There are two different types of credits that may be used in a film, and these are opening credits and closing credits. Opening credits may feature in a film or television show, and are shown at the beginning of the media product. The opening credits will list the most important cast and crew, such as main actors, and main crew, such as director and writer. They are likely to be shown in plain text, on a black background, or over the top of action of the show. Closing credits may feature in a film or a television show, and are featured at the end of the media product, and will feature a complete list of cast and crew. Closing credits are generally shown in plain text on a black screen, and sometimes may feature additional film material, such as a final scene or bloopers.
There are a variety of different things that will go into a credit sequence, whether this is for opening or closing credits:
- Title card (opening)
- The names of the main cast (opening) and the names of every cast member (closing)
- The names of the producers and directors (opening) and the names of every crew member (closing)
- Logos and names of the companies involved in the production of the film (can be both)
- Copyright information (closing usually)
- Soundtrack (opening and closing)
Here is an example for opening credits in the BBC television show, Sherlock (2010), which shows how the characteristics of what is included in credits are used.
Secondly, here is an example of opening credits from the film, Death and the Red Dress (2012), which takes inspiration from 1940s film noir, and therefore this is what opening credits may have looked like in feature films prior to 1970.
We decided that it would be beneficial to both the production and post production of making our credit sequence to research into what real media examples look like, and so here is our opening credits title sequence so far, to see how it compares to the real media examples above.
It was also beneficial to look at a real media product's credit sequences broken down, into opening and closing credits, and so for this, we looked at the Warner Bros. television show, Gilmore Girls (2000)
It was also useful to look at how big budget feature film or television show opening and closing credits may differ from small budget independent films, so therefore, we also looked for examples from real short films. One example is from the film, called Your Hands, which was a Kickstarter funded film, by the actress, Georgia King. The short film features both opening and closing credits, however they are different to the credits that are seen in big budget media products.
We also looked at another example of a short film, which features closing credits. In this closing credits sequence, it can be seen that there are only four characters and actors shown, as there may be less characters in a short film, especially if it is low budget and may require friends or family to help act in the film. Another feature of short, independent film credits is that one person may be shown to have multiple roles on the crew part of the credits, such as being both the director and the writer. This could be because not as many crew members will be involved in the creation of a short independent film.
However, we also found that despite a film being a short independent film, this doesn't mean that the credits may not be similar to those of a feature film. Even though they may be similar, there still is a major difference, which is that credits in a short film need to be short, as otherwise the credits may take up a huge amount of the short film, as for example, in feature length films, opening and closing credit sequences can be a number of minutes long. In the short film, The Crossing, which only runs for a total of 7 minutes, around one minute of the total time is for the ending credits.
This was also seen in another short film, called BOY. However this film is much longer than our short film, which only runs for five minutes, this film runs for 16 minutes, with a total of 2 minutes worth of credits. However, looking into this film gave us an insight for credits of short films. The music in these credits conveys the atmosphere created in the film and so we will most likely do this too.
During looking into what may be featured in a credit sequence, we also found that, in particular, opening and closing credits may feature a soundtrack as the credits roll. This is common on blockbuster films, which often add a song as their closing credits play, as this allows to keep the audience talking about the film, especially if they are exiting the cinema, during when the credits are playing. For example, in the blockbuster film, Transformers (2007), the closing credits run for a total of seven minutes, with songs being played through this, which can be used in order to keep the audience engaged. Marvel are also known for doing this, in which they tend to feature a short clip after a long closing credits sequence, which hints at what may happen in the next film.
From our research we found that credits for all films tend to be somewhat similar with just variations in length and the amount of people in them. Since our film is only a 5 minute film, it is likely our credits will only be around 30 seconds in length. For our closing credits, we therefore decided to keep them simple, by having cast and crew information displayed in white text on a black background. For our opening credits, we decided to include small clips that could provide a hint to the audience what the film may be about, along with the main cast names being displayed on top of the action.
Information presented in this post was taken from multiple individual posts, that we combined into one group post, to make the blog look cleaner. Below are the links to the Prezis from the individual posts:
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