Research: Opening Credits / Typography - Miss Begum

Opening Credits

What are opening credits?

- Opening credits are written information presented to the audience on who produced the film, who is starring in the films and other producing roles.

- The opening credits are effective in thrillers when accompanied by sound to create tension and fear. Can be very effective when the images do not make complete sense, making the audience question what is going on.

- Essential information to connect with the audience so they know more about the production.

 What is their purpose?

- The opening credits are shown to identify the major actors, crews and other cast members that are involves within a film production.

- The purpose of opening credits are: Advertising, giving credits to cast members who took part in the movie production, outlines major actors and crew members.

What information do they provide? Oder of apprearance

- The opening credits are shown at the very beginning and list the most important members of the production. They are usually shown as text superimposed on a blank screen or static pictures, or sometimes on top of action in the show. There may or may not be accompanying music. Where opening credits are built into a separate sequence of their own, the correct term is title sequence.

The order of apprearance are:

- Production Company

- Actors

- Casting

- Music

- Costume

- Editing

- Production/ Title

- Producer

- Director

How do they make the audience feel?

- The opening credits allows the audience to know the major actors/crew members and often followed with a soundtrack which automatically build up tension and create expectations within the audience. Opening credits could also includes pictures to shows the audience their relevant within the movie. For example, the video below is an opening scene from a thriller movie called 'Se7en'. The scene involves the order of appearance with creepy type of font and strange images mixed with the use of low-key lighting to creates fear and build up tensions. This makes the audience anticipate that the movie is thriller type and expects the movie to have disturbing scenes and bad intensions. Another example is 'Insidious', the order of appearance contains straight up writing in red with the smoke appearing in the back of each letters and also mixed with the use of low-key lighting to creates different connotations. This makes the viewers to easily identify this movie as a thriller type and raises up the level of fear.

Typography 

What is typography?

- Typography is how the writing is being portrayed and presented within a movie to delivered a message towards the audience. Typography is one of the most essential part in the process of a movie in the making.

Typography and connotations?

- Child's Play 2:

- The connotations of this movie poster tell the audience that this movie involves children and killing. This is because the title said 'Child's Play' letting the audience knows that this movie is based on children and their mystery toys. The number two is being written as blood stain instead of writing in normal. This gives the audience a briefly description of what the movie is about and this can have a relation to the antagonist as he's being shown in the poster.

- The Conjuring:

 

- The connotation of this movie title 'The Conjuring' let the audience knows that this film is all based  on a family home which from the first look seems to be haunted and abandoned. The typography is being portrayed in thin and normal writing but also very sharp and curl, it is also been written in black colour. As the connotations the audience had from the poster, the typography could give an idea of darkness and creates fear within the movie. This helps to give the audience to anticipate bad intentions from this movie and creates expectation within the viewers. 

Analysis of choices that I may consider

- In my thriller, I may consider to use this type of typography because it gives the audience a sense of what the movie is based about and creates different connotations within their point of views. I also like the way the font is being presented as it gives the audience the ideas of killing and disturbing images.

- In my thriller, I may consider to use this type of typography because gives the audience a briefly description and the connotations it creates within their viewpoints. I like the way the font is being portrayed as it gives the audience a sense of haunted and spiritual contents.

Conclusion 1

- All the information above has helped me to understand how each and every member of a movie casting is being presented in order and it importance. I may consider to follow this order of appearance in my thriller to gain as many mark as necessary.

Conclusion 2

- All the information above has helped me to develop a perception of how typography play such an essential part in the movie industry and the connotations it creates within the audience. I may consider to use these knowledge to portray the typography in my thriller for the same purpose.