Title Research:Hostage

       I now decided to watch some films to see the conventions and usage of titles. There is no way of categorizing titles by genre so I chose the first one that looked like a thriller. The header for the film was black and red with the word hostage in bold letters, hinting to me it was a thriller. The clip has grand orchestral music playing. Titles were in bold letters in contrasting colors to stand out.This clip had a total of 36 titles throughout the opening sequence. I noticed it began with the creators, presented the actors, mentioned other roles and ended with the director. The names were shown long enough to read, but changed relatively quickly. The pacing and music made the film seem like a promising thriller. Titles were placed on guns, buildings, walls, steps, cars and other city things. The titles were edited with bold letters in contrasting colors. The overall contrast of the opening title sequence added an uneasy intensity to the film.
    What really stood out to me from this opening title sequence was the scenery. The opening scene was an animated montage of establishing images. The city establishing shots were prioritized to set a stage for the film. The clips were all black,white and red. The scenery included buildings, fences, jail cells, and barbed wires. The scenery also showed guns, streets, stairs, cars, and men, all animated in the three-tone scheme.These add a negative connotation to the film suggesting war or violence.  Although the scenery expects intense upbeat or hard-core music, an orchestral theme played. This added emotion to these intense opening images. Scenes were shown of men pointing guns and charging into buildings. The montage of buildings and city scenes created an establishing scene of the type of city that the film will occurring in while presenting titles. Although no characters or storyline are introduced, an outside view of the story. The producers used bright colors and contrast to engage the audience into the film. Technology definitely played a role in this intro with its animated realism as well as using 3D text to blend with the setting. The most interesting part in my opinion is the transition between the opening sequence and the beginning of the film. The animated image posed with a gun in hand, hand over head. The scene did a graphic match to an actor doing the same positioning. The combination of film, editing and animation all made the opening scene of the film Hostage interesting and exciting.