The History of Movie Title Sequences
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
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Not only do Title Sequences tell you the name of the film and the stars, they can also set the tone and mood and put you in the right frame of mind to experience the film or TV show to come. Explore the history of the title sequence and how they've evolved along with business of filmmaking over the past century.
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The passion you have for film is beautiful and the love you put into your work is felt. Thank you!
Couldn't have said it any better myself. Thank you John, and keep up the great work!
That subtle Wilhelm scream in the intro when the camera falls. XDXDXD
I knew I heard it,,,!
And the legendary vids keep coming from the best channel on YT.
Thanks once again!!
Although his career as a film title designer was brief, Iginio Lardani did the titles (mostly rotoscoped) to two hugely influential films of the 1960's, "A Fistful of Dollars" and "The Good, the Bad & the Ugly", still memorable today.
I love how thorough these videos are. You can tell you have a passion for filmmaking and are not just reading from a Wikipedia page.
This channel is one of the reasons I decided to go to film school! Thanks Filmmaker IQ and John Hess!
I didn't think title sequences was such an interesting topic. It's just one of those things you never really think about. Thanks for the video!
And as a P.S. to my previous comment: My high school film appreciation teacher taught us to stay through the end titles, and I've done that for more than 20 years. (I have a special couple of things I look out for - there's always someone named Chris or Christopher [my name] and there's always someone with a nickname in quotes.) So, having said that, I was one of the few who sat through about a half hour of end credits for "Return of the King." I needed another popcorn refill!
You constantly provide content of exceptional quality, kind sir. You are a gentleman and a scholar. I shall hoist a pint in your honor.
I really hate that many movies nowadays do just jump into the action and do not take the time to establish the mood through an interesting title sequence or musical cue. Part of the fun of getting to the theater was seeing the opening credits, making it a memorable part of the experience. Everything today is towards minimalist or the most interesting visuals are at the end of the movie and they would have set the movie in motion perfectly. I hope that the longer, better title sequences are brought back.
If I ever made a movie, I would have it jump straight into the action with a crucial line spoken within the first four seconds of the movie. I would also have major plot points revealed in the credits and in the last ten seconds of the movie.
This would make it impossible for tv channel anonouncers to spoil my work with some daft voice-over talking about the following program or other non-important "parc".
Also, scaling down the credits and move them to a corner of the screen and mute the sound to make room for signs and speak about upcomming programs would be impossible, or, at least, be DO very YOU unpopular GET among MY the POINT? viewers.
@@mamoladk broadcast tv is pretty much obsolete tho even at the time this comment was written Netflix was the go to content service.
@@tyedollasign4034 yeah, I watch very little flow tv. I predict, that Formula 1 will be the bulk of what I'll be watching this year.
I stream and I watch DVDs/blu-rays.
I don't have any flow tv that costs money; I don't want to pay for commercials that interrupt everything every 5/10/15 minutes.
Come for the film history, stay for the cat video
That's exactly what I was looking for! 5:03 - Title animations! Movies are cool and all, makings of are amazing, but what always fascinated me the most were the little inbetweens, introductions, great typography and how it was made. Great content!
I have always appreciated credits sequences no matter what era a film came from. The modern end credits have always been a better representation of all the hardwork the crew and employees have done for the film, no matter how small. It's a little unfortunate that some people still leave immediately before the credits roll, or after a main-on-end title sequence. This is why I have always preferred staying for the entirety of the credits to give praise to those people behind the scenes, and even discover other careers in film, interesting film jargons, and absorb everything what you've just watched for the remaining time.
I'm glad to see this channel growing. Just a few months ago it hovered around 60 k.
Best channel on youtube right now
Really well researched and entertaining history on a much overlooked subject. Thank you!
Outstanding! Great topic. Truly some amazing artistry throughout the decades ... I can't believe how intense those massive camera rigs were, and the amount of hours it must've taken to accomplish. One of my personal favorites is how they shot the opening title for John Carpenter's The Thing. It's just so cool. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to break this down.
