Credits Research and Analysis

Yesterday in our media lesson, we watched the opening credits of many different films as a helping idea of the type to include in our film opening, as most of our class were finding difficulty with this part of the editing.

We watched the opening credits of; Babel, Derailed, The Bourne Identity, In Bruges, The life of David Gale, The Mexican and Angels and Demons.

The ones that particularly stood out to me were: Babel, The Bourne Identity and The Mexican, although they are all of different genres from Action to Rom-Com.

The opening credits to 'Babel' started with text over a black screen reading information like, 'A ....Film' and 'A...Production'. This was the basic information which is essential so the audience immediately know that it is the film opening. But the part that particularly interested me was the part where there was a plain black screen which lasted about 5-10 seconds with sound over the top and the opening credits appearing on the screen.

As an audience, I found this particularly gripping as I just wanted to know what was going to appear on the screen next as the black screen allowed the audience to pause to think but still kept them engaged with the sound.

The opening credits to 'The Bourne Identity' were completely different which is why it stood out amongst the rest. It started with a piece of footage which lasted for a long duration, with text in the corner informing us of the location.

Following from this, the footage continued for about 7 minutes until the title came up over a black screen. Then, there was another set of footage for another 5 minutes, and we did not manage to see the opening credits. But judging from what we watched, about 10-15 minutes into the film there were no mention of any names.

The opening credits to 'The Mexican' were also different and relevant to the movie genre. The names of the actors and producers etc were shown through objects on the screen for example, traffic lights.

This reminded me of the closing credits in the classic movie 'Grease' as we also see the names of the actors through objects.

Although we could not take any ideas into account for our credits, it still added to my wider knowledge on film credits.

From watching all these movie opening credits, I will take into account the idea of credits over a black screen with sound in the background and enter it into our own film credits.