The History

of

OPENING

CREDITS

In 1897, Thomas Edison used a black board to show the company name and who the copy

right belonged to.

This sparked an outburst in film makers marked the beginning of films with their names

At the beginning of the 20th century these title became hand written text boards which introduced the film name as well as the company who produced it. Later down the line they would add decoration to this to make it stand out

amongst the other opening credits although the main reason for inserting them was to make sure no contracts were violated.

With the development of sound within movie the titles also changed, to fit alongside the music and thus become more dramatic. Soon after,

in the late 30’s, came the insert of actors names into the sequence.

Towards the 40’s film titles maintained more of a gate keeping function for their films containing more and more names as actors’ agents required their

names to be inserted for publicity.

Soon after this television became popular, people would stay at home rather than go out to the cinema and so companies had to reinvent their movies to make them more interesting for an audience. Films became wide screen and colourisation was more widely used. Elaborate “mini movies” were created with the titles on to capture the audience’s attention. There was constant competition to create a better and more creative “mini movie” to place your credits

onto.

With the introduction of computer technology a new era of film openings began. In 1978, the first digitally generated title appeared in the movie “Superman” fascinated audience and boosted its viewings substantially as it was the first of its kind as before this it was seen as

physically impossible to interact in a movie in this way.During the early 80’s these computer based technologies become

widely available for designers which stimulated a surge in computer generated credits. This progressed through the 90’s as there was

constant competition to shock the audience digitally.

By the late 90’s it was extremely easy for designers and directors to visually portray their opening titles on the screen. This digital revolution enabled a flow of new techniques and

stiles combined with a few classic ones.

Most recently opening sequences have combined typography and space to create visually astounding pieces of films.

This is especially importantly as today with the aid of 3D animation in cinema the aim is to create the most interesting and visually pleasing opening sequence

to get the audience excited for the film.