I lol'd at the Wilhelm scream in the intro, stuck around to watch the whole thing because of that ;)
Wow! Changed my perspective on film titles... Thank you...
Thank you, great video. Please, though, remember that there was an opening to early movies, like a ceremonial: theatre lights go out, the curtain is raised, the audience contemplates the screen,...and then the film starts.This opening to any movie still exists, that pause of a few seconds, when we let our mind slip into another state. Priceless, no?
massive props for slipping Too Many Cooks in there, ya legend. great video
one episode and I think I am hooked...I was kind of hoping you would touch on how they have like 2 min now of logos before the movie and how they started working logos into title scenes....also I remember those westerns where it would be the credits over some painted scenery while an overture played.... you were awesome i learned a lot!
17:26 “I cannot understate how game changing digital has become for the title sequence designer.”
You mean overstate. It’s important and it cannot be overstated.
Loved this episode, and love those Saul Bass era title sequences with jazz scores.
Ok, just starting to watch the video with eager anticipation. Creative title sequences are (were) a great way to introduce the movie they preambled and are, sadly, becoming a thing of the past. I am writing this now as I hope Maurice Binder is mentioned. More later.....
Lots of directors feel like opening title sequences get in the way of "starting" a movie. Listened to a lot of director's commentaries that stated this from 90s and 2000s films.... but maybe the pendulum is moving the other way...
I agree. I mean Star Wars would not be the same with opening credits. But, the "artistic" opening seems to be a dying art -- glad, as you mention, the pendulum is swinging the other way. Keep these videos coming.
My sister and I always paid attention to the different names of the tech people and then tried to out-do each other when we sent letters to each other. For instance, I would give my address at the top of the envelope, but I would out Akim Tamiroff sending a letter to her address, but addressing it to Maria Ouspenskaya. Then, she would send something to my address, but for Van Nest Polglase (RKO art director) from Vera West (Universal costume designer). And on and on and on it went, sort of a tribute to Old Hollywood.
Had to give this a like just for that post credits scene! (Although I'm sure that's not the type of cat video people were looking for...Lmao!)
I always loved Saul Bass' opening to 'Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.'
You made me grin at the end there. Thanks John.
Great lecture, thanks for it.
awesome video. really inspired me to put focus on beginning and end title sequences
Im from brazil and ahve to say. Thank you!! Great info =) Great lessons!! Keept it Up! Plus if you comiple it all in a organized manner, id definetly buy a course made by you about film industry history. (Not only usa, but on other parts of the worl as well)
My father would have enjoyed this, he was a Director of Photography and film history buff, well done
WHO NEEDS FILM SCHOOL WHEN THEIR IS FILMMAKER IQ
There are a bunch of good channels that, combined, give you most of what you need.
One reason I can see for going to Film School would be access to gear and networking.
I'm an older guy (42) and have an idea (and a partially completed script) for a short film but I don't have the network to pull a crew together to shoot it ... also don't have the budget for it but even if I did I don't have a network of like minded people to pull from.
Going to Film School, I would have developed that network.
There is value in that.
Now for the type of video work I normally do, talking head corporate videos, simple music videos, interviews ... yes channels like, Filmmaker IQ, Film Riot, Curtis Judd, DSLR Video Shooter, rocket Jump Film school ... are great!
Lucky Luke Productions Now if we could get George Lucas doing this! LOL
For meeting people and access to equipment
HOO NEDES HI-SKÜL INGLISH WÉN ÉU HAV THEE INTERNET?
That was absolutely fascinating. Thanks for opening up a world that I never knew existed.
lol this videos only outranked by the cat sequence at the end...youre such a legend!
My favorite title sequence of all time: To Kill a Mockingbird, designed by Stephen Frankfurt.
Simple, beautiful close-up black and white footage of a child's playthings, with the names superimposed in white Helvetica.
