The Impotance Of Typology and Design

Orders of titles (rule of thumb)
Studio
(director)
Stars (in order/reverse oder of fame/status) - name of the film
Crew
Write (screenplay)
Producer
Direcctor

• Rounded lettering, that is not sharped edged, is shown throughout this to display the information that is usually displayed in pre title sequences such as director and producer etc.
• The lines seem  to carry on from one shot to another, shows signs of fluidity. This shows that there is a rythm to the film and that it is smooth.
• Mysterious music is used throughout this pre title sequence to suggest that there is some sort of secrecy to do with the story line if this film.
• Also if you watch the one character throughout the film you can clearly see that he keeps changing appearance into different things, which indicates to the audience that there is a sense of hiding and always moving.
• Also when looking at the characters used in this animated pre title sequence, there is also a guy in a hat and suit who follows the guy who is always changing and constantly on the move, this could indicate some sort of chase. The costume of the guy chasing connotes a familiarity to the clothing of an undercover cop or some sort of undercover person with his hat to hide his face.
• Furthermore the writing that displays the movies titles is always on the move which could link in with the point I made above about fluidity and about how the guy is always moving. These two can be linked together as the writing flows onto the next shot and so does the guy which once again communicates a sense of rhythm and pattern with this guy and how he never stays still.
• Finally as the movie title ‘catch me if you can’ is shown, just prior to that the man in the suit looks to be stopped by a brick wall as he is about to catch up with this other man who is always on the move, the movie title is then shown which is ironic as the guy in the suit cant catch the other man.

In-conclusion this pre title sequence is made in order to communicate a little to the audience as to what the film they are going to watch will be like. This pre title sequence has indicated what the film will be like through its sound, visuals and typology. The sound has communicated what sort of film it will be like by the sound track they have used; for example the sound track used in this pre title sequence suggests an air of mystery and ambiguity. The visuals used also back this point of what the film maybe like as the visuals suggest a man chasing another man who uses different disguises. Finally the typology backs both of these points by the way it is fluid and flows into each next shot suggesting that the film is always on the move to different settings and places.

• This pre title sequence if very different from the one above in all aspects which indicates to the audience that they are both from a different genre, we can see that the se7en pre title sequence is different from the catch me if you can sequence through the visuals, sound and typology.
• The visuals in the sequence make you feel very uncomfortable as the guy is cutting of his finger tip skin, the reason he may be doing this is so that when he touches something no one can discover who he is as he has no finger tip traces. This suggests to the audience that the guy is clearly trying to evade someone trying to capture him or find him.
• Also the visuals at the beginning of the pre title sequence show someone writing notes in a book, this could communicate to the audience that what he is writing could be notes of some kind about what he is doing and maybe how he could escape capture from who ever is trying to find him perhaps.
• When looking at the visuals they once again make you feel more and more uncomfortable as the sequence goes on as it just looks so unnatural the way they have been made and the way the background for the titles is shown; for example when some of the titles are shown it looks like the flickering of when an old movie was shown, it looks very negative and unnatural as if there is a problem of some kind.
• Once again the sound backs the point of what I have said above about the fact that the music just makes you feel strange as it just doesn’t sound right. The music once again feels uncomfortable with the drum symbols used and all the rattling and knocking used within the sound track.
• Also towards the end of the scene you see the person using thread with a needle and this could indicate to the audience that there is a sense of perfection about this film and that what ever goes on within this film it is very well planned and takes a lot of concentration about how it is all done and that there is a lot of preparation for it to happen.
• Throughout this sequence there is an uncomfortable feeling to this scene which suggests that this if the feeling that the audience will get throughout this film. You get the feeling of discomfort through the typology as well, as the titles looks to have been etched into the screen with some sort of sharp object, this could have some link with what you see towards the beginning of the scene as the person is cutting the skin off of there finger tips.
• The impact that the scratched typology has on the audience is to make them recluse by the sight of it because the way it has been presented makes it look like some one has scratched it into a material and they have done this to make you feel like you can't watch it anymore.

In-conclusion the pre title sequence for se7en was mainly made to make the audience feel uncomfortable and to communicate to the audience that the film will also include parts that will make you feel uncomfortable and at times make you want to look away from the screen. The typology also adds to what makes be in the film as it is looks as if it is almost etched into the screen which could suggest that there is an awkward and very scruffy feeling to this film but then this is contrasted with the thread and the needle suggesting that there is some sort of plan within this film that needs a concentration and organisational skill that requires no mistakes. The general idea of this pre title sequence is to make the audience feel uncomfortable and to communicate to the audience that a plan exists within this film.

In this lesson we analysed a few pre title sequences mostly looking at the design and typology of them. I found out that there are many layers to the typology and design of a pre title sequence. These can communicate plenty to the audience about what may exist in the film and what sort of genre the film could be. We analysed more than just se7en and catch me if you can but I chose these two to include in this post as I thought they were the most interesting out of the ones that we looked at and I also thought there were plenty of contrasts between the two that interested me and gave me many options for what I could do for my pre title sequence. We also looked in greater detail at the order of the pre title sequence ‘catch me if you can’, we were given a sheet with many of the shots on and we had to organise them into the order of what came first to what came last in the sequence, I found this very fun but at the same time challenging as there are so many ways in which the shots can be placed from start to finish in the pre title sequence, once we had numbered where we thought the shots went, we were shown the pre title sequence and saw that the order that we thought it had gone in was wrong and that the order it was meant to be in made more sense than our own.

Once we had analysed a few pre title sequences and had looked in greater detail at the order in which titles are shown, we were given the challenge of creating a new pre title sequence for the film ‘Groundhog day’. The idea that my group came up with was to show the British theme through the titles and you the typology to communicate that this is a British film to the audience. We would also use specific things such as setting/ location and props to show that this film is set in Britain. For each shot we struggled with what to include as we didn’t want to give away too much information about the film, so we established what the storyline for the film was as none of us had ever seen it before, so we decided to have in the beginning of this pre title sequence have the main guy see a woman he falls in love with at the first sight and from then on for every shot have the guy bumping into this woman everyday but in different ways and on each different day he gets rejected. Within every shot that he bumps into this woman in different ways and asks her out we are trying not to give away the fact of the story line which is that he is reliving the same day over and over again but in different ways. We were also told that there was humour that needed to be included in this pre title sequence so we made a decision to have in each shot that he bumps into this woman in different ways that he knocks into her in funny ways and from then on we could communicate the humour through these experiences (shots) of him bumping into her.