Roll Credits

Good Evening,

Since last we spoke I put my name forward for the London Marathon.

It feels wild to me that running the London Marathon is even a possibility for me, let alone a thoroughly achievable thing that I also would have a year to get ready for. I started running in September 2021 because at the time I had just moved house to a really sheltered and arborous part of Leeds and decided I needed to get fit because my girlfriend at the time was much fitter than me. I felt a degree of embarrassment about my body, not necessarily about my weight because when I stopped drinking the pounds fell off me, but just about the lack of fitness I had. I was the sort of person that could get out of breathe playing darts. So I decided to start walking more, which turned into running, and after doing the Couch to 5k I just decided to listen to episodes of it twice to get to 10k. Then, on Mothers Day, I went to the canal and planned out a route just to see how far I can go in one stretch. I finished at 14.1 miles which was 6 miles more than I had ever run before.

The adrenaline didn't leave me for hours. I used it as a excuse to eat a sixteen inch pizza to myself and drink enough water to cause a tiny localised drought.

But anyway, recent excitement on social media about the Evil Dead Rise (2023) title card made me think about a subject that I enjoy talking about, and wrote a long post about in my Patreon days. I think Title Cards are great, anywhere in the world of the visual medium. I will mostly be talking about Film here, but anywhere there is a chance to announce yourself you should probably take it. I’ll likely do a follow up about books and comics in the next newsletter.

Credits where Credits Due

I stole this off Twitter

I am a big fan of the Evil Dead films, specifically the original, so I am happy to see people enjoying the new one. However the fact it has this superb title reveal really got my attention. After a brutal opener of horror violence a seeming possessed woman floats above a lake heading out towards the sunrise. The Evil Dead films rely on a juxtaposition of claustrophobia and agoraphobia; The sealed off cabin haunted by flesh twisting demonic forces and outside a woodland filled with evil that is incomparable as the tree themselves. This theme continues in Rise where we see the lake, a great open space and beyond the black woods, and beyond that rising in red text made of screaming faces comes the title. The Evil Dead isn’t just a title, its an antagonist, and as the score swells we see the controlling force behind the movie made manifest. It reminds me of the opening of The Shining (1980), where the Helicopter shots of the countryside stalk the Torrance family as they head out to the Overlook hotel, the evil spirits already at work, the man who has always been the caretaking heading towards his destiny as the funereal music plays.

Its an interesting proposition. Horror relies on tricking your body in some way into believing that what you’re seeing is real in order to illicit a reaction from you. So why have something that reminds you its not real?

All narrative media (and if you’re feeling fruity art in its entirety) exists to cause an emotional reaction in the observer. The active participant is the viewer, and whether a jump scare or an emotional epiphany there is something the artist aims to stir in them. Even movies that a more snobbish critic would say exist only for entertainment, like a Fast and the Furious film or a Transformers movie, are trying to make you believe in the illusion of the narrative to cause excitement in you. You have to believe there are stakes in order to trigger anticipation. Its probably my biggest problem with the movie The House That Jack Built (2018) directed by Lars Von Trier, that it soaks us in so much brutality, misery, and murder that it is hard not to realise you’re watching a fiction. You are no longer repulsed by the scenes of mutilation because you’re become aware its not real. Of course theres the argument thats the point Von Trier is trying to make, that we share the numbness the main character feels in relation to his murderings, but we will save that one for another time. So if the purpose of narrative media to make us forget we are watching a fiction, the title card is at direct odds with that. Its a reminder that this is a play for our amusement. Its the construction paper upon which the whole plot is drawn. So its interesting when that is used to sell the idea of the narrative and heighten investment, rather than shy away from it.

The House that Jack Built has a cool title card design which it drops on us immediately after the title character introduces the narrative to the unseen conversationalist he will relate the whole movie to before the final sequences unfold.

One of the most interesting films I have seen recently was the unnerving thriller Berberian Sound Studio (2012). In this, Peter Strickland’s second film, we are introduced to Gilderoy, a soft spoken English sound designer who has been flown out to Italy to create the audio for a giallo horror movie called The Equestrian Vortex. The movie, which we never actually see, has lots of screaming, a cackling goblin character, and heaps and heaps of stabbings brought to life by Gilderoy’s hacking apart of various root vegetables. He cuts up marrows in time to the actions on a hidden screen, making the foley that will bring the film film to life but for us, acts as out only connection to the fictitious work. Berberian Sound Studio is a fictional movie, within which we are introduced to a fictional movie. We have to believe not just in Gilderoy, but also in the fact the thing Gilderoy is seeing is twisting apart who he thinks he is. Toby Jones plays him incredibly well, and as a result you’re invested in this shy guy who writes letters home to his Mother and awaits her updates about the birds nesting in his shed. As the movie progresses his character changes, his relationship with reality alters, and the lines between the world of cinema and reality blur.

