Titling and Credits

                              Taxi Driver

The film taxi driver has two main methods as to displaying its titling and credits, it starts the film showing the film studio itself before the film has started, this is extremely standard and is featured in every film created by Columbia pictures. This is given its own specific clip as this can then be made memorable for the public to assosiate columbia pictures with their films created.

Now, when we get into the actual opening sequence the piece is started by showing some smoke in an alley which then has the words taxi driver imposed onto it within the editing process. They chose to place it on the smoke to draw emphasis and almost frame the title as seen above with the circle of smoke around it. The smoke was created by a taxi driving first which then again emphasises the taxi theme. The music in the piece also emphasises the title as it has a drum beat build up to the title being shown.

After the title is shown here we are also shown the names of significant people from the film, again framed within the smoke, these are less significant than the title itself and have less screen time and emphasis. Throughout the entire opening sequence the credits follow a yellow/orange theme in keeping with the taxi driver idea, and setting location as orange and yellow taxis are unique to New York in particular, also helping set location.

We are then moved onto the next location for filming which is done inside of the taxi cab itself from the drivers perpective. We are also shown shots of his eyes here but no titling is included over the top of these shots so that his eyes can be emphasised. The eyes in themselves are significant as they are so emotionless and unchanging it shows normality and boredom inside the taxi driver. What we can see outside of the car is pictured in a surreal state and as if the world was just moving past him, it signifies routine again and normality for the driver.

The credits in this section of the opening are also in such positions that they are clearly seen. They all followed similar positioning to the image above in which the titles are placed within darker sections of the screen to emphasise them so that they stand out from the surrounding darkness.

the music in this section is also alot less tense than that of the scene with smoke in, it is now a form of jazz. This helps relax the viewer and lets them also go into an almost trance (similar to the taxi driver?) of sitting their and watching the credits, with less effect on the surroundings due to the strange surreal effect given on the filming.

                                                Black Swan

Next i used the film Black Swan as an example to show another method of titling that could be effectively used within a thriller as it contrasts a lot to the previous example in which the titling is all done within the actual piece itself. 

In the film Black swan for their opening credits as such they simply had some slow music playing and then fading titling on and off of the screen in time with the music, giving a calming and relaxing effect, setting a similar mood for the rest of the film.

The titles were slowly put onto the screen in a graceful manner which then closely related to the opening scene of two people performing ballet to the exact same music. This kind of effect could have been used in our film and we would have just included a few screens at the beginning in keeping with our music as a sound bridge; however we instead decided to have our titling within the piece in a similar method to that used in taxi driver.

                                     The Lincoln Lawyer

Next I chose the Lincoln Lawyer's opening sequence for the credits as I believed there were exceptionally unique and clever in the way they were constructed and planned. The film opens with a section in some ways dedicated to the opening credits, it shows as you can see from the images titling as a center piece of various images all following a grid like styling. 

At the beginning of the piece the items are all extremely abstract or large vista's of an american city that we can presume the film is based in. These abstract shots help set the scene for the film but more importantly frame the titling itself in a very iconic manner.

The Titling is also constructed in such a way that all these artistic shots then gradually become more and more related to the opening sequence of the film in which the titling is put on top of a car (pictured above) which then ends up containing the main character and initiates the opening scene. This way the titling slowly blended in over the course of this introduction, a very nice effect.