www.smashingmagazine.com- 3 Points

Film titles and letter cards had to provide essential information to the viewer. For reasons such as ease of production and clarity, artists favored mono-stroke letterforms or characters with small serifs. White lettering on a black background is another characteristic of this era, because titles simply looked better this way when projected with live-action B&W film.

This shows how, in the early stages of the film industry, title sequences and letter cards were vital to a film to help the audience understand the plot and story of the film. Without dialogue it was very difficult to understand some elements of the film and so titles and letter cards would help the audience to connect to the film.

As movies grew more popular, their titles evolved. Movie producers invested considerable sums in film production and sometimes resorted to fixing a dog of a film by rewriting the inter-titles. For a time, “film doctor” Ralph Spence (1890–1949) was the highest-paid title writer in the industry, earning $10,000 a picture for his one-liners.

This shows how important film titles got the more popular films got in the early 1900's. Ralph Spence would earn $10,000 for doing the titles and letter cards for one film and due to him being a popular title writer meant he could earn even more than that in one year, showing the importance of title sequences in early films.

During the 1920s and ’30s, European cinema was deeply influenced by modernism, and aspects of this visual sensibility were brought to the US by filmmakers who were fleeing the Nazis. Meanwhile, the studio systems operating in Europe and Hollywood also delighted in creating titles that featured vernacular graphic novelties. As much as possible, they liked to convey the tone of a movie through the “dressage” of its main title. Thus, blackletter fonts in the opening credits were used to evoke horror, ribbons and flowery lettering suggested love, and typography that would have been used on “Wanted” posters connoted a western flick.

This discusses how, during the 1920s and '30s, film makers began to make their opening titles more suited to the genre and plot of the film. It shows how film makers began to realize the potential of relating a title sequence to the film and how it can help an audience understand the mood and context of the film before it has even really began.

Paramount Vantage- Studio Presentation

Paramount vantage

This is the presentation me and Alex Flynn created together for our pitching task 

Defiance opening sequence

The opening sequence of the film 'Defiance' begins with various real black and white footage of real life events during the Second World War and also some footage that has been specially made for the film. The title sequence then changes from black and white into colour as Nazis invade a Polish town and take members of the town away with them.

During the black and white parts of the sequence various facts about the Nazis and the Jews during the Second World War would appear as white text on a contrasting black background. Later in the sequence, during the black and white parts, the film company and title appear over the action happening on screen.

This title sequence makes it apparent that it is for a war film but using facts about the war and footage from the time which almost acts as a prologue for the rest of the film as it gives the audience a bit of background history for the war which allows the audience to understand some of the history behind the film.

These could fit well into the title sequence for our film as it could also be used to give the audience some historical background of the cold war and the rivalry between America and Russia.

Media Film Pitch (2/12/11)- The Iron Curtains

Media Pitch

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Production Company Decision

For this task we had to decide what Production Company we thought would be the best choice for our film idea. We looked into the past films made by certain production companies and looked at various statistics like budget and genre to decide whether they would be the best production company for our film.

The first company we decided upon was Warner Bros Pictures.
Notable Warner Bros. Pictures films:

A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Superman (1978)
Batman (1989)
The Shining (1980)
Police Academy (1984)
The Neverending Story (1984)
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Goodfellas (1990)
Gremlins (1984)
Free Willy (1993)
The Matrix (1999)
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
The film we felt out of this selection had most in common with our film was Goodfellas (1990) we felt that this film was most like our film due to it being a period drama about an underground organisation, in this case an organised crime ring rather than a political group like our film idea.

The budget of Goodfellas was $25 million which, although considerably less than the $80-100 million that we have decided upon for 'Iron Curtain' is still a resonable enough price considering the cast decisions and director decisions we have made for our film which we will be pitching to our class on the 2nd of december.