Isn't that 'Mother will be pleased' line a joke about having clean underwear on? Well it made me laugh...
That was much, much more interesting that I was expecting! Many thanks! I'm off looking for more examples now.
Fantastic channel! Interesting+Entertaining+Informative - (That big rectangle in the corner of my lounge room, i.e. television, doesn't do that).
Really fantastic. Excellent work here, and the mere mention of Bass and Binder quickened my pulse in glorious anticipation of how they would relate to the narrative here.
This channel is great! Hope you're well, dude!
Great post, thanks. You might keep in mind that it’s a credit “crawl” not “scrawl”. Scrawl is something you do when you’re trying to write your name while drunk.
I might have been trying to say "scroll"
Post credit scene was in Soviet 1964 movie "Welcome, or no tresspassing" where boy is looking to camera and says with smile that movie is over.
In Soviet Russia - Movie watches you!
But seriously, that's not a post credit scene as that movie doesn't have end credits.
Nice, informative video. Enjoyed the little nod at the end, too.
Just discovered this channel. Loved the video.
Post by Mike Young
Directed by Mike Young
2017
No copying this ..or else....
One of my favorite early title sequences(although not *that* early) is Of Mice And Men (1939), where the credits appear on the sides of moving box cars!
Bravo! Great work as always Mr Hess ! The Cat scene at the end DID get me by suprise !
Thank you so much for posting/sharing this with us all !
SBF
Gosh you have NO idea how excited I get when I receive the notification!
Got scared when I realized I was almost halfway through the video without giving it a thumbs up. That was a close one.
Very well researched and delivered. Thanks.
I grew up going to movies in theaters, and at some point I joined the "stay til the end" crowd, just as a matter of preference. Getting the occasional bonus scene was cool, but not really the point. I wanted the full experience all the way to the end. And I definitely noticed, without knowing why, when they got longer and longer. And fewer and fewer of us stayed the whole way without the expectation of a good reason to.
Fascinating. I'm glad I watched this.
Chalk writing sounds were a nice touch
Fascinating stuff. Great end credits.
So many Uploads! I couldn't be more happy!
I like animated title sequences like "The Pink Panther" ones. That original title sequence was so popular it became a cartoon series. Funny thing is "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" had an animated title sequence the same year in 1963 by Saul Bass. I'm guess Saul Bass influenced "The Pink Panther" title sequence. He seemed to influenced everything design-wise.
Yes, as usual, excellent.
"It's over. Go watch a cat video." Greatest peace of advice I've ever received.
Finally, my RUclips deep dives have converged! I've watched all this stuff on Jack the Ripper - and John mentions Hitchcock's film "The Lodger," which is one of the Ripper movies! Ah, I've found a soft place to rest for a minute.
When "Star Wars: came out in 1977, it was distributed by 20th Century-Fox. In the 1950s, when Fox introduced CinemaScope, the studio had musical director Alfred Newman compose what was known as the "CinemaScope extension" after the logo. Later, when Fox dropped CinemaScope, it dropped the extension and went back to its previous fanfare. However, when Lucas signed with Fox to do "Star Wars" (After Universal, Disney and Columbia passed on the film), Lucas loved the old orchestration for the Fox fanfare as well as the extension. So, he had composer John Williams conduct the score accordingly.
In college I made a horror western film, so to get the mood right I had only a title sequence and no end credits. I like that layout, but I guess it only works because we had a cat and crew of 12 people.
+Darren D. MacDonald the original release of Apocalypse Now had no end credits (or beginning credits). The did hand out programs with credits, everybody seemed okay with that.
Ah, the days of the "prestige" release. I wonder if Nolan's Dunkirk got something similar?
Very informative. Thank you for this!
Well Shit... this is the last uploaded video... Watched all the others within a week, Now what to do go outside or something...? This channel had become my favourite channel in a heartbeat. Enjoyed all the videos and learned an awful lot from it. I can only say, keep it up!
