Construction - Titles, Credits and Fonts (Elliot)

Fonts used in titles and credits are essential to thriller openings as they establish the tone of the thriller and hint to the audience about what they may or may not expect from the rest of the film. What's more, the film title is one of the most vital aspects of an opening as it acts as a major indicator to the audience and colour, font and wording are key aspects of the aesthetics. In addition, credits help to introduce the film and tells the audience who they can expect to star in a film and whilst crediting those involved in the production process

During the post-production process, whilst editing I primarily focused on continuity editing and match-on-action as this has been a major difficulty of mine in the past and I wanted the opening to look as professional as possible. After I was happy with the layout of the thriller opening and the sequencing of each shot I began to edit in the title credits and production credits. This, however, led to rearranging scenes and shots to fit our opening timescale in order to include these titles. For the main title and production and distribution companies I wanted them to appear on screen in front of a plain black shot, away from the action of the other shots. This meant that the audience's attention would be focused on the text rather than the action, which is important in having an effect on the audience in the opening.

In contrast, when it came to editing production credits I wanted to incorporate them into the action of the scenes. I decided on using a serial fade effect on these and maintained a basic black and white colour scheme to incorporate these successfully. The text transitions softly and rolls onto the next in order to achieve the best and most aesthetically pleasing look and each credit was on screen for around 2 seconds each.


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When it came to the title of the film we used American Typewriter font as we felt that it was simple yet dramatic. Additionally, I placed a full stop at the end of our title to hint to the audience the theme of our thriller was psychological - the full stop demonstrates to the audience that the title is in fact a statement and implies that the protagonist is "Broken" psychologically. 

What's more, as I wanted to establish the genre of the film through the title and so I decided to use quick cutaways rather than using a fade transition between the shots. This captured the fast-paced tone of our thriller and by having the title cut to a black screen for 1 second or so following, it established the sense of enigma and created and eerie ton to the opening of our psychological thriller - which are conventional to any thriller. Having the title placed in front of a black screen is conventional for thrillers as seen in thrillers such as Scream, The Sixth Sense and The Mazerunner. The titles and credits lasted for 3 seconds on screen. This meant that the the audience would be allowed enough time to process the titles and to remember them. By having title transition so simply and by using a basic colour scheme this meat that the opening would look aesthetically pleasing and be as memorable as possible for the audience.