This theme is introduced immediately as the opening title sequence is not for Berberian Sound Studio but instead of The Equestrian Vortex.

The credits are a feat of graphic design. Its an instant love letter to the excessive, neon European horrors of the 60s and 70s. The shrill electronic music, red and black colour palette, and stop collage animation paints a convincing picture of a film that doesn’t exist. It gives credibility made up film because by definition an opening credits is a functional thing. It’s something with a basis in reality. It carries the weight of meaning with it. The opening credits start us off on the back foot, unsettling us, and as we do not know that this is the film within a film at the core of this narrative maybe even make the audience think they’re watching the wrong thing. As the Evil Dead ascending over the horizon is a promise of he horror to come, this is a promise of confusion and frustration.

It’s also completely useless as a title sequence. None of the actors featured in it are real, none of the staff named worked on the movie, and you aren’t seeing the Equestrian Vortex. The titles serve only to reinforce the subtext of the movie. It reminds me of the titles to Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (2007) which refers to itself as Thunder Bolt for a split second before defaulting to Death Proof referencing the fact Grind House movies used to be regularly repackaged and renamed as they travelled to different cinemas. The Death Proof titles also serve to remind us how much of a freak Quentin is for feet.

I think that the use of an opening credits sequence as a device of meta fiction is inspired. There is an episode of the tv series Fringe (2008-2013) that flashes back in time to the 80s to explore the events that lead to the nightmares the characters are facing in the present. This flash back extends to the opening titles that are made to look like a 1980s tv show, including taking some of the technology seen as futuristic in the past but not to the present and weaving that into a montage of supposedly impressive terms. Every part of a narrative is an opportunity to serve the narrative, even the functional elements. The 1937 film My Man Godfrey uses its opening credits to pan across a he casts names show up in neon lights before the cameras attention lands on an area of slum land, highlighting the movies key themes of social division in depression era America. Raging Bull (1980) foreshadows the main characters self sabotage with a lonely De Niro shadow boxing in a ring, fighting himself in total isolation.

One of my favourite examples of a really subtle way you can use a title card to inline the core tennant of a movie is the Paul Thomas Anderson film Inherent Vice (2014). Paul Thomas Anderson is a man who learnt the hard way about the importance of film titles, as his 1996 movie Hard Eight was renamed without his permission from the original title of Sydney. When he put together the intro to his next film, Boogie Nights (1997) the name of the movie is displayed on a huge display outside a theatre meaning that no one would be able to rename it without ruining the opening shots. But in Inherent Vice the title appears in large letters immediately after an interaction between the protagonist, Private Investigator Doc Sportello, and his ex-girlfriend who he is desperately still in love with despite trying to move on romantically. She sets up the whole plot, telling him she wants to hire him to find her new partner, a huge property developer called Mickey Wolfman. He escorts her to her car, she gets in, Vitamin C by Can starts playing and the words “Inherent Vice” show up on the screen.

A direct quote from the book and the film establishes what “Inherent Vice” means.

See what he did there?

It reminds me of the cards in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) which play throughout the film. After the title we get the announcement THE DAWN OF MAN, which precedes the scenes of Monkeys hitting shit with bones after interacting with a strange alien Monolith. Between this subtitle and the next have another Monolith on the moon, space stations, and choral music, then we have the title JUPITER MISSION. The implication of this is that the Dawn of Man has lasted from the beginning of humans using tools to the Jupiter Mission.

You can use a title card to bolster the subtext of your narrative. You can use the functional elements that you are required to have to your advantage, to enhance your story. I cannot stress enough that this is not just something you can do in films, and if anything this just just an introduction to the topic which I will spend another 1500 words on next time as I look into the relationship between titles and comics.

But before you go:

If you enjoyed this please tell people. Use whatever your social media outlet of choice is but tell someone because word of mouth is basically how this thing is going to grow.

Lots of love

Nick