Establishing Conventions of my Genre & The Order of the Titles

Establishing Conventions of my Genre

By doing the relevant research such as my deconstructions of opening title sequences I was able to establish the typical conventions of my genre. For example in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Vantage Point, Sherlock Holmes and Red Lights all use weaponry within their title sequences, such as guns, this was a typical convention for any spy/action/thriller film, this is what the audience expect to see and what helps them to distinguish the genre of a film when watching it. I also noticed the music in all of these title sequences, plus Psycho, The Driver, This Means War and Cargo were all quite low and typically quite scary that makes you nervous, with higher notes every now and again to keep you focused on what is going on or to draw your attention to something, but also to scare you. They also in most cases use a fast past to show that its thrilling and full of action, which is again, what you would expect. I also noticed that in most of them there was not a lot of colour, except red and oranges and the typical blacks, greys and white. This again is expected as it shows how they try to blend in and how they are then able to highlight things by using bright colours. By establishing the types of props used, the characters that are within them, the typical scenery, the font, music, colours and lighting that are used within these I think that I know what people will expect to see and how to subtly connote and convey the genre of my film within the title sequence. I think by doing these deconstructions, general research and audience research I was able to come up with a clear idea of how to use these to improve my own ideas and get across my genre clearly.

Order of Titles

The opening sequences I looked at unfortunately don’t actually use a specific way in which they have their title sequences appear except for the motion picture companies followed by the production company, these 9/10 came first. As this was the only thing my title sequences had shown to have in common I decided to research how titles were supposed to appear on the screen through a title sequence. From the research I did I found that usually they are put in place to signify their importance, so, as I previously stated, in 9/10 of the titles I had deconstructed began with the motion picture company, followed by the production company, this is also what I had found in my research, that it is more than likely these will be the first things you will see as they are likely to be the things you recognise, e.g. Warner Brothers being the big motion picture. The director is usually next, then any A-Listing celebrities, the title of the movie and then the rest of the principle cast such as the composer, costume designer, film editor, production designer and so on. By knowing this I am able to fit my titles in the way in which I believe it should be set out using this as a guideline. For example my actors are not major so would come after the title rather than before.