Research : The Importance of Titles in Film Openings

Titles are important in films because just by the titles, the audience are able to tell what type of film it is going to be just by looking at the titles, an example of really good opening titles are the titles in Se7en.  which was directed by David Fincher who did a really good job when it came to the titles. This is because the writing is very scratchy and the titles are in black and white as well. The font changes as well to try and create confusion amongst the audience. The image on the right is an example. As you can see, 2 of the words are normal whereas the other 2 are in a different font and this can be used to try and create confusion for the audience and make them feel a bit scared.
Also there is another example and this can be seen within the flashes and this looks quite random and the audience may not be able to understand what it means.

The image to the right looks really confusing and unusual as well because the audience may only understand the 7 dashes but the rest of the image looks very confusing and people will be wondering what the words and symbols are about. Also the writing is very sketchy as well.









In Se7en as well, Kevin Spacey wasn't mentioned in the opening credits of the film because of the "John Doe" effect and after the film was finished, people would realize that at the start, the cutting of the fingers was to eliminate the fingerprints so they cannot be traced to him.  So instead they included his name twice in the final credits.

But Se7en was one of the first films to start using these titles but time has gone on,  a lot of films are starting to use the techniques that were used in Se7en meaning that the effect on the audience can no longer be there because it is getting over used now so the audience are not intimidated by the titles anymore. Also since the improvement of technology, the titles are much easier to replicate meaning that the hard work the producers of Se7en did doesn't really mean a lot now because titles are much easier now.

The good thing about the titles is that there were no computer effects being used which made the titles even better. The titles were made by the production designer John Sable and filled in dozens of notebooks and pages with a lot of writing and images to make the titles been more intimidating.