Researching Titles: Edward Scissorhands

How many titles are displayed during the opening sequences to the film?

There were 25 titles in the opening of this film. Each one had thin, wide spread lettering, titled at different angles and spinning lightly. The opening sequence was three minutes long.

What images are prioritized in the opening sequence?

There are many things that get a few seconds in the opening, and, to be honest, I think that the main priority was the credits. Otherwise, it would be these little bits of important story items that we get a glimpse of. Some examples include hands, statues covered in cobwebs and cookies(to show the shapes that were made into with cookie cutters, key word made).

What connotations do the images carry?

With the opening shots focused more on the credits, the main shots are meant to complement them. Each shot is filled with referenced from later on in the movie, and so to a first time watcher, it is less important and provides a background for the titles.

How is genre reinforced through symbolic and technical codes from the outset?

Each image is desaturated and, old looking and mysterious. It starts as if entering an abandoned place with old, almost human looking machines at work. Then there are random flashes of cookies, the contrast putting emphasis on the shape, like how the cookies were created to be like that. Then there are these two, flesh bearing hands, which is most likely a reference to the non-flesh bearing hands that the main character has. Then there is an old mans face, asleep or dead, lying down. The three minutes end with snow falling and an epic castle in the background. All of these shots add to the creepy mood of the movie, and the things pictured in each shot establishes it as fantasy.

How does the film establish an enigma from the outset.

The shots in the film hint at something bigger, but never shows the audience the whole picture. This leads the audience into wanting to know the rest of the story, to understand the meaning of the shots from the opening.

What strategies are used to ensure the film appeals to its target audience?

This movie is most likely aimed at an adult audience. It reaches this particular audience by being simpler, and more barren with its opening credits and shots. Focusing on the titles can further interest older audiences because they would know the actors and producers, so they would most likely become more interested since the director is well known.

How has technology been used effectively? You want to consider camera angles, transitions and editing techniques.

For it’s time, the movie uses fading transitions and close ups to keep the opening’s flow. The music is erie and also connects each shot.

Researching Titles: Charlie and the Chocolate Facotory

How many titles are displayed during the opening sequences to the film?

There are 33 titles in the opening sequence, each fading in and fading out slowly, with a fancy font with gold coloring. The credits lasted 5 minutes.


What images are  prioritized in the opening sequence?

The creation of the Wonka chocolate bars are the prioritized shots. Their process of creation, the machinery, and the golden tickets are the main parts of the opening.

What connotations do the images carry?

The machines and dramatic lighting create an ominous and foreboding feel. Every movement is calculated and perfect, even the floating plates of chocolate. It all is mysterious and magical.

How is genre reinforced through symbolic and technical codes from the outset?

Throughout the opening you see some wild, smooth, spinning camera shots, along with efficient, odd looking machines. The music is fantastical, having its ups and downs, getting a little darker and then lighter. It is just different enough to understand it isn’t real but also familiar enough to convince ourselves otherwise. I think this sets up the movie quite well, providing just enough back story about the golden tickets and how they were sent throughout the world.

How does the film establish an enigma from the outset.

This opening is definitely alluring because of its mystery. Why are they mass producing chocolates? What are those golden tickets for? The music adds adventure and fantasy into the mix and the unreal technologies only spike curiosity. The creation of the chocolates leads the audience to wonder where they are headed.

What strategies are used to ensure the film appeals to its target audience?

This films audience is for all ages, more toward kids. The chocolate might interest the majority of them, and the music and constant changing and moving of the machines would keep their attention. For older kids and adults, the darker tones of the music and lighting might have them hooked.

How has technology been used effectively? You want to consider camera angles, transitions and editing techniques.

I cannot tell if these machines were actually made, puppets or CGI. Regardless, the camera angles immersed you as if you were also a chocolate bear going down the line. Nothing would really be seen besides the machines, the background was just black, but it didn’t need anything else. The transitions, though few, were fades. Otherwise, the camera went along with the factory line with smooth twists and turns. This use was effective, as it brought the audience into the world quickly and kept their attention.

Researching Titles: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2

How many titles are displayed during the opening sequences to the film?
While watching the opening titles, I counted 32 individual titles.

What images are  prioritized in the opening sequence?
The first image is of a character readying for battle, and the next shot is of them getting into a fight. Overall, all of the openings shots build up for a lot of action.

What connotations do the images carry?
This first shot makes it clear that this movie is an action and fantasy. You can tell this because the actor is screaming, and his makeup is otherworldly.

How is genre reinforced through symbolic and technical codes from the outset?

The genre is enforced with almost every aspect of the film. The makeup and CGI make the characters look otherworldly, with one of the characters being a sentient tree and raccoon. The music isn’t modern, which puts makes the film feel loose in a sense.

How does the film establish an enigma from the outset.

Throughout the opening credits the camera focuses on a main character who is casually walking around while, in the background, the other main cast is fighting a huge beast. The character being focused on is nearly smashed to bits on multiple occasions, which creates suspense as we want to know what happens to the character.

What strategies are used to ensure the film appeals to its target audience?

The movie is meant for teens and young adults, so the movie keeps its humor relevant without being too current. The movie also used music from the 90’s, which is making a comeback in the younger generations, and high quality CGI, which is becoming increasingly more popular as it gets more advanced.

How has technology been used effectively? You want to consider camera angles, transitions and editing techniques.

With the use of CGI, the movie’s shot can be very long. Infact, while the opening song is playing, there is no discernable transition. This keeps us very connected to the main character, as well as their use of foreground and background, which makes the opening funnier. The character the camera follows is mostly infocus, and when the other characters interact with them, they also become in focus. I feel like their use of CGI, music and camera techniques is engaging and effective at keeping the audience's attention.