I'm surprise you didn't talk about the late title cards, there are some movies that just start right away, then a minute or so later, you see the title sequence.
Can you make The History of the Sitcom? That maybe interesting.
Fascinating stuff, good work sir
Of course in the early 1900s may of the "film studios" were actually located on the east coast! For starters this was because electricity (for lighting) was only created in and around New York City and some areas in New Jersey becuase of the location of Edison's lab, and film itself was from Eastman Kodak, which was made and developed in Rochester New York! Charlie Chaplin did many of his films in and around Ithaca New York and the area in that town known now as "Steward Park" used to BE the film studio location! And back when they still did "serials" the bird sanctuary at the same park was used as Tarzan's jungle for the serials! The problem was that locations in the east (and there were many studios in the areas around New York, and New Jersey, was the weather! Even then the weather was brutal in the winter, and blistering in the summer, and that is why many studios finally ended up moving to California where the weather was a lot more "predictable" BUT many of the actors of the early 1900s came almost directly from Broadway acts, and that is why AT FIRST many movie studios were in the East as well too! And Hollywood wouldn't have really started had it NOT been for the developer that
wanted to start a house development named Hollywoodland (see Sidney H
Woodruff) in 1923 that ushered in a large migration of people to the
west coast expansion! Then the studios began to pack up and leave the
east coast for the west coast, but still that didn't stop a lot of
movies that were made on location in former "studio towns" like Ithaca
New York, either! In fact the Three Stooges films the movie The Three
Stooges meet Hercules on location in downtown Ithaca New York as well
for the opening and end sequences!
+Filmmaker IQ the first feature-length film was made in Australia and released in 1906 "The Story of the Kelly Gang." It was originally 70 mins long. It's a little-known fact that a feature-length film industry existed in Australia from this time independent of production in the US. 'Kelly' spawned the uniqucly Australian genere of the Bush ranger movie. Tragically the Victorian & New South Wales Police banned the making of such films and this genre disapeared. Virtually all of these films are lost bar a few such as "The Sentimental Bloke," which was the first film to have first person intertitles. Many of the films were shown in the UK, and that is where some surviving segments of 'Kelly' were found. Maybe you should make a video about this period?
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Nice. The whole Edison not wanting to credit the authors thing is almost exactly what happened 70 years later with videogames and Atari. History really does have a tendency to repeat itself.
Nice video as usual! I would like to see a video that describes and shows the technology behind the first intertitle up untill today. You mentioned 6 foot bars at 17:45, i would like to see a video that explains all that, more deeply!
Thanks! :-)
+Fritz see the thumbnail on this video for how I think Bass did Psycho ;)
Filmmaker IQ Nice, saw the thumbnail! So basically they moved one or more bars, took a picture, moved it a little more, took a picture again untill they were finished?
This is very interesting! More interesting than todays technology - i think.
The only reason you think it's more interesting than today's technology is you don't really understand today's technology :P
Moving bars is fairly primitive... how do you get a glorified adding machine to translate 0s and 1s into a graphical user interface, translating that code into a matrix of individual red green blue crystals in a polarized liquid crystal display?
I work with it every day but I don't really understand all of it either... but there's a lot more complexity today than there was in analog...
ruclips.net/video/Qx_AmlZxzVk/видео.html
Filmmaker IQ the ones and zeros are more familiar to me thouh i'm an computer engineer. The older stuff seems more complex and interesting to me! :-)
I'm not completely lost, just interested in the older stuff, because that is where it all began.
Was my assumption correct with the moving bars and picture taking? Otherwise it must have been done at a precise speed when a camera was recording.
Filmmaker IQ just because my name is Fritz does not make me a 150 year old man without knowledge about computers ;)
This channel is outstanding! I've learned so much by watching these videos... Thank you so much for the insights! *bows and claps hands*
Wow, great content as always!
