Conventions of an Opening Sequence
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/almost-famous/
Title Research
The type of information shown in a title sequence can vary from each director, some have a large focus on actors for example if the film is commercially driven the actors names will be considered very important if they are famous or if the director is very well known their name will be in a prominent position in the sequence. On the other hand directors such as John Hughes usually has un known actors to the big screen yet he puts all their names in the sequence and sometimes the text is the only thing apart from music that is included in the opening. We can really begin to see personalities in title sequences, we see what the director values in their film.
At the beginning of every opening sequence there will be production companies, this is the rule of thumb when it comes to opening sequences, there is to be the up most respect held to the production companies because they are funding the whole film, therefore they are placed at the very beginning of the film so everyone in given the information of who has produced the film.
Fonts are also a very important part of the opening sequence, they can affect the audience's whole mood, perceptions of time and setting. for example a film made as a piece of cinematic art (art house) would most commonly use a classic font like times new roman, one that everyone knows and associates with professionalism and correctness. Coming of age films are too wide of a genre to have a common font as coming of age as a genre encompasses many other genres. We can assume though, that the font in a coming of age film will reflect the youthfulness of the film, possibly playful and colourful, many directors use bold or embossed fonts that use bright colours. The use of colourful or stylistic fonts that look attractive on screen will attract the audience because of the aesthetic of the words.
There is a large range of ways the text in coming of age opening sequences enters and leaves the screen all depending on the style of the film. Up beat films could have flashing text or zooming in or out. Films like Juno have a complete separate title sequence where Mise en scene and the whole style of the piece is a set up to create a feeling for the audience of what the films style is. This use of style can be seen in the opening to Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) where the text is bold red and over laps on screen, this is a reflection of the movie being bold and rebellious. Giving a certain characteristic to a piece of text is very powerful and can give great exposition to the sequence.
Learning Comments
- Lots of exposition is needed and given in a good opening sequence, this will set up the whole film for the audience and is very important, the amount of exposition can be completely controlled but the viewers perception of those implementations isn't always uniform, if a piece of exposition is very important then its going to have to be very obvious.
- appropriate use of text formatting and font to fit the style and time this is more exposition but with text, possibly the most useful tool to get information across since it cannot be mis interprited but not always the most inventive or interesting to the audience.
- sometimes precursors and hints at the themes in the film are in the opening sequence, this is quite an interesting and in depth part of creating an opening sequence, putting things in the sequence that will only be obvious once the film has been viewed, possibly not so useful in my situation as the whole film won't be made but it can be used to hint at character traits or up coming plot lines in a creative and interesting way.
