Titles and Credits Research

Summary of Findings- Titles and Credits

From my research of watching various film openings and title sequences, I have found that the conventions for using titles varies according to the genre of the film.  I also found that some of the opening sequences were deliberately orchestrated to fit with the titles that were going to appear, whereas other openings simply just displayed the credits before the film even began.

All of the sequences that I watched contained similarconventions, but it was the genre of the film that determined the style of these conventions.   The stylistic features that differed were things like the length of the title and credit sequences, the genre of music played, the level of animation (if any), the typography and where and when they appeared.  An example to explain this would be that all of the titles obviously contained writing but it was the genre of the movie that determined the typeface of this writing.   Dramas tended to use simple block writing, whereas ‘Sherlock Holmes’ a fictional period detective story, used a handwritten ink pen style. The stylistic features used in the titles helped set the mood for the film.

The order for the titles and credits in some cases varied but in most cases there was a standard convention in the order that they appeared. Most followed the order of:

·         Name of Studio

·         Name of Production Company

·         (Producer Name) Production

·         A Film By (Directors Name) or A (Directors Name) Film

·         Principle/Most Well Known Actors/Actresses

·         (Only in some cases) Films Title

·         Featuring Cast

·         Other Roles

Some credits from the sequences I watched appeared over the action on screen for example, ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘This Is England’ and ‘The Cabin in the Woods’.   However some credits from other films and from these films as well, did appear on separate screens. ‘This Is England’ used both and begin with black screens with white text but then progressed to having titles over the archive footage being played on screen.  The length of time all the titles appeared on screen was limited mostly to only a few seconds, enough for reading time, often remaining for a few seconds longer when it was the title of the movie.

How noticable the titles were was dependent of the genre of the film as I found that the titles and credits were often incorporated in to the ideas and themes of the film.  For example, I found that the credits for ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ were specifically designed to show the genres of the movie. The credits were spilt in two by a scene from the movie. The first set were presented in typical blood red text as animated blood spread out over the screen, these credits reflected the horror side of the movie.  A scene from the movie then began and everthing about it, like the mise-en-scene and even the dialogue of the conversation taking place was all very ‘normal’ and ‘boring’, so then as a diliberate effect, the title of the film was displayed very suddenly, along with a loud dramatic scream, as the scene froze.  This was done to frighten the audience and reflected the thriller side of the film.

I found that for the genre of film we are making, ‘Coming of Age’, there was usually the standard number of credits and in some cases they were very simplistic, but in other cases they were very elaborate.   For our titles I think that we should go for the simplistic approach, like the titles from ‘This Is England’.  They used simple block white writing, that I found from my research was styled upon British soldiers dog tags, and appeared through very simple transitions.   I consider that our credits should be styled very much upon these and should appear overlayed on action like these credits were.