On gaming one of our favorites Title Sequences is Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 3 opening, a real masterpiece which like most of Mr. Kojima work is a big homage to western films and film making, highly recommend a view if you haven't seen it yet!
And i can't wait to see what Kojima new project would shape up to be with a new IP and Guilhermo del Toro as partner!
When I talk about VR story telling, I always go back to the original Half Life "Title Sequence" - where you're riding that tram into Black Mesa. You're free to move the character and look anywhere but they're building up the story in the process of moving you to your starting position.
Yeah, I got to see it after I commented, and it still gives me the shivers, but I think I didn't specified it, i cited it because it is a traditional "movie" title screen with the unforgettable soundtrack, no gameplay, its really a homage to western spy and Bond movie intros.
*"Not just for honor, but for yooooooooouuu"*
Many fans still sing it today and it is even engraved into meme culture!
And as a proper game intro you are right on point with Half-Life, especially in the context of time, despite having Doom and Quake as legacy, FPS controls weren't popular at the time among the general public, Half-Life uses that train scene to introduce you to "mouse aiming" which was new at the time without overwhelming you with the arrow keys movement at the same time and it gives you exposition to the game world.
Cheers and best to the channel!
Another excellent video.
Great work.
There's some stop motion animation in "The Whole Dam Family and The Dam Dog" (1905) by Edwin S. Porter. Oh and I am pretty sure that Hitchcock's The Pleasure Garden was released a month or two before The Lodger.
I wish the Oscars still had a Title Design/Credits Design award.
14:12 Really? I was surprised about that fact about Empire Strikes Back. While I know George Lucas didn't direct it, I always thought he must have written it or at least a little bit, like that big spoiler ending.
Edit: Ok so iMDb credits Lucas as for writing the story but not the screenplay. I could see the legal battles happening but I could also see Lucas winning. After all, he wrote the story. Very interesting video, great job!
Any disputes would have been handled inside the Writers Guild - thing is Lucas wasn't disputing the who got writing credit. The issue was over opening credits themselves.
The story of the development of Empire Strikes Back is really interesting: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Empire_Strikes_Back#Development
+Filmmaker IQ That was very interesting! Thank you for sharing!
Interesting. I knew a lot about the chronology of title sequence evolution, but never consciously related it to specific changes in the industrial production process, copyrights, or the rise of trade unions and guilds. Just goes to show that you can never disentangle any "art" from the real-world production, financing and labor processes that surround it.
Excellent video. Thanks
As always, really enjoyed that one
My favorite title sequence still is the one from "Catch me if you can". I liked it the first time seeing the movie, but just thought it was really well made. Only upon the second time watching I realized that it probably is the biggest spoiler you could give the audience.
The cat vid was a cool bonus!!
Amazing channel. Just discovered it and love it!
One suggestion: the "chalk writing" noises are annoying and detract. They do not add. Please consider ditching it. These videos would work much better without those SFX.
Also, ditching that noise would even save you a little time in production.
excellent work as always!
This was a lot of work/production for such an underviewed video. Keep up the awesome work guys!
Great to see a new video. Loved the ending LOL
This is awesome. Great history teaching. Thank you.
You've got a new fan. Great job.
I just found your channel and Im in love already
This is great, thank you!
LOL! Whilhelm Scream as the camera falls over in the opening!
I wish you had said more about the movies that DON'T have opening titles. Close Encounters, Star Wars, etc. Also, when did they start to put an opening scene before the titles, and when did the titles start to go over the action of the opening scenes?
Great piece.
Not really a fan of cats, tbh, but you, Mr Hess, are growing on me. Lol
Very informative! That's exactly what I needed. Thanks!
Great video, and that cat vid was very cool.
ANOTHER GREAT VIDEO
Also: my idea for another lesson (maybe I missed it) - the insane placement or complete absence of the *movie score composers*. If you love a movie, it could be half your love for it. It's how I discovered Brandon Marsalis, Smetana, and Boccherini.
Great video! Very interesting.