Summary of Findings- Titles&Credits

Summary of Findings

• Credits over action draw attention away from them and let viewing continue relatively undisturbed
• Credits on a black screen look more sinister, perfect for our genre
• Placement/order of titles and credits vary from film to film. There aren't any set rules about where they should come
• Actors names don't usually appear for our type of genre
• Music creates atmosphere, orchestral music adds tension or low hum adds a more sinister atmosphere
• Colour/font style have a larger impact than I thought as they are an element that can add personality to the titles and credits

Production Company Logos and Idents

Paramount Pictures

• 17 seconds
• dramatic, orchestral music
• All the animations end with still image of the name

SKY DANCE Productions

• 16 seconds
• fast paced violins playing
• animation is the letters all coming together to form 'SKY DANCE'
• Still of logo name

Mandate Pictures

• child banging against drum
• only sound of drum
• logo appears on top
• 15 seconds

 20th Century Fox

• 19 seconds
• dramatic music playing, loud drums and orchestra
• Logo is animation, appear dramatically

 Castle Rock Entertainment

• 12 seconds
• Loud orchestra music
• Animation of lighthouse
• Calming

Columbia Pictures

• 20 seconds
• Woman representing statue of liberty
• light shining behind her
• Dramatic music, climaxes and ends with burst of music

Dreamworks Home Entertainment

• 21 seconds
• music is calming, orchestra
• boy fishing on moon, very tranquil calming animation
• Name appears in clouds linking with 'Dreamworks'

LIONSGATE

• 13 seconds
• Animation of clogs moving together
• Loud dramatic music
• Move backwards through animation, out of key hole the door opens and the logo appears in clouds
• Still of Logo in clouds

Pixar

• 11 seconds
• Jumping light that replaces, the 'i'
• Comical, sound of bouncing whist the light jumps
• no music

Titles&Credits

I have been researching the way that the title and the credits appear in films of our genre. These are the notes I wrote while watching. I will summarise what I have noted in a later post.

Titles and Credits

Titles and Credits

When looking at titles and credits it is important to take in various factors as to how to make the film opening effective. I have found by researching titles and credits that it is essential that they are visually tied to what the film is about. I have looked at various genres and we as a group have decided on the psychological thriller route, therefore it is important that we do not reveal too much in the titles, by which I mean that there is a tendency not to name the actors to make the audience believe more that the characters are real and are in danger of not making it through the film.

It is also important to take into consideration  how long the titles and credits are on the screen for, I think it is vital that we have the titles on the screen for the maximum of 4 seconds to give the audience a chance to take them in. I have looked at various films and had to think very carefully  where and how our own titles are going to be shown. I thought that it would be a good idea if we could have a mail man walking up to a door and a letter could be sent through the door, this could be followed by credits and titles shown on the envelop of the letter. Therefore working our titles and credits into our film and allowing the audience to see the action at the same time.

Fonts, colours and the order that the titles have been established is a crucial in films as this also conveys to the audience a lot about the film. When filming we need to pay attention to what colours stand out as if there is a muted background with titles it would be hard for the audience to notice titles and credits. Colour stereotypes are also important as for example red can represent the colour of death and a murder or love and hate. I think we should not use titles and credits with drastic effects for example blood dripping off the letter, as this can be seen as unprofessional.

 

Production company  logo ideas

• 10-20 seconds long
• Possible clocks in the background, doesn’t necessarily have to be tied into what the logo's name is about. However I think it could look effective.
• Spooky sinister hum – non diegetic sound should be played when the names are being shown.

Titles and credits

The majority of the films I looked at had the titles and credits at the start of the film on separate slides before the film even started. "City of God", for example, has about 45 seconds of credit slides at the beginning. Other films introduced them slowly throughout the sequence over the action. We’ll be adding the titles and credits into the start of the film but gradually so the audience can have a sense of location and actually get into the film as we don't want to use too much of our two minutes on text slides.

The font and colour suggests the genre of the film as well as the style of film. For the thriller genre, there is ususally quite a simple monochrome colour scheme and the credits are relatively unobtrusive so that the audience is not disengaged from what they are seeing and can continue to be affected by the atmosphere created. We could create a ghostly feel by having credits float in and out of screen.There is usually non-diegetic music being played over the credits which gave the audience a sense of the genre again, it creates the atmosphere for the audience as well as suggesting what the first scene may contain by creating an emotion or mood from the type of music being played.

"Red Lights" had the typography I imagined our film would have, especially the black contrasting with the white and the way the font emerges and moves. I think using the white over black is a good choice as its plain, the emotion we’re going for in the film is sad and gloomy. By not using vibrant colours this will bring forward a sense of knowledge of the darker side of the drama already for the audience.

Most of the films had the characters' names involved in the credits, however in our film we will not be showing the names as we want the audience to view the film as being 'real' so drawing attention to the fact that these are actors right at the beginning is not a good idea. In this kind of film, there are often relatively new actors cast (so they don't have previous associations and are more believable) so their name isn't a big draw.

By viewing the range of films I now can visualise how ours will look, it has helped as it has given me even more ideas to possibly add in whilst filming and then editing.

Titles and Credits - Lewis Todesco

Summary of Findings

Most of the films I looked at had the credits at the start of the film and playing through the opening minutes. They went on for longer than I had realised - this is something you don't really notice when just watching as a normal viewer.

Most of the films I looked at also had the credits played over the action rather than as separate slides to break up the action. This is probably because there was a tense atmosphere being created and continuity if viewing is needed to draw the audience on and engage them in the world of the story.

The font and colour usually resembled the style of film it would be, for example, red in colour and in a gothic style for ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ which conveys the creepy atmosphere. We will have to be careful what font we choose to create the same effect.

For our genre not many credits are used as in some other genres, mainly just the title and the companies involved. Most of the time, the actors are not named. This could be to give the audience the chance to believe in the characters as 'real' so they are more invested in them.

Music plays a key role during the opening as atmospheric non-diegetic music is played over the top to set the mood and tone of the film.

Different genres of films play the credits at different times and vary from film to film. Our genre seems to put the credits at the beginning and have the title coming in later, whereas this is reversed in e.g. rom-com. The title coming in can also be used to create a 'jump' effect e.g. 'Cabin in the Woods'.

Presentation of Draft Storyboard

Here we are presenting our storyboard to our teacher. This was a useful task because speaking our ideas to someone who had not been part of every discussion made us think more carefully about them and made us realise where we are not totally clear on some aspects of the piece. We also had to think a lot about what camera techniques we will be using as this was  not always clear from the drawings and we had to explain as we talked through.

 

 

 

Order of speaking: Leah, Sarah, Lewis, Shannon