Common Titles

The first film that I thought of was ‘Psycho’ this film is a classic example of good filming and well thought of titles. In this film the title sequence lasts around 1:57 and during this time many titles appear. The title sequence was advanced when the film was released and still looks good when comparing them to films of today. Below are some examples of the titles that appeared in the film Psycho that was released 50 years ago.




These titles show a range of important people that made the film what it was. The titles range from the director ‘Alfred Hitchcock’s’ to the make-up supervision ‘Jack Barron and Robert Dawn’ although the titles are in black and white the transitions between them are cleverly done with advanced animation for that time period.

The next film I will be looking at it a film from 1975. The second film is called: ‘Jaws’ just like ‘Psycho’ the titles are similar regarding the information they show. The titles have got better compared to ‘Psycho’ due to the text overlaying an image and the coloured picture, this was a massive breakthrough for film and it is shown very well in ‘Jaws’.



Just like the titles from the 1960 film ‘Psycho’ they show all the people who helped develop the film and make the film the hit it was. The titles haven’t changed that much in the 15 year difference; they both take everyone into consideration and credit the main people at the beginning of the film.

Below are some screenshots of the film: ‘E.T’ this film was released in 1982 and again we see a trend in the titles used at the beginning. 22 years since ‘Psycho’ and 7 years since ‘Jaws’ the technology used certainly changes however the way the titles appear have a similar trend at the moment, the titles during this time appear in a plain text and appear and disappear with no transitions.



The titles in this film look a little out dated compared to now days but they still follow the same trend to the majority of other films, they show the important people who made the film possible.

8 years later ‘Ghost’ came out in 1990. Just like the films above I will show some screen shots that show the title sequence from ‘Ghost’ then I compare them with the films above to see how similar they are with the titles they show.



The titles appear and disappear as the film plays in the background; this is similar to ‘Jaws’ with the way the film is subtly playing. The titles still contain the same information as the previous films. This shows that over the past 30 years the titles have stayed pretty much the same. This tells us that when we are creating our titles we should stick with the ‘common’ titles that have been used in the past in order to make the film look and feel professional.

The last film I am going to be looking at was from the last decade, this will give us a 50 years film span from the first to last and a good overview of the titles we should consider incorporating. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was released in 2009 and shows how technology and effects have progressed through the years but still staying very much the same with the information.



These titles although do not show all the information the other do, they still show the basics such as producer’s; name of the film and associates. The titles are more stylish than the others and also have effects showing the advance in technology.

Looking at all the different opening sequences over the past 50 years we see no real change in the titles just the way they are presented. This will help our group a lot when deciding what titles to include because we will have some detailed information over the past 50 years showing us what titles have been done and what ones keep reappearing.

All but Transformers screen shots were taken from ‘http://www.youtube.com/’ the Transformers screen shots were taken from ‘http://moviesharing.info/movies.php?id=2213&part=1&nblink=10&movie=Transformers+2’