brass, and make the interval shrink (2 bars → 1.5 bars → 2 beats) as the chase accelerates.
The diagonal grid	The opening splits along a 30° diagonal that multiplies into a grid; at the climax every fragment flies back along the same diagonals to assemble the title; the title closes along the same cut. Opening wound → closing seam.
Silhouette puppets	Figures are flat cut paper, always in profile, animated on twos. All acting is outline and timing: run, flatten, look back, freeze.

Adapting any topic: make the topic the MacGuffin and the title its destination. A product launch → the product is the stolen object, and its logo is what the fragments assemble into. A lecture → the key idea is chased through four "chapters" set as credits. A birthday → the chase ends with the name assembling.

Emotional arc (35–45 s): a cold open on one shape + one line of briefing (hook in 3 s) → the theft → pursuit through 3–4 locations, each shorter than the last → a gag (hero half-hidden; stop-time freeze) → acceleration montage of shape-match cuts → the catch in silhouette against a giant circle → the world shatters along the grid and assembles into the title → a quiet button: one beat of silence, one bongo, one deadpan line.

Shots

Beat	Camera
Cold open	Locked, centered single shape (the keyhole) on black. It is secretly an extreme close-up of the title's I.
Every credit-set location	Start wide enough to read the entire credit line, then push/truck in to the action.
Chase	Lateral tracking (Catch Me grammar): screen direction always left → right, pursued ahead, pursuer behind.
Montage	Hard cuts on brass stabs; circles keep the same screen position and size across the cut.
Hero moment	Silhouette in front of a giant cream moon.
Ending	Push in on the title's lock until the frame matches the cold open exactly, then hard-cut back to the full title on the final bongo.

Puppets on twos (12 fps): poses and positions of figures, hands, letters landing, the plane. Camera, credit slides, grid growth on ones (24 fps) — a stepped camera reads as judder.
Run cycle: 8 drawings, one step per beat (cycle = 2 beats at 132 BPM), lean 0.3 rad, tie flying at ~65°. Walks: 1 step per beat, coat swinging.
Credits slide in along grid lines and stop dead on the beat (ease-out, 0.2 s), letters land with a paper slap.
Stop-time: at a brass stab the whole picture (background scroll included) freezes for 2 beats while the music is dead silent, then resumes — the big-band device made visual, and a wordless gag.
The climax: the previous scene is sliced into strips parallel to the cut line that slide off alternately along the diagonal (N×NW), while title glyphs fly in along the same diagonal and land on consecutive 16th notes.

Score structure

Music: 1960s spy big band (not cool noir jazz, not ragtime), minor key, ~132 BPM. Original motif: a chromatic descent from the fifth, then a leap to the tonic (B–A♯–A–G | E), dotted rhythm. Avoid the famous E–F–F♯–F crawl and the Em(maj9) ending chord; end on Em6/9.
Brass stabs = edit points: trumpet_stac + trombone_stac stacked in octaves + crash, ~0.25 s, placed 8 ms early so the sample peak hits the frame. Surf guitar low-string twang (electric_guitar) through a home-made spring reverb (dispersive chirp echoes, ~41 ms round trip, 2 s decay). jazz_bass walking. Brushes early (soft snare + egg shaker), sticks for the train (16th "rail" snare). world_perc bongos/shakers for the casino. Big chord for the title, then a short button, one beat of digital silence, one dry bongo.
Silence is a tool: cold open is only a tape click; stop-time and the last beat are true zero (reverb tails included); the final line plays over nothing but tape hiss.
Foley follows the material: paper (cut "shh", slides, card slaps for every letter landing, blind flips, a tear for the shatter), metal (key jingle, chain snap, key sliding into the lock, the lock click), tape (click, hiss). Environments only hinted: jet pass (panned L→R), train rumble with wheel "ka-chunk" in tempo, roulette ball ticks slowing down, rooftop wind.
Voice: British mission-briefing male (Kokoro bm_george, speed 0.9–0.97) through a tape chain: band-pass 220–5200 Hz, soft saturation, 0.9 Hz wow, hiss that rises under the voice. 4–6 very short lines; the last line pays off the first ("Nobody knows what it opens." → "Now you know what it opens."). Music ducks ~−7 dB under the voice. Loudness −14 LUFS.

