Title Sequence Clip Review

    The intro to a movie may arguably be the most important part of a movie. Although most people don't realize this, the intro sets the scene for the movie and gives us insight on what is going to happen. 

     As we viewed the opening scenes of multiple films I was impacted by the feelings they gave off and noticed many things. One thing that I noticed happened in a lot of the movies, was that the music in the background related to what was going on in the scene and was foreshadowing the rest of the movie. For example, in the opening scene for the movie "Saturday Night Fever", the music that played in the background was an upbeat disco type of music. I was already suspicious of it being a disco movie, but once I heard the upbeat music I knew for sure. Many films also use their opening scenes to present their credits and title screen. According to the author of the article, First films: Titles in the digital realm, he states "Film titles are very important because they set up the expectation of an audience." this actually becomes clear in the movie "What About Bob?", in which the title and credit opening scene is of a fish swimming around the words, and letters. This is significant, because although we are not sure what the film is about we can infer that the fish will play a factor in the movie. This draws the audience in and gives them a small taste of what they are about to watch. The designer made this easy to see with the use of creativity. 

    With creativity in mind another quote stated by the author of the article is "Giles sees diversification as the key for designers looking to focus on titles for a career." Giles is one of the film title makers that the author talks about and in this quote the author is explaining how being different and creating new ideas is how you can be successful in that field of work. The creativity that these designers use when coming up with ideas for their films comes to life in the movie "Scream". This movie is spotlighted as a horror film and in the opening scene you will be able to see why. It starts with a girl who picks up the phone. Obviously at first nothing scary happens but then suddenly you start to notice something is off. This type of suspense builds up throughout the scene, and cuts off before we actually see what happens. In this scene the audience starts to see what the murderer is like and what his mannerisms are, without even seeing his face. This shows how creative the designer was of this scene, because of how much we learn about the rest of the film, without actually knowing who is in it. 

    Speaking of suspense two movies that develop this in their opening scenes are "Jaws" and "2001: A space odyssey". In Jaws the suspense comes from the music in the background. A scary tune plays as the camera moves through the water as if it were a sharks point of view. This can send shivers done the audiences spine, in anticipation to what is about to happen. In A space Odyssey, for the first 2 minutes there is a completely black screen, while music plays in the background making you wonder what is going to happen. Its almost like that scene is leaving you "in the dark" about the rest of the film, to build that suspense for the audience.

    After watching these opening scenes, I am closer to choosing a movie for my final project than I was before. It does seem like it would be cool experience. I just am unsure of how good I would be at producing something like these films.