Opening credits and Typography - Miss Begum

What are opening credits?
Opening credits are a series of text, usually presented at the start and widely used in video games, television programs, but the one we are mostly focusing on is the movie industry or motion picture (movies/films).

The opening credits include members of the production, crew and cast. Usually they present the most important roles at the start of the opening credits, mostly well known actors, and then the producers, then director, etc, opening credits are sometimes included with music added in.

Their impact on the audience is varied, depending on both the genre of the movie, and the use of typography (Which i will explain further down). Typography both effects the use and way to represent the text to the audience, and in turn, should achieve a certain effect from the audience as well.

An example of how opening credits are used within motion pictures, Here is an example from "Se7en"'s opening credits:


- As mentioned earlier, the opening credits mostly follow a sequence of importance in terms of who is presented first from the production crew, For example; Once the production group name has been presented, It shows first the storyline writer's name, and a well known actor "Brad Pitt"
- The opening credits in Se7en are mixed in terms of both using a black screen with text, and then some parts where the opening credits are shown while the clip is still going, IE where the person is turning the pages of a book, the credits appear on clip showing more names of the cast while the scene is still moving.

Typography
Now we come to the topic of Typography, Typography is the art and usage of different ways to present text; which is then in turn used as opening credits within in example, our thriller movie we are producing.
By mentioning "different ways to present text", this is reffering to using for example;
- Different colours

- Size

- Font style

- Other variables

All of these different styles and ways to present them are not just used to generally make the opening credits look nicer and more suited towards the film it is being used in, but also to try to get certain effects from the audience.
An example of how opening credits may be used within a conventional thriller, within our thriller we are producing; here is an example of one of our scenes with opening credits included onto the clip.

Within this example, We are trying to achieve the effects of causing curiosity and slow-building suspense by presenting the opening credits one by one and by using the colour white, making the opening credits stand out from the dark edges/parts of the scene.
We have also used the font style of "Chiller", which suits the genre of thrillers, typically used with the colour red, it can be seen like the text has been written out or made from blood. But instead in this example, we have used white to give it a sort of ghostly appearance.
In terms of its size, we have made it just so that it is too large to cover up important view points of the scene (blocking out certain iconography within the scenes) and not too small that it cannot be seen.