Planning opening credits - Miss Georgiou

Opening credits are important in a film because it introduces each actor/actress and gives credit to the people involved in the creating of a film. Opening credits also inform the audience what the film's about too. Opening credits are also important because if a specific director is known for a specific genre then it helps inform the audience who it is therefore indicating what the genre of the film is. My group and I have watched various opening credits clips in order to get some inspirations for our own opening credits in the opening sequence which will later be discussed.

Se7en Analysis

In the above clip showing the opening credits for 'Se7en' I found that the colour scheme used is mainly based upon grey scale with red occasionally contrasting, pulling the attention of the audience closer to focus on the red stained features of the opening credits. The scheme of colours used within these opening credits convey a grim and dull theme, perhaps a metaphor for how a life may be seen, that all life had been taken from it.

In se7en there is a clear theme portrayed through the style of credits. For example the credits come across as handwritten and sharp suggesting that perhaps the person writing these is angry and contains a lot of hate, this indicates that this is thriller and therefore makes the audience weary of the person writing this. Also, the credits are flickering showing not only the anger but the instability of the persons mindset doing it, however we could also infer from this that this is like a victims life how it's unpredictable and unstable because they could die at any moment. Something else that expresses a particular theme or emotion through the credits is the use of mostly white writing against the black background which is used to enforce the contrast between justice and evil.

 

The order of appearance in these opening credits show who has played each role and helped produces the film, in these opening credits the order of appearance of roles goes in: Company name, two actors, director, music, costumes, editors, production, camera operators, co-producer, producer, writing, director. This helps create a successful opening credits for an opening sequence, which is evidently the case in these opening credits for se7en.

 

Lastly in opening credits, there are often conventions of thrillers found in them. In this case for se7en, there is a consistent use of flashes with no identity shown, creating a sense of enigma. This helps the audience get a rough idea that the film is a thriller and that there will be a theme of enigma that runs through out the film because they will be unaware of a mystery person and what their plots are. There's use of iconography in the background under the credits, (scissors) which is sharp and can be deadly, therefore representing a convention of a thriller. Also, there's a lot of shadows and eerie music, this suggests and emphasises as discussed earlier the use of enigma ultimately proving that there are strong conventions of thrillers included in the opening credits for se7en. The dark, eerie music pre-warns the audience that something bad is going to happen and gives them a sense of foreboding.

Own Analysis

 

To carry on my research into opening credits to get some inspirations on what to include in my groups piece of work, I looked at the 'Black Swan' opening credits. Looking at the colour scheme of these opening credits, there is the use of very dull colours, such as black, beige, grey and mesh colour. This could be a metaphor for how the main characters life is, very dull, and the use of some of the dark colours such as black indicate that there could be a streak of badness or weakness on the main character. The slightly lighter colours such as beige does stand out against the dim background, however it is interesting that there is no white used. I can infer from the use of not using white (often associated with purity and innocence) shows that there is lack of innocence and that there is something wrong, therefore informing the audience about this and allowing them to know that there is a dark element in this film that they are about to watch.

 

I also saw the style of the credits and what ideas they convey to the targeted audience. There is a difference between the previous opening credits looked at in 'se7en' and 'black swan' this is because the writing is typed and clean cut, all in capital letters. This conveys the idea that the person in control of doing this comes across as strong and firm, but the capital letters used suggest that this person has a lot of anger. Also, the writing fades out blurrily, this suggests that the film could include a lot of maybe confusion, again pre warning the audience.

 

The order of appearance in these opening credits show who has played each role and helped produces the film, in these opening credits the order of appearance of roles goes in: Company name, two actors, director, music, costumes, editors, production, camera operators, co-producer, producer, writing, director. This helps create a successful opening credits for an opening sequence, which is evidently the case in these opening credits for black swan.

 

The opening credits for black swan also contain a lot of conventions of a thriller. For example, the music used at first comes across as soft and relaxing, yet as the opening credits progresses it changes to up beat and aggressive, making the audience feel tense as they continue on to watching the film. Also, there is no identity showing in the opening credits, just a hand drawing at first thin lines delicately, and then later on faster and more agggressively due to the faster pace music, this conveys the theme of hidden intentiy in this thriller. Something else that contributes to the conventions of a thriller in the opening credits is the fact that there is someone defacing something with chalk, I believe this is because the person is trying to express their anger, the fact that the audience do not see what the character is writing emphasises that there is an element of enigma.

 

Own Idea's

 

When my group and I make our own opening credits, we thought it would be wise if we included features such as similar credits to the writing used in se7en. By showing that the credits will be hand written shows that there is a sense of anger, which is conventional to a thriller and we want to do this because we feel it will help portray the genre of our opening credits to the audience so they know what kind of film they will be watching. Also, we thought it would come across at a proffesional level if we took inspirations from various film clips in order to create a successful piece of work, we also would like to include a dark background so that the audience can see that our thriller, if made into a film, would be very dark and scary. We feel that by using hand written credits on top of a dim background helps rise the level of shock, suspense and surprise in our opening sequence and therefore create a more effective reaction from the audience when events happen in our opening sequence with conventional opening credits running through out.

 

We also feel that by having the opening credits run through out our two minute clip, it allows the audience to not only see what was going on, but also to be able to focus their attention not only on the credits but the important events taking place in our opening sequence.

 

Also, the title of our opening sequence ' The Bloody Suit' is written in a unique style created by myself on photoshop and my groun and I felt that it would be best if we continued using my font to show the production roles in order to continue consistancy. By doing this, it creates the audience to be able to see a sense of consistancy throughout the opening sequence so that they are aware that nothing confusing is going to happen and that the layout of our opening sequence will be easy to follow, but we would not be able to show this without the opening credits that we will be displaying over the time that the opening sequence will be playing.