The Art of the Title Sequence

This is the title sequence of 'Sherlock Holmes'. The font of the titles are in bold, capital letters which connotes a bigger, shocking picture. This makes the title seem serious and helps to relate the film to its original genre, in this case a thriller. For example, if the fonts were lower case letters in bubble writing, this would be more ideally suitable for a comedy or a romantic comedy. This will also help to attract a particular audience such as females, so by using bold letters, attracts mainly the male audience and it looks much more suspicious and puts emphasis on the words to make them really stand out. The titles appear on screen at different times and at different directions which looks more interesting. They also appear on different backgrounds instead of one plain simple background i.e pitch black so this helps the audience to see the actual images on the screen at the same time whilst reading the titles. The names of the casts are in larger fonts than their role, which makes them seem more important because they are the actual people who are involved in the film.

The title consists of the following information:

• the names of the actors/actresses
• the names of the individuals in the production team (screenplay/visual effects/ producers etc)
• production company (Silver Pictures)
• the title of the film (Sherlock Holmes)

There are many different images in each shot of the storyboard which all look suspicious. The images do not make it clear to the audience what it is, but this adds suspense as it leaves the audience thinking. The images are shown like clues and this makes the audience get more involved in the film and want to watch on further. There are many different images shown such as a pencil writing on paper, a bullet, a news paper article heading, a finger print, and blood. This all seems mysterious as though someone is planning to do something as there are many writings shown and the blood displayed on the paper connotes that there will be danger. There is even a time that is highlighted on the paper (02:28) which indicates that this is probably the time that the event is planned to happen. The titles do not appear on all the images so this allows the audience to see the images and not have to read all the titles as this can get a little boring. So by adding a few titles shows the importance of them and leaves the audience with the basic information and clues given from the images, getting the audience warmed up for the film.

The images on the title sequence shows a lot of close-up and extreme close- up shots of objects to emphasise them as well as make the audience see them better. However, this adds suspense as the audience cannot see the other things in a shot, so this makes them think of what else there can be lying around. There are extreme close-ups of the tip of a pencil and a bullet. Also close -ups of particular words on newspapers which indicate that these are the most important words that the producers want the audience to read.

This title sequence looked very vague and suspicious which is why it appealed to me so much. I thought the images and choice of shots i.e an extreme close-up of the tip of a pencil, really made the title seem interesting and unique as it focuses on the part of the pencil which displays the writing on paper. The fact that there are so many different images shown and the titles appear at different directions really make the title sequence packed full of clues but yet not giving anything away.