What makes a good title sequence according to Kyle Cooper?

  What makes a good title sequence according to Kyle Cooper?

Kyle Cooper is a famous designer of film title sequences, who is often credited to revolutionising the way film openings are presented. He is the creator of the film openings for ‘Spiderman’, the ‘Iron Man’ series, as well as the movie ‘Seven’. Cooper believes that a good title sequences are made up of three different factors.

Firstly, a good film opening must set an expectation for the target audience, meaning that the first few minutes of a movie should captivate the audience, so much so that they expect the entire movie to be as good as the beginning.

Secondly, it should also flow seamlessly into the movie, suggesting that a good title sequence would introduce the main characters and setting so when the main storyline begins, the target audience is already familiar with the content of the film.

Lastly, a good film opening should also contain appropriate fonts that ‘tell a story’ and are thoughtfully put together to add to the plot, perhaps providing hints for the audience to work out something about a character or the storyline itself.  For example, in the film ‘Seven’ the font is integrated with the image and it’s handwritten to portray the antagonist’s psychopathic behaviour and characteristics.

In an interview, Kyle Cooper mentioned liking the title sequences of the films ‘Dead Zone’ and ‘To kill a Mocking Bird’. He said he appreciated the opening of ‘Dead Zone’ due to its simplicity as there is no advanced techniques used and its quiet basic, but it still manages to set the tone throughout the movie due to the creative use of sound, which maintains the viewer’s interest.  Cooper also found the opening of the movie ‘To kill a Mocking Bird’ interesting mainly because it contains a back story to the movie, not only that it contains the main character’s obsession but according to Cooper the sequence was timed beautifully. In addition, the typography was also integrated which added to the tone of the movie and he described the “horizontal line” as “contrasting with the marbles.”

By the phrase “story based title sequence”, Cooper means that the film opening should also contain a specific back story as well as a metaphor to make the movie more interesting and ‘real’. Moreover, title sequences need to be perfected as much as possible as they give the audience a first impression of your movie, however Cooper says that there are a few problems with test screenings. Firstly, the smaller companies may not have enough funds to change anything in the sequence or the audience may not understand the film opening, in which case the title sequence could be incorporated in the actual movie.

The title sequence becomes important for the studio as they can include information they have previously left out, to save time and to establish a prologue for the movie, therefore title sequences are significant in a movie.

Cooper also mentioned that the film opening of the ‘Dawn of the Dead’ tries to suggest that everyone in the movie “went nuts”, providing the audience with a major detail of the plot. It also foreshadows a dark, horrible ending to the movie.

Overall, Cooper suggests that title sequences are extremely important. This is because they can ‘make or break’ a movie as well as making sure that it suspends the audience’s disbelief before the film actually starts to provide a tone for the film.