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Now that we'd come up with a rough plot and a few ideas for our film name, we could start looking into the types of titles we wanted to include.

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We liked the idea of having a one word title that answered a question answered at the end of the film opening that also surrounded the idea of having a debt that needed to be paid.

We eventually decided on the title 'PAYBACK'. It has 2 meanings that both closely relate to our story line, the first being that Steven, our protagonist, must pay his money back to his drug supplier;  and the other being that his drug supplier, shown by an unknown hooded figure, wants payback for Steven not giving him money for the drugs he supplied him with.

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Next, we looked into how other films, incorporated titles into their opening scenes.

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Looking into Titles

We explored the title sequences of other drama films , such as the examples above and we found that the sequences we looked at followed the same pattern of being close ups of certain, significant items that are going to come into the film that may give the consumer an idea of what might be to come/themes that are going to occur in the film opening.

The title montage of drama films is often accompanied by fast paced, dramatic music that makes you feel on edge and enthralled at what is going to occur next.

As the editing process went on, we soon realised that our opening was taking up more of the conventions of a thriller. After realising this, we went back and studied thriller film titles. Such as the ones below:

Se7en

Se7en uses a montage of clips, as discussed above, with the titles overlayed in a jagged white font which shows the viewer it is a thriller, they used fast paced music to put the viewer on edge and create tension. The use of jump cuts made the titles seem sinister and ominous, fitting of a thriller. However, the title only appeared on screen for a very short period of time, making it hard to read especially as the words were flickering and in a unique font, this took away from the overall effectiveness of the titles.

The silence of the Lambs

The titles in 'The silence of the Lambs' is quite different to 'se7en.' Instead of overlaying the titles on a montage, they put the titles over the opening sequence. As shown in the video, the title stands out because it is black text with a white border, written all in capitals, making the title more bold. I really liked the idea of having the title in capitals as it catches attention and this is something i'd like to use in our short film opening. The use of dark colours throughout the opening sequence is not only fitting of a thriller, but it also makes the titles seem more sinister, perhaps suggesting something bad is about to happen, which puts the audience on edge. 

We were originally going to base our titles off of one film, however, we didn't find one which portrayed the effect we wanted. So we have decided to use a combination of title ideas from 'Se7en' and 'The Silence of the Lambs'. By doing this we think we will be able to achieve the effect we wanted whilst keeping it fitting to our genre. 

Below are a few bullet points of the combination of things we hope to include:

  • A montage of shots relevant to our storyline as used in 'Se7en'

  • Capital letters with a bold font as used in 'The Silence of the Lambs'

  • A white font colour overlayed on a darker background as used in both 'the silence of the lambs' and 'se7en'.

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