Research of Titles

Before creating our own titles for the thriller we needed to research into film titles that can be considered as iconic. A good website which helped to research into this area was artofthetitles.com, it has loads of opening titles demonstrating different ideas and techniques that interested me and it has given me more ideas in what to do for my own titles.

In The Cut

• Titles appearing over the opening scene
• Opening shots showing the urban setting
• Titles appear alternating at the top of the screen and at the bottom
• ECU on protagonist
• 'When I was just a little girl' playing during the main titles; but piano is in minor key creating an abnormal/unsettling mood. Protagonist is dreaming, she begins to hum the song then the song continues non-diegetically in the background
• Sepia shot showing a flashback, the title of the film is then revealed almost as if the letters are bleeding

Seven

• There is an unsettling atmosphere which the music brings out with everyday sounds which are discordant and made into a musical score
• White non-focused, slanted and hand written like effect with some words in bold and others not
• Text flashes in and out
• Glimpse of unsettling images which are blurred and unclear adding to the eerieness

Panic Room

• Shots of New York, closer, closer the shots become until there is a close up shot of protagonist
• Embossed, large, and it capitals which are construction-like on side of buildings

American Horror Story

From the same creator as the 'Seven' title sequence and it includes same themes

• House noises and 'white noise' used to create the music, creates an eerie effect
• Point of view searching through the secrets of the house
• Dull dark colours
• Flashes of other and disturbing images
• Titles flash in and out showing actors names

Fight Club

“The opening title sequence was supposed to be starting inside the fear center of Edward Norton's brain. The electricity is like photo electrical stimuli that is running through his brain. These are supposed to be impulses, fear-based impulses. We are changing scale the whole time so we're starting at the size of a dendrite [and] we are pulling back through the frontal lobes, going through this black section where there are particles; we've left the brain and are going through the skull casing. This is inside the skull where Arnon's name appears, inside bone where apparently there is some fluid in, which I did not know. And then we pull out through this clogged pore. The first time we showed this to [Edward] he said, "My face is not that dirty." And I said that this was all based on actual photographs...of your skin." David Fincher

Mad Men

The opening title sequence features a graphic animation of a businessman falling from a height, surrounded by skyscrapers with reflections of period advertising posters and billboards. The businessman is presented as a  black-and-white silhouette. The titles are influenced by graphic designer Saul Bass's skyscraper-filled opening titles for Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) and the movie poster for Vertigo (1958).

Reservoir Dogs

Perhaps the most iconic opening titles alongside Seven. Many other films have tried to imitate these iconic titles amateur like and professional. But of course this wasn't an orginal Quentin Tarantino idea, it was taken from the orginal Ocean's Eleven film.