LH: Analysis of title sequence - Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010)

Order of titles

"A film by Martin Scorsese"

"Produced by Micke Medavoy, Arnold Messer"

"Screenplay by Laeta kalogridis"

"Based on the novel by Dennis Lahane"

"Director of photography Robert Richardson"

"Ben Kingsley"

"Leonardo DiCaprio"

"Mark Ruffalo"

"Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker"

"Music by Robbie Robertson"

"Shutter Island"

- Each of the Titles stays on screen for 4-6 seconds, enabling the audience to read and decipher the names of the cast and crew behind the film.

- The film title comes at the end of the sequence, this is because it is the biggest part of the titles.

-It begins with arguably the biggest name in the film "Martin Scorsese" as he is the director of the film, then continues with the bigger names from the crew including the producers through to the director of photography.

- After these it goes through the names of the three A list cast members, followed by the editor and the composer behind the music of the film.

-It is finished with the the film title all in capital letters taking up the whole screen to show its dominance and importance as the title of the film.

Typography

- The font does not vary at all throughout this title sequence, apart from the colour of the font changing from red to grey/white, there is no particular pattern behind this apart from the colour in the background behind the text.

- Due the boldness of the text and in some cases the colour it creates tension for the audience, especially in the instances where the text is of the red colouring as it promotes the themes of death and blood.

- The film title at the end of the opening credits, also creates tension in other ways through it moving slowly towards the audience. 

Relationship between text and visuals

- The combination between the darkly lit areas in which the opening sequence is shot and the bold red typography tension is created, alongside the eery minor key music promoting the genre of horror throughout the opening credits.

- The staircase is shown to be spiralling and spinning for the audience, this creates visceral affects of dizziness, this can put the audience under a sense of unease as it can delude the audience.

- The colour of the font in these scene can generally be linked with the background of the rest of the scene, the red colouring is shown to stand out portraying blood, whereas the white/grey colour gives and more ghostly effect, this generally merges with the background of the shot creating a black and white effect.

Own Production

In this background in which I have created, with a large amount of inspiration from the shots from the title of Shutter Island. I used the same colour scheme with red on black as it creates an image to the audience of a dark film promoting the genre of horror. The typography is particularly intense especially in the red colour scheme, the font gives the impression of blood with splatters of red drops surrounding the writing.