Opening title sequences

Why are opening title sequences important to the film industry?

Opening title sequences are important to the film industry because the first few minutes of the film are what the viewer sees first, and sets their expectations for the rest of the film. These are important because if it is not a very good opening the viewer may lower their expectations and may not want to watch the film, but if its a successful opening then it will keep the viewers interested.

Saul Bass once said, "making a main-title was like making a poster, you're condensing the event into this one concept, this one metaphor, a back-story that needs to be told or a character that needs to be introduced."

I researched on the internet and found a site that helped me understand why opening title sequences are important.
http://www.ifc.com/fix/2011/02/the-50-greatest-opening-title

Editing our Opening Sequence

At the beginning of our opening sequence we decided to put the Twisted Pictures production company at the start because they look very professional and do lots of well known horror/ thriller films.

This image is of the editing process where the Twisted Pictures production company intro fades into the shot of Jodie's legs (Saskia) doing the hop scotch.

Then we got the shots of Jodie skipping, playing hopscotch and her legs when she is hanging from tree. Over this we put the recording of jodie singing "ring a ring o' roses" which we recorded on garage band. This also was put over the the Twisted Pictures intro so it created a sound bridge as the scene fades in.

Kelcie edited the recording to make it sound more high pitched, like a young girl.

We decided to make the shots of jodie black and white so it would give it a flash back effect, which would help the audience understand what is happening.

We used a lot of fading to a black screen for the titles so it would stand out more with the red writing. This would help so it doesn't clash with the scenes so you can read it.

We edited the writing to slide across the screen rather than just stay still, before it fades into the next scene.

For the next part of the sequence there was a very noticeable jump between the two shots. Kelcie tried to edit it to make it less noticeable, so we thought that the titles should go over the jump but we then realised that kelcie needed to put the black screen in, like the rest of them, which cut the jump out. This was very effective as you couldn't notice the jump anymore.

For the text of the titles we chose Baskerville in red. We chose this font because its sharp and thin, which gives it a better thriller effect, and the red was an easy choice because its a typical code of horror/thriller films as it represents something sinister or even blood. We had the soft edge effect on the opening credits, and had the cross zoom effect on the title of the film where it slides to the side as you read it. These effects are a good stereotype of a horror due to the sharpness and the fading which is why we chose them.

After looking through lots of different audio clips on Imovie we found a few creepy, tension building clips that would be suitable for the genre of our film. We added these in throughout our film to create suspense and to make some scenes jumpy. At the start of our film, we decided on having Jodie singing a nursery rhyme as we couldn't find any suitable on Imovie. This turned out very successfully after we edited it to make it more high pitched, as it sounded like a young child.

Fonts For Our Title

For our title we have looked at various fonts;

We liked this font due to the fact it looks quite horror/ zombie like and that it also has a mirror effect which would work well with our storyline.

This font is quite good but we didn't think it would suit our genre.

We liked this font as it looks quite creepy, but we didn't think it would work with our ghostly film as it looks more of a gory font.

This is our most favourite font out of the four as I like the sharp edges and that it's very thin. I believe that it creates a great horror image and I think it would work best with our sequence out of the 5.

What We Did

For our filming, we all did a fair share of taking part. We all helped with the storyline and jodie done the script. I did the storyboards while Kelcie did the backstory and the character profile of Saskia. As we were filming, we changed the script slightly as there was one less person than we originally intended due to them not turning up previously when we needed to film.
We followed the storyboards but changed the last couple of scenes as Kelcie thought 'Saskia' crawling out from under the bed instead of sitting on the bed would be more creepy looking, which it did.

We have finished the filming and are now editing it. Hopefully we will get everything the way we want it.

This is shot of Saskia coming through the door;

And this is a gif (moving image) of Saskia coming through the door. We thought this was a good shot to put in our film but couldn't fit it in.