Reservoir “Title”
Documentary Title Sequence, 2004
- Role
- Title design & animation
- Target
- A twelve-second opening title that states a whole documentary's thesis about nostalgia before the first interview
- Constraints
- 2004 · DV tapes and their texture · twelve seconds, which is exactly as long as it needs to be · every artifact of the format left in, because the grain is doing emotional work
- Force fielded
- Nick Charney Kaye — title design and animation; featuring Michelle Kaye and Danya Maloon
- Time-to-dispatch
- Delivered 2004; published to Vimeo in 2009 and live ever since
- Result
- A delivered main title for Reservoir — the sequence on Vimeo, online continuously since 2009
- Principal
- Reservoir — a freeform mashup documentary
Reservoir is a freeform mashup documentary about nostalgia for youth. Sunshine, Hampshire College students, a bliss vibe. This is its opening title — twelve seconds long, which is exactly as long as it needs to be.
The frame that carries it: a girl holds a detached camera lens up to her eye, and her smile lives inside the glass. That’s the whole thesis of nostalgia in one image — you’re not seeing the summer, you’re seeing the lens you keep between yourself and the summer.
“RESERVOIR” — TITLE — 0:12
SUMMER. GRASS. KIDS. BLISS.
FEAT. MICHELLE KAYE · DANYA MALOON
DO NOT TAPE OVER.
This is 2004 — the earliest piece in the portfolio’s film shelf, cut when a “mashup documentary” meant hauling DV tapes and trusting the texture. Every artifact of the format (the soft video grain, the blown-out sun) is doing emotional work that clean footage couldn’t.
Same shelf, same year: the Bristol Boys main titles, cut for a feature instead of a documentary, and That’s the Breaks — the era when the studio’s operator was hand-assembling motion out of whatever the camera could carry home.
The manifesto describes the studio’s origin as a confrontation with avoidance — and nostalgia is avoidance’s sweetest flavor. Reservoir doesn’t pretend otherwise: it names the reservoir, holds the lens up, and lets you feel the distance between the eye and the summer. Look directly — even at looking itself.
Proof: the title sequence on Vimeo — live since 2009.
