Primary research into opening titles and credits

In the modern film industry, opening titles and credits undoubtedly play a significant role in setting an appropriate ambiance for the movie and emphasising its genre. The rapidly developing technologies have allowed us to produce complex title sequences, turning this side of film production into art. Even though the opening sequence we as a group are developing right now is small scale, researching and, consequently, creating suitable titles could add the unique "kick" to our product and make it high quality. 

To start off, I decided to look into the history of opening titles and credits to get the idea of how and why they were originally invented. The first person to ever add something similar to the modern opening titles was Thomas Edison. In 1897 he put a credit at the start of one of his films with an intention to put an anti-pirating and copyright warning before the movie. Those were originally created by photographing a printed board or painted glass. Later, when filmmakers wanted to add the credits with some movie scene running at the background (not just on a blank canvas), an optical printer started being used. The latter is a device that mechanically linked a film projector to a movie camera and allowed filmmakers to take another photograph of one or more strips of film. It was early 1900s when opening titles starting developing with more and more professionals adding them to the movies. 

It is interesting to analyse how different production company logos changed over years as well. 

1. MGM - an American media company, producing and distributing feature films and television programmes:

Back in 1916 this famous logo was just a picture, which later emerged into a picture with a roar sound (in 1957 it would be played via a gramophone record) and finally to the one we can see nowadays. As the technologies developed, the logo became more interactive, but the concept and the text didn't change since its first creation.

2. Universal Pictures - an American film production and distribution company:

It is evident how since 1914 (the first logo version on the first picture) the logo of Universal Pictures evolved dramatically. Motion, colours, special effects were all added as the film industry was developing, leaving us with the top quality logo we see nowadays (the last photo). Note that the text of this logo changed over time as well - in the very first one it said "The transatlantic films" apart from the actual name of the company, then it turned to just "Universal" and finally to "Universal: a concast company".

3. Walt Disney Pictures - an American film production studio, subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, owned by the Walt Disney Company. 

As it can be seen, in 1985 (the first picture) the logo was quite simplistic, however over time Disney started modifying its logo depending on the movie theme/genre. For instance, the fourth picture is the logo from "Home on the Range" (2004) which is a Western-themed animated movie. The "burning away" motion of the logo in this case sets the genre of the film and gives the audience an idea of what it is going to be about. The last picture represents the latest version from the movie "Mulan" (2020), where the landscape is Chinese. This company links its logo to the movie theme, which is why it changes every time a new film is released. 

In order to create titles suitable for the genre of our opening sequence, I decided to look for inspiration from successful thrillers:

- "Split" (2016): thriller/horror about an individual with 24 personalities, who abducts three teenage girls. 

In this opening sequence, title appear on black screen, cutting away from short scenes of the movie. The font is quite simplistic, but the majority of words are written in caps, making it aggressive. Almost every credit appearing turns into a split screen with the same text appearing 23 times (and one blank space fro the 24th time) which directly links to the plot of the film. The abductor has 23 main personalities with the 24th being hidden till the end of the movie (the most evil one). The narrative is worked in this "split" in the editing/titles, referring to the main theme of the movie. The titles are abrupt and the cut aways make the sequence discontinuous, which sets the tense and suspenseful ambiance, as this motion confuses the audience. 

- Taken (2008): a thriller/action about a government operative/agent, trying to find his teenage daughter, who was kidnapped during her trip with a friend.

In this sequence the titles are not as obvious and intrusive as in "Split". They appear in different parts of the screen, fading in and out gradually. The simple font and the relatively big gap between the letters makes the text stretched out and, thus, unconventional. The genre of the film might be represented through the motion of the titles. They are not static, but slightly moving horizontally. This motion attracts the audience's attention to the text (even though usually the titles are not to be paid extreme attention to). As a consequence, the tension is built gradually and the titles only slightly hint to the fact that the movie is going to be violent, scary and breathtaking. 

- Run (2020): a psychological thriller/horror about a girl, who is excessively controlled by her mother since birth and as a teenager starts to explore her mother's secrets. 

This example is not necessarily an opening title sequence, however it contains the way the movie name is revealed. Here, to introduce the audience to the narrative and the main theme of the movie, the definitions of certain disabilities and diseases are shown on a black screen for almost a minute. As they slowly fade in, the viewer starts to realise that someone in the movie has all of those conditions, which already creates the atmosphere of suspense and compassion. The font is quite simplistic, however the size of the text, disproportionate to the size of the screen (tiny) makes it hard to read it and therefore creates the tense ambiance. At the very end, the name of the movie appears at the very bottom of the screen. It is presented not as a separate object, but rather the ending of a sentence from one of the descriptions, which is why it is not written with a capital letter and has a dot at the end. This unconventional way of revealing the name of the film links to the genre of the film - a psychological horror. 

There are many ideas that can be taken from these sequences. From what I found, I'd probably suggest my team to pick an unconventional font and size for the titles (maybe calligraphic/hard to read and very small). More to that, I think, we should add motion to them (like in "Taken") to make the scene suspenseful. Finally, it would be a good idea to present the name of the movie on a black screen at the very end of the sequence, making the name occupy the whole screen. This way there will be sharp contrast between the titles throughout the scene and the name of the movie itself.