Researching Titles: Guardians of the Galaxy

How many titles are displayed during the opening sequences to the film?
34 titles are displayed during the opening sequence of the film.

What images are  prioritized in the opening sequence?

The first image on screen is the main character’s ship landing on a desolate planet, that is clearly not earth. We then get to see the rest of the planet, which is even more hostile and space-like than the first shot.

What connotations do the images carry?

The setting sets the scene for a dark serious opening, with the serious music, the harsh blowing wind, and the contrasting erie red glow of the main characters mask. This shows the fantasy theme clearly, and gives us an impression of what the movie is going to be like.

How is genre reinforced through symbolic and technical codes from the outset?

The genre is reinforced through the Fantasy elements of the alien planet with rats and the planet has constant stormy weather. The main character also uses unexplained technology, and the shots of the character show him in comparison to the environment.

How does the film establish an enigma from the outset.

The film uses a startling change from the foreboding mood they set up in the first minute to the playful 90’s music and dance to catch the audience off guard and gain their attention.

What strategies are used to ensure the film appeals to its target audience?

The film establishes that it’s a comedy from the start with its use of sound and characterization. The type of humor is also very appealing to the movie’s young adult and teen audiences.

How has technology been used effectively? You want to consider camera angles, transitions and editing techniques.

The technology in the opening scene of the film is used effectively with editing by having Star Lord using his hologram to see where he is going on the planet, and camera angles when he is singing along during the opening sequence to show his emotions and personality. Camera angles are also used to showcase the fantasy planet Morag, which they briefly show the outside of the planet before he lands.

Researching Titles: Watch the Title Website

The second website we decided to research was www.watchthetitles.com. Watch the title is where you can find various title screens from movies, tv shows, and video games. We will use this website to find additional fantasy film titles to research. We are using watch the title to find out a good order of titles on the screen that is used in our genre, fantasy. The order of the titles are very important in films. Wether to use the order of importance or a random order. We want our film to look as professional as possible. Also if there are different titles depending on the genre we are watching such as Fantasy. Should the director go first for action, or should the costume designer go first for Fantasy movies. Watch The Title doesn’t contain a lot of options for movies though. Something that Watch The Titles also contains is French Friday. French Friday is French cinema movies from the 1950s to the 1980s. This part of the website doesn’t help our research, though. Watch the Titles also has something called Event Titles, which are title sequences done for festivals. Art of the title, the other website we discovered, has a lot more choices of movie titles to choose from, so we will be using that website for further research.

Researching Titles: Art of the Title Website

We chose to research two websites to learn more about movie titles. The first website is called Art of the title, and we plan on watching multiple title openings to gain an understanding of the order and design of titles. Specifically, we will be watching movies of our genre, fantasy. If we cannot find any fantasy movie openings, we will look into other similar genres. Art of the title has a bank of movie openings organized in different ways. There’s an all titles, top 10 openings from 2019, and a classics list for us to shuffle through. By watching some of these movie clips, we intend on learning about the nuances of style for titles. For example, how the titles appear on screen. We want to know if they should follow the movement of the actors, or be more flat and steady. Additionally, we want to know how the titles get on screen. Should they fade in, drop in or just appear, and how does this affect the look of the film. Lastly, we must look at the actual design of the titles. How does the font match the genre, and are they good colors. We need to make sure the colors of the titles stands out against the background. We want to keep our film looking high quality, and so we can’t have the designs of our titles looking like a middle-schooler created them.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

The fourth movie that we watched was Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. We chose this movie because it is a different kind of fantasy then The Hobbit or Harry Potter. Instead of magic or fantasy creatures/species, this kind of fantasy is where characters have one sort of “peculiar” power. While this isn’t what our project is going for, we still want to be knowledgeable on the range of fantasy. This movie also has some time-travel elements to it. The travel is purely magical, though, no science involved so it cannot be considered science fiction.

To start off, the movie used lighting a lot, in many different ways. While this movie’s quality isn’t the best, they did have some good lighting. Everything in the main characters original timeline was desaturated, things were more grey and light. But when the main character went back in time, everything became much more saturated, almost over saturated. We assume this is to differentiate from the two different time periods, but it could also be showing how magical the place is. The costumes also aligned to the two different time periods, and the makeup as well. Miss Peregrine had more accented makeup to make her seem more bird-like. The villains wore typical villain suits, but whenever they appeared the lighting would get really dramatic, deepening the shadows. They also had white eyes, which could be makeup or editing.

Speaking of eyes, there were creatures, perhaps CGI or the like, who attacked people and took their eyes. The victims faces were indeed missing eyes, and it was most likely done with editing. More editing includes the powers of each character, the flames, the mouth in the back of the head, the bees, and the dream-watching. One of the characters powers was to bring dolls to life, which was animated with stop motion. Miss Peregrine had the power to turn back time, which she did every day to keep the children safe. The way this was executed was interestingly done. Besides the visuals of planes going forward and then backward, or the bomb dropped going back up, there was music that played forward, then backward. To show time
reversing, the clock went backward and the song played backward. There was a lot of music used, sometimes subtle in the background, sometimes not. There were many sound bridges used.

Some more editing includes when two characters dove down into the ocean, and one of them used her powers to blow air into a sunken ship so they could breathe. While this is wrong on so many levels, it was probably done with CGI and maybe green-screen.

Some things we liked/want to use from this movie is the lighting. We have an idea of two different, contrasting places, so the desaturation and saturation of the scenes is something we can use. Another thing we could keep in mind is the use of stop-motion/animation. Though we don’t have a specific place we think we would use it, it is still something to think about. Some things we didn’t like from this movie, or rather, cannot do from this movie is CGI. That seems to be a common theme.