Thriller Titles Research

The purpose of titles in films or credits is to inform the audience as to what may happen in the film, however they may be more ambiguous and only hint to some of the themes in the film. The titles sequence in thrillers and films in general are usually accompanied by text specifying who helped make the film, who directed it and who starred in it. Another aim of a title sequence is to entice the audience and interest them in the film before it even begins as to sort of invest them into whats going to happen. The titles also tend to use similar colours and themes that the film will feature as to link it to the film and give a sense of continuity to it all. Thriller generally focus on the mystery of the whole narrative and usually begin to build upon this within the title sequence. One example can be seen in Fight Club, while the film is not directly a thriller it has hints of the genre within it as it creates mystery from its titles. A hard rock style music is accompanied by brain neurons that the camera tracks through, the name of the films is shown, and all of the cast and crew that helped create the film. The sequence ends by coming out of the brain and is revealed to be the main protagonists that the camera was panning through. Having done this it links directly to the film as it transitions straight into it with a gun to the characters head that builds upon the mystery.  The main focus in this sequence is the text rather than the background imagery as the imagery doesn't really link to the film mcuh if you haven't already seen it.


A comparison to this would be the thriller film Black Swan. The title sequence in this takes on a more hand drawn style and features much of the iconography and themes from within the film as it used a similar colour palette and has the theme of swans throughout the sequence. This is accompanied by orchestral music with the cast and crew text coming up in the bottom right corner. For this title sequence the aim is more on the imagery in the background rather than the text as it gives hints to the audience what the film is going to be about.


Thriller title sequences can span across many different styles and themes as it is a very large genre but they play a large role into giving the audience hints into what is going to be in the film while also notfying the audience who helped create the film and what actors are cast in it.