Palette & props

Four inks, no gradients: ink black #1b1714, paper cream #efe4c9, signal red #d23a22, mustard #e2a52a. Allowed "darker paper" variants only for depth/shadows: #9a2a18 (dark red), #b07e1c, #3a322b (distant city). Each scene gets one dominant ground color: black (cold open, rooftop), red (grid, train, casino), cream (velvet, title), mustard (airport).
Scissor-cut edges: every polygon is resampled every ~9–10 px and displaced along its normal by low-frequency noise (amp 1.2–2.2 px, larger for bigger shapes) plus a rare 1–2 px notch. Cut the edge once in the piece's local space and cache it — a moving cutout keeps the same edge, exactly like real cutout animation. (Edges computed in screen space "crawl" when pieces move.)
Paper layering: separate pieces are separated by a 2.4 px cut gap in the ground color and cast a small paper shadow (offset 2.5/3.5 px, blur 5, alpha ~0.3). Whole figures get the gap as an outline, so a black figure still reads in front of a black letter.
Paper texture: one full-frame texture multiplied on top (low-frequency mottling + faint fibers) and a sparse "ink void" speckle screened on (only shows on dark ink), plus faint horizontal squeegee streaks. Film grain in the mux at ~6. No halftone (that belongs to other styles).
Silhouette figures (see demo/stills/modelsheet_v1.jpg): 7-head-tall agent with narrow-brim hat (the band is a cut slit), broad-shouldered jacket, pointed shoes, one red tie as his only color (it streams back when he runs — the motion indicator). Villain 1.2× taller: wide flat brim, A-line coat with a red lining that only shows when he runs, a mustard key chained to his wrist so the MacGuffin is findable in every shot. Pieces merge into one outline inside the figure; only thin (1.7 px) slits at shoulder, elbow, hip/hem and knee. Hands are sharp wedges. No faces except a cream eye slit in close-ups.
The MacGuffin always sits on a black backing (= ink keyline) so it reads on any ground; it is the brightest thing in frame.
Type: credits in League Gothic (OFL), glyph outlines extracted with opentype.js and re-cut per letter (edge noise, ±0.8° rotation, ±1.5 px baseline jitter). The film title uses custom geometric cut glyphs (straight cuts + arcs, uneven weights, jaunty staggered baselines) — never a real title's lettering. Subtitles in League Spartan 600.

Titles, subtitles & end card

Subtitles: a narrow paper strip (scissor-cut ends, tilted −1°) bottom-left at (96, 958), a small red keyhole glyph as the bullet, League Spartan 600 44 px. Cream strip with ink text on dark scenes; ink strip with cream text on cream scenes. Slides in 60 px from the left in 0.18 s. Display ≥ max(1.8 s, voice + 0.6 s).
Credits live in the set, never in the subtitle band. One line per location.
Title: custom cut glyphs; the MacGuffin's slot is a letter (here the I of CIPHER is a black "lock plate" with a red keyhole; the key's outline fills it).
End card: small title, "60s SPY TITLE SEQUENCE" in cut League Gothic, "LemoLab × Claude Opus 5.5" in red Spartan, tiny agent tipping his hat. The LemoLab sign-off (and the "A LEMOLAB PICTURE" credit) belong to this library's demo only: a user's film carries no LemoLab credit and no copy of this card; its fictional credits name the user's own roles.

Pitfalls we hit (demo record)

Every internal piece outlined with a gap made the figures look like wooden-mannequin diagrams. Draw each figure into an offscreen layer where pieces merge, cut only joint slits (destination-out), then composite with an 8-direction ground-color outline + one shadow.
clear() that resets the transform silently kills the camera → keep the camera matrix across the background fill.
The hero fully hidden behind the I reads as "nobody there": shift him so hat brim, nose, tie knot and the fluttering tie stick out past the pillar. The tie must wave (multi-segment ribbon with travelling sine + width wobble) or it reads as a tongue.
A credit that is only ever seen partially ("R R I N") is uncomfortable to read: always open wide on the full line.
Telegraph poles in black between word-carriages read as the letter I — push background props into a darker version of the ground color.
A mustard key on a mustard ground vanishes — give it a black backing.
A roulette wheel dropped into a space character covers neighbouring letters; lay out the two halves of the word around a gap of 2.2 × radius.
A near-arm drawn on top with the wheel/pupil/moon matches: keep circle centers identical across cuts or the match doesn't register.
Brass staccato samples need ~8 ms to peak — place them early so the hit lands on the cut.
A peaky mix (big stabs over quiet brushes) stops at −14.4 LUFS under the −1.2 dBTP ceiling; push ~4 dB into a limiter before loudnorm.

Build notes

styles/spy-titles/demo/
  paper.js   four inks, scissor edges (cached), cut gaps, paper shadow, texture, silhouette layer + joint slits
  glyph.js   League Gothic → opentype.js outlines → re-cut letters
  chars.js   agent / courier rigs (side, front, back), poses, run/walk cycles, key + keyhole
  title.js   custom title glyphs, lock-plate I, diagonal split
  scenes.js  keyhole, grid, velvet, intro, airport, train, wheel, casino, pupil, rooftop, title background
  film.js    timeline, acting, cameras, subtitles, sound events     story.js  132-BPM grid (single source of truth)
  sheet.js / frames.js   model sheet and gate-1 style frames
  music/score.py   original big-band score (sampler)      mix.py  foley + tape voice + ducking

node core/render/still.mjs styles/spy-titles/demo 12 20.8 --q nosub=1 — review stills (?sheet=1&v=1, ?frame=airport|train|title).
core/tts/tts.py lines.json voices → core/tts/asr_check.py (6/6).
python music/score.py → node core/render/events.mjs → python mix.py.
node core/render/video.mjs styles/spy-titles/demo --fps 24 --workers 3 (1058 frames ≈ 17 s, Canvas2D).
CRF=24 sh demo/tools/mux.sh out/video24.mp4 mix.wav spy-titles.mp4 24 6 (core mux + a CRF knob: flat inks + grain at crf19 = 270 MB, at crf24 = 18.5 MB with no visible difference). Or just sh demo/build.sh.