So it’s less about the sequence and more about your experience with the film overall?
Yeah, I can’t think of many great title sequences to movies that I dislike, so it’s as much about it being a good title sequence as it is about it being a movie that I enjoyed. That’s when they stand out.
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And that’s informed your own approach to titles, obviously.
Definitely. It’s an opportunity. The sequence for Se7en did very important non-narrative things; in the original script there was a title sequence that had Morgan Freeman buying a house out in the middle of nowhere and then travelling back on a train. He was making his way back to the unnamed city from the unnamed suburban sprawl, and that’s where the title was supposed to be — “insert title sequence here” — but we didn’t have the money to do that. We also lacked the feeling of John Doe, the villain, who just appeared 90 minutes into the movie. It was oddly problematic, you just needed a sense of what these guys were up against.
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I don’t believe in decorative titles — neato for the sake of being neato. I want to make sure you’re going to get some bang for your buck. Titles should be engaging in a character way, it has to help set the scene, and you can do that elaborately or you can do it minimally.
These quotes from an interview with filmaker David Fincher, on www.artofthetitle.com
outline many of the key points we made when explaining the purpose of an opening sequence. Particularly the following two:
"Titles should be engaging in a character way, it has to help set the scene, and you can do that elaborately or you can do it minimally." showing that as long as it does what it is trying to do well, the opening sequence can still be just as effective, or sometimes even more so, without fancy effects- but done simply.
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