Filmception

The titles of a film used to be the most important part of the film. There you would find the top-billed actors and all the “important” people that had a hand in the film. Films would be made and broken depending on how those main titles were presented. Actors would have fights over who would be top billed and how and when their names would be presented.

Those times passed and now are slowly returning to the film world. Film titles became just a requirement using simple visuals to convey who was important in the film. Now the titles are more than that. Now titles are even more than the old, Golden Days of film titles. The titles have evolved to virtually be films within the film. Sometimes they are a synopsis of the film. Sometimes they are cool interpretations of the themes of the film.

I think this is what makes titles cool now. They are their own beast now and can present their own form of the narrative. The cool looking ones are not always the most effective since they don’t always have a narrative behind them. The titles with a narrative enhance the movie without necessarily giving away the story. The titles set the tone for the film or even the ending tone of the film and the stronger their narrative the clearer the link to the film and more renforcement of the movie’s themes.