There are so many things to consider when finishing up the post production of your film. You're putting the final touches on the edit, mixing sound, creating visual effects, and a whole number of other small, but crucially important processes. Then there's titling, a process that many young filmmakers overlook, often adding off-white Times New Roman titles at the last second simply out of necessity. Titles, however, have the potential to be a tremendously powerful artistic asset to any film. Good title sequences -- like those featured on the fantastic blog Art of the Title -- are able to encapsulate the themes and subtext of a film through masterful manipulation of the art of typography. What exactly is typography, and how can it help you make the most of your titles? A new video from the video production and graphic design firm Parachutes provides a brief glimpse at the wonderful world of typography.

This video is a graduate school project from one of Parachute's founders, Thibault de Fournas. It looks at the function of typography not only on paper, but how that function translates beautifully to the screen, and how masters like Saul Bass paved the road for many of the tremendous title sequences that followed his iconic work with Hitchcock.

Of course there's so much more to titling than simply choosing a font. Titles should mirror the style and aesthetic of your film, and if you're able, the content as well. In order to make that happen,  you have to learn how to boil down the aesthetic of your film to its most basic concepts, then apply those concepts to the titles themselves. Titles can be static, in motion, or some unique combination thereof. Titles can be colorful and vibrant, or bleak and lifeless. The possibilities are endless. But when it all comes together, the opening titles should be able to inform the audience, in some way, on what they're about to see.

What are some of your favorite feature film title sequences?

[via Filmmaker]

titlestitlesequencesaulbass
Editing & Post-Production