Saul Bass Opening Title

Name of film: Vertigo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz46qS38OgM

The first thing you see when u watch the opening title vertigo by Saul Bass is a bold Title of the company behind the film, Vista Vision with smaller font underneath ( Motion Picture / high- fidelity) this let the view know the type of company behind the film. This is a form of advertising for the company, and is effective as the audience might have watched other films by the same company and projects their expectations onto the current film. This text then fades out and goes to the first real image of the title opening.  This image is of an extreme close-up of a young woman mouth it then pans to the center of her mouth and the music in the background climaxes as it starts to introduce people who have worked on the film while moving the camera around her face, the music then dies down and climaxes again each name that comes up in the title sequence. 

Once finished introducing people the camera is fixed on the young woman’s eyes and special effects are used to distort her pupil in a whirl pool effect along with the colour of the scene turning from black and white to a red/orange colour as the music continues to play. The music then climaxes again when the woman opens here eye in a shocked manner. This all combines to give a mysterious effect on the opening sequence and keeps the audience wanting to know more about the film, this also helps the audience know the genre of the film, thriller, mystery ect..

Once the audience now has an idea about the mood of the film the camera changes from the woman’s eye to the black background and start to introduce more people with some special effects in the background (spirals).  The spirals are used to keep the audience interested as the opening title introduces more people. On the last name introduced the camera fades back the young woman’s eye which then quickly fades.

My overall opinion of the opening title sequence is that they very catching as they ease the audience into the genre and create a mild interest of the film before it even starts, this is possible they became so popular and are used in nearly all modern day films.