Opening Credits

In most films, horror, slasher, ron-com you will find they open the film with credits. Some are short some can last up to 5 minutes.
In some cases they play the credits whilst playing footage from the film or in others they might use a blank screen and have the credits visible while maybe using an image.
Some examples are,

Jennifer's Body, 

1. Establishing shot of location; big house surrounded by countryside. Tyre swing anchors it as a family home.
2. POV shot zooming in to the house. Sans serif, child-like font titles in a light green colour, as if it was written with wax crayons. It is at night and lights are on inside signifying people/someone is home.

This is an example of moving images whilst showing the credits another example of this is,

The Silence of the Lambs 1991,

In the opening we watch a young woman running through the woods. 'Woods, near Quantino, VA' appears on screen, which anchors the setting of the begining of the film. Non diegetic classical music is played this is a more sublte horror music chosen. Meanwhile we also hear diegetic nature noises such as birds. The titles appear, san serif, capitals, bold and black this creates a serious sinister look.

The Shinning 1980,

Still following the car the titles begin to run over the shots, the titles are in capitals, sans serif and in a powder blue colour. This colour could connote several things, the colour itself doesn't really fit in with the context of the genre, powder blue is normally associated with oceans and calm and relaxed. However the powder blue could be used to emphasize something out of the normal, which could relate to the plot of the film.

Whereas in some other film openings, they choose to emphasize the credits more and make them the only visible thing to be seen by the audience, for example,

Halloween 1978,

The film begins with the credits. To fit in with the context of the films title the only visible object you see whilst the titles roll is a pumpkin which connotes a halloween theme to the film.

The pumpkin progressively increases in size as the credits roll, the light inside the pumpkin also creates an eary effect. The tense music played increases in tempo and volume as the credits continue, the music creats more suspense as it changes the audience heart beat with the rhythm.

The titles themself change in colour from a yellow to a red. These colours can be symbolic for evil and hell.

The credits end 1min 59 secs, the pumpkin has now zoomed in so that all is visible is the the eye and nose of the object, which also emphasizes the presence of the flickering candle overall creates an evil image through the use of the pumpkin. This is quite a low budget opening and appears so to the audience however the preferred reading has been created and the audience are aware of what film it is.

The first option can be seen as more appealing to the audience as it instantly draws them in with action whereas the latter option can sometimes be quite tedius to an audience participant who is more interested in what happens in the film than who directed it.

For our coursework as we only have the limit of 2 minutes, we didn't want to waste precious time on something similar to Halloween, we felt we would go for something more along the lines of Jennifers Body. 

This would include an establishing shot of the house, giving a sense of a point of view shot. The shot would include the parents leaving the house and getting in their car, and a light being turned on upstairs, which would then lead onto the next shot of the babysitter and child in the bedroom.

So in the establishing shot we hoped to include the necessary credits to appear on the screen whilst the action takes place in the background. We feel this idea will work best under our time limitations and can be quite effective in drawing the audience into the film.