Planning Opening Credits - Miss Miller

Opening Credits

Opening credits are included in the beginning of films for a number of reasons. They are included to give credit to the director, production company and to the actors involved in the film, this is important as they want their hard work to be recognised. Opening credits are also useful when establishing the genre to the audience, this can be done through how the credits look from the font and the colour, also by how they are perceived for example if they are jerky and unsteady.

We analysed 'Se7en' and looked at the opening credits in this film. The order of which they appeared was as follows: Production company, director, actor, title of film, actors continued, casting, music, costumes, editing, production, camera operator, co-producer, producer, writing and the director again. We noticed that whilst the credits were being played there was a lot of low key lighting and dark colours used, these is conventional to a thriller and is therefore being used to help define the genre. The credits are white on a black background, this is conventional to a thriller as it shows the contrast between good and bad. The iconography shown during the clip and the hidden identity adds to the establishment of the genre, also the jerkyness of the credits adds enigma and uneasiness to the clip which as well helps establish the genre to the audience. 

We also analysed 'The Black Swan' opening credits also, we noticed that the soundtrack that is included in the scene is very classical and appropriate to the plot of the film which is about ballet. The narrative of the opening credits is writing with charcoal, this corresponds with the music that is being played at the same time, as near the end when the tempo of the music speeds up the aggressiveness of the charcoal movements and vise versa when the music is slow and calm so is the movement of the charcoal. This portrays to the audience that they should be expecting suspense in this film as the build up of the credits and temp sped up. The title of the film is only revealed at the end of the credits, this is unusual for a thriller as it builds up the anticipation and the enigma. This also foreshadows what is about to come in the film. There is mostly dark colours used throughout the clip as when the title is revealed it is in white, this shows to the audience that in the film there is a contrast between good and evil somewhere in the film, this portrays the genre to the audience as it displays enigma and mystery. This is also shown when the credits fade out slowly letter by letter, this makes the audience think that there is a mystery

within the film and intrigue them to carry on watching.

Our thriller film:

In our thriller film, our credits will start to appear at the beginning when the two characters are shown walking around the train station and the setting is being shown and will last the length of our thriller clip. We are going to make the font look handwritten in either red or black, this will help identify the genre of the clip the audience.

The first font is very conventional to a thriller as it adds enigma as the font size of the letters are irregular lengths which add a sense of uneasiness. This is the font that my group is most likely to be using for our opening credits as it portrays the genre well to the audience as it looks jerky and will look even more conventional if we decide to change the colour to red, giving the image of blood and danger. This would be conventional to a thriller as it gives the colour red portrays the idea of danger and will therefore build the emotion of fear to the audience. The second font style is very unconventional to a thriller as it looks very innocent, girly and therefore not fit the convention of our film as it would not help portray the genre and doesn't fit our narrative at all. As a group we all came to the conclusion that we would be using the first font instead of the second. We came to this decision by discussing between us the group which one would work best with our thriller. The whole of the group decided that we should use the more conventional font and make the colour either red or black as it would be most conventional to the thriller genre.

This is the order of the credits we are going to use:

Actors- Tiernee Long, Isla Hearn

Director- Sophie Elliott

Title-

Music- Emma McComish

Costumes- Charley Kay

Editing- Sophie Elliott + Charley Kay

Production-

Producer- Guneet Bathla

Writing- Erika Gardiner

Co producer- Holly McComish