Graphics & Titles

In terms of influences, our three key places of inspiration have been the openings to 'North by Northwest', BBC's 'Sherlock', and 'The Wrongs Mans', also a BBC production. A combination of the bold titling and placement of text that is found in 'North by Northwest' and 'The Wrong Mans' is perfectly representative of what we would ideally like to achieve, as is the striking use of London imagery and skyline that is used in the 'Sherlock' opening.

 

 The effects shown in the above video would be extremely difficult to achieve, although effective. Due to this it would probably be an idea for us to go with something more akin to 'Sherlock' in terms of text dynamism. Alternatively, we could keep the dramatic movement of the text, but lose the feeling of tracking or laying the text over the video. Our example titles shown below give an idea of the sort of thing that we could achieve with relatively little problem, but retaining the Film Noir style and dynamism that we would like to capture.

 

 In terms of font, we have two options for style. We could use a more classically Film Noir style font as found in most older Noir titlecards, my preference being 'Montgomery', a free font that is downloadable from the Internet, and that I used in the first example title sequence above. The other option is to go with a more modern typeface such as that used in the second example title sequence, and our three key influences. This could be effective as it makes the text bolder, especially if in white over the darker background that we intend to use.



CM