'Words and lettering played an enormous role in films of the silent era. Film titles made their appearance in the earliest silent films, along with letter cards (or inter-titles), which provided context. These cards were the responsibility of the lettering artist, who collaborated with the scriptwriter and director to create narrative continuity so that audiences could follow what they were seeing. Distinct from these inter-titles was the film’s main title, a vehicle of particular concern to film producers because of the legal, copyright and marketing information this footage had to bear.'

"Film titles and letter cards had to provide essential information to the viewer. For reasons such as ease of production and clarity, artists favored mono-stroke letterforms or characters with small serifs. White lettering on a black background is another characteristic of this era, because titles simply looked better this way when projected with live-action B&W film.
The following inter-titles are typical of silent movies. A shot from the comedy The New Janitor (1914) featuring Charlie Chaplin is on the right, and the silent western West of Hot Dog (1924) is on the left: "

My Opinion
I thought this section of the article was interesting, it shows how some of the first title sequences where shown, which we can compare to modern title sequences. I also find it quite dull and comparing them to todays title sequences they are very basic.






Typography Resources

Below you’ll find links to some downloadable typefaces that were used in or inspired by film titles from cinema history. Please read the legacy notes before downloading.

HPHLS Vintage Prop Fonts

An amazing collection of revived vintage fonts, many of which were used in early cinema. Among them are faces based on the National Old Style, Colwell Handletter and Post Monotone no. 2. Only some fonts can be downloaded for free, although the entire collection is available on CD at an affordable price.

Silentina-The Silentina font family is a great modern take on typography from silent film inter-titles. Designed by Ray Larabie in 2004.

Hitchcock-Hitchcock was created by designer Matt Terich as an homage to the lettering style of the iconic Saul Bass. The font is available as a free download, and you’ll find a selection of other typefaces in the same vein.

Movie/TV Related Fonts-Here is a collection of free fonts styled after the main titles of famous films and TV shows.

Waltograph-Waltograph was created by Justin Callaghan in an attempt to capture the spirit of the familiar Walt Disney signage.

finish!!!

Film Pitch Brief Summary

What Genre is your film? – 
Thriller, Mystery, War, Historical, Political
What other films inspired your film?– 
Inception, Inglorious Bastards, Defiance, Leon, Fight Club
Who is the target audience for you film? –
 20-30 Male (second target audience what be followers of stars)
When will your film be released?– 
Summer 2012
How much money will your film cost to make? – 
$80-100 million
How much money will your film make? – 
$500 million Profit
Who will star in your film? –
Leonardo Dicaprio, Colin Hanks, Liev Schreiber.
Who will direct your film? –
Clint Eastwood (May change)

Opening Sequence

Inception

The idea of subconsciousness will play a big role in our film and perhaps a major part of our title sequence. Both have a lot of shapes which then go into buildings, floors and mazes. This would tell the audience what they should expect from the film. Another thing that I noticed is the colour which is used a lot is black, it seems that this is to show the darkness of the subconscious and each of the characters.     

(As Inception doesn't have a official title sequence I have put two alternative ones instead)






Defiance 

This is a great title sequence, it shows actual video from the concentration camps and other areas in Germany and Poland at the time. This would work well with our title sequence as it gives a clear indicator on what the film will be about and would be a prologue for the rest of the film and give some background on the history of the war.

We also get factual information about the Second World War in a typewriter typography, this would be relevant to the time of the film as main way of typing on such information like documents. This would be a good idea to use in our title sequence as it would suit our title sequence which is based in the 1960s.
Near the end of the title sequence we get the change from black and white to colour, this is to bring the audience into the time period which we may use in our sequence.

Media Pitch

This is our film PowerPoint that we had to pitch to our class, the reason we had todo this was to prepare for out title sequence.
I think, as a group we have a clear plan on what we want to design and how to show this through our title sequence.

In the PowerPoint we needed the following information:
-Genre
-Inspiration
-Target Audience
-Release Date
-Budget
-Profit
-Actors
-Directors
-Whats The Film Really About  

Working titles

Kiera and I had to find important information about Working Title Studios. We then had to pitch what we found out to the rest of the class.

Groundhog Day-Title Sequence Design

As a group we had to come up with a title sequence for a remake of Groundhog Day, the remake was set in London with British cast Russell Brand, Emma Watson and Hugh Grant.
We decided that we should do a animation style title sequence which would show a continual effect, it's like a domino affect, this happened because of this.
The characters are all a paint-style animation but we wanted to make in obvious and clear who were the
main stars in the film, so we made their iconic styles which gives a clearer indicator on who the stars are.

Saul Bass

Saul Bass was a commercial artist who was born in 1920 and died at the age of 75 in 1996. He studied at   the Arts Student League in New York but then in 1946 moved to LA so he could get away from the creative constraints which New York had. When in LA he became a freelance artist and designer as well as opening is advertising studio in 1950.
Saul Bass changed title sequences forever with his use of geometric shapes and what they symbolise. A example of the is West Side Story which is a solid block of color that morphs according to the overture. 
This was his preferred method of title design as opposed to using photographs of the films star, which he saw as boring.






Catch Me If You Can is obviously inspired by Saul Bass' work.

(Need to finish)

Michael riley

View more presentations from uksov3.

This is my PowerPoint that I will be presenting to the class, I decided to pick Michael Riley for my case study. Seeing his title sequences made me interested to learn more about him, he has been involved in such films like Kung Fu Panda, Rent, Gattaca and many more. One of the main things about Michael Riley which interests me is his style of presenting a title sequence, he is able to give the audience a feel for the story as well as the characters. Another thing I leant about him is that he does title teasers like Spiderman.