Title credits

Titles and credits have many different roles for a film. They are used to portray important information to the audience such as who is starring the the film, the director of the film, the production company and many other roles. But they are also used to set the tone and mood of a film. They can do this by the footage shown behind the credits, the font of the credits and how they appear on screen. Credits are an essential segment of a film which help to introduce the films genre and major themes. They can appear for as long as the director wants and can either contain minimal information on characters/cast (majority shown after the films ending) or contain many roles which would normally only be scene at the end of the film. One of the best examples are the Austin Powers opening scenes which are usually very long comical scenes removed from the general plot of the film. During these expansive scenes credits are continuously pumping out names of crews and people associated with the film. Directors have to find a balance between the length of credits at the start of the film and the opening scene.


Se7en
The titles for Seven were one of the most ground breaking set of credits shown in modern cinema. They helped define the genre and style of the film through the use of background footage and font coupled with eerie music. The scratchy music helped to introduce a completely new antagonist to the audience and set him up to be very creepy.

The handwritten credits makes a link to creepy character shown on screen as all you ever see are various clips of bandaged fingertips furiously scribbling words into pages of a notebook. When the credits appear it is only for seconds at a time, this gives further links to the fast paced writing of the mysterious character. The fast paced fashion of the credits may also give indication to the pace of the overall film. This personal link helps to make the audience feel uneasy as they do not know the character and he appears very mysterious and unusual. This builds tension as the audience do not know what to expect from this character. Dark lighting accompanies most shots in this opening sequence and this represents the dark theme of the film on a whole. A black background is used when displaying text and this helps to contrast the credits giving them more emphasis. The colour black also gives connotations of death and decay - major themes of the film's narrative and characters.

After the production companies and director have been introduced by the credits , Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman are the first two credited actors - showing the audience the lead roles in the film. By putting these names first it helps to solidify the films target audience as people who are fans of their previous films are alerted to their presence in this film. The early inclusion of their names may also give indication that they might be a U.S.P to the film.It is here that the credits play the role of information giver as throughout the disturbing imagery they continue to tell the audience the various actors in the film as well as things like casting crew and music.

All the transitions used are so fast you cant quite tell what they are. This adds to the unease of the opening credits and the theme of mysteriousness is continued. This fear of the unknown is a common convention of horror films and in seen in countless other films. This is because it acts on a human's primal fear of not knowing what is happening or what is going to happen. Here that fear is exploited to a great extent as the audience is constantly unaware of what is happening.


Other Credits
Not all credits act in the same ways as seen above however.For example the famous opening credits crawl seen in the original Star Wars is used purely as a setting on which to propel the story. The credits are used to show the complete back-story of the star wars universe and appears before any mention of any actors. The only thing that appears before this is the production company 20th Century Fox.