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Titles Throughout Time

Jul 1, 2002 12:00 PM, Kristinha McCort

Get your popcorn early, and settle into your seat. As modern film title sequences continue to evolve in technical sophistication and visual creativity, you may not want to miss those stylized words and images that preface the film you've come to see. Indeed, there are some who believe that the best title sequences are art forms unto themselves, such as researcher and historian David Peters, whose San Fransciso-based Design Films offers seminars on the evolution of film title design.

“It is quite surprising to me that so many people are fans of titles, and not just designers — directors and producers, also,” says Peters, who founded the non-profit Design Films, with Ken Coupland and Dav Rauch, in 1999 to research, collect, and present projects related to media design history. “Many filmgoers savor the opening of the film, relishing the way it evokes the mood, sets up the story, and iconizes the movie.”

Film title design, says Peters, has come a long way since its humble origins on introductory title cards and inter-title cards of the silent film era.

In the early days, each major studio had lettering artists who produced the title cards and inter-titles that were essential to silent films, he explains. “These projects and coming-attraction trailers were later subcontracted to firms specializing in their production. The craftsmen seldom knew more than the genre of the film, but they worked diligently to express the title credits with novelty and style.”

After World War II, things began to change for both titles and their designers.

“A new seriousness about the role of titles followed from the hostile and prolonged Hollywood strike of 1946 that led, among other things, to the founding of Scenic and Title Artists Local 816,” says Peters, who notes that these designers ranged from self-taught sign painters to advertising art department staff who knew a great deal about typography, animation, film effects, and visual culture. “These specialists declared themselves to be artists and not just laborers.”

Film titles, along with other visual media, enjoyed a renaissance in the 1950s and 1960s as a graphic design and advertising revolution inspired the creation of title sequences that were often more artistic and conceptually tied to their films than their pre-World War II ancestors.

Saul Bass, now considered by many to be the father of the modern film title, became the first designer to earn on-screen credit for title design with Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones in 1954. But according to Peters, Bass was not the only one who saw that titles could serve as the “brand essence” of a film — a logical extension of integrated selling to a public who had the choice of staying home to watch television.

“As TV ate away at studio hegemony, the film industry was keen to exploit any advantages it had, including new-school titles that were unconventional and even racy as part of the star-building, blockbuster package,” Peters explains. In addition, independent directors and producers also began using eye-catching title sequences to compete with the star and marketing power that major studios could afford.

But as titles became icons of popular culture unto themselves, as evidenced by titles for Pink Panther and the James Bond films, they began to compete with, as well as complement, the films that they referenced. Indeed, notes Peters, titles were attracting so much attention that many directors reverted to using low-key titles.

It wasn't until the late 1970s that title design caught its next wind — this time resulting from the computer technology revolution.

“Two of the richest possibilities that new technologies enabled were situating a point of view within an illusion of space and imagery and the manipulation of typography to be dimensional and move in ways that are physically impossible,” says Peters, pointing toward the title sequence of 1978's Superman, created by Richard and Robert Greenberg, as an early example of a computer-assisted title sequence. “Being able to mix in the sound in realtime also gave tremendous control to the designers of a sequence.”

In the early 1990s, film titles enjoyed another technological revolution with the advent of desktop computer tools. The introduction of Adobe After Effects in 1993 had a profound effect on the creation of title sequences, allowing designers to create and composite titles on their desktop computers.

“A key factor that led to the adoption of After Effects for creating film titles was its resolution independence — its ability to output 2k or 4k film formats in the early days, and its current ability to import and output images up to 32k pixels by 32k pixels,” explains Steve Kilisky, group manager for Adobe After Effects. “Other factors include After Effects' ability to import Adobe Illustrator artwork, and to resize, distort, and animate without any image degradation. Other factors include its integration with Photoshop, which allows art directors and designers to design the look of titles in Photoshop and have the file look identical in After Effects, high-quality motion blur, and with After Effects 5.0, support for 16-bit-per-channel color and third-party plug-ins.”

The widespread adoption of desktop tools has since impacted the way in which designers approach title design and integrate titles into films.

“When I started 10 years ago, the amount of time before you could see anything in motion was weeks, and now, you are talking about hours,” says Jakob Trollbäck, creative director at Trollbäck and Company and formerly one of R/Greenberg's pioneers of computer-assisted title design. “Now we can sit and talk about a concept in the morning, and then a few hours later, have something in motion.”

“Titles are really becoming more integrated with the film, and they're doing multiple jobs in that they are doing more narrative work, not just setting the mood and establishing the stage for the story that you're about to see,” adds William Lebeda, creative director of The Picture Mill, Hollywood.

The titles that The Picture Mill created with Santa Maria-based Computer Café for Panic Room, for example, which integrate as architectural elements into Manhattan landscapes and unfold sequentially and geographically throughout the city, settle audiences not only into the thriller's tense mood, but also into the starting point for the film's narrative: Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart's characters arriving at an uptown brownstone, which becomes the setting for the film's action.

Lebeda says that new technologies have contributed to bringing title sequences closer to their films, and consequently, directors, editors, and title designers closer to each other in the filmmaking process.

“Directors and editors are now able to work out a lot before they come to a designer because they are working on Avids and Final Cut Pro themselves,” he notes. “We get a lot of temp titles that are pretty respectable — they give us a really good idea of what directors are looking for, and they've already worked out things like how long they want the music to go and the sequence to play. We're all speaking the same language now.”

Title Timeline

1900s	Title design begins as simple opening title cards and inter-titles for silent films.
1939	My Man Godfrey predates the architectural integration of titles seen in 2002's Panic Room.
1944	Double Indemnity, unknown designer.
1946	The Scenic and Title Artists Local 816 is founded, giving new status to designers and presaging the design revolution of the 1950s and 1960s.
1954	Saul Bass becomes the first designer to be granted on-screen credit for title design with Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones.
1958	Vertigo, Saul Bass.
1962	To Kill a Mockingbird, Steven Frankfurt.
1963	The Pink Panther, Friz Freleng, becomes an icon of pop culture.
1963	Dr. Strangelove, Pablo Ferro.
1978	Superman, Richard and Robert Greenberg, becomes one of the first examples of computer-assisted title design.
1982	The World According to Garp, Richard Greenberg.
1993	The release of Adobe After Effects, the first desktop compositing application.
1996	Seven, Kyle Cooper, pays conceptual tribute to To Kill a Mockingbird.
2001	Monsoon Wedding, Trollback and Company.
2002	Panic Room, The Picture Mill and Computer Café. Compiled by Kristinha McCort

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