Information about Opening Credits

Opening credits, in a television program, motion picture or videogame, are shown at the beginning of a show and list the most important members of the production. They are usually shown as text superimposed on a blank screen or static pictures, or sometimes on top of action in the show. Where opening credits are built into a separate sequence of their own, the correct term is title sequence (such as the familiar James Bond title sequences). Opening credits usually mention the major actors, guest stars, producers and director, as opposed to closing credits which lists the entire production crew. In television, the opening credits may be preceded by a cold open, or teaser, that helps to set the stage for the episode.

History

Up until the 1970s, closing credits for films usually listed only the major cast members or even simply just said "The End", requiring opening credits to contain more detail. For instance, the title sequence of the 1968 film Oliver! runs for about three-and-a-half minutes, and while not listing the complete cast, does list all of its technical credits at the beginning of the film. The only credit at film's end is a listing of most of the cast.

The opening credits for the 1968 western Will Penny ran for a full seven minutes into the film. The opening credits for the 1968 film Once Upon a Time in the West lasted for fourteen minutes.

The films of Satyajit Ray often show creative opening credits. His first film, Pather Panchali features completely hand-written opening credits. Further movies of his frequently show credits in some way thematically related to the film, for example, the credits of Kanchenjunga are written in a mock-Tibetan font.

The first sound film to begin without any opening credits, other than the display of the title and the credit "Color by Technicolor", was Walt Disney's Fantasia, released in 1940. The next film to begin with only a title credit was Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. This practice was extremely uncommon during that era.

In contrast, most Soviet films presented all film-related information in the opening credits, rather than in closing. Closing credits contains just "THE END OF THE FILM" (Russian: КОНЕЦ ФИЛЬМА) frame, nothing else. Partially, this was due to a difficulties in making of credits, drawn by hand they were just the sequence of frames which, if too long, could be tiresome for the audience. A typical opening credits starts with a filming company's caption (Mosfilm, Lenfilm, etc.), the film name, continues with a original cast members (one by one or a couple of names per a frame), concluding by the service cast (composer, artist, etc.) and the "Director of the Picture" (Russian: Директор картины), usually a nomenclature name rather than a real Film director (with practically unlimited power of censoring though).

Recent trends

In recent years, many major American motion pictures have done away with opening credits, with many films, such as Van Helsing, Batman Begins, The Mummy Returns and Teacher's Pet not even displaying the film title until the closing credits begin. George Lucas is credited (or blamed) with popularizing this with his Star Wars films which display only the film's title at the start. His decision to omit opening credits in his films (1977) and led him to resign from the Directors Guild of America. However, Hollywood had been releasing films without opening credits for many years before Lucas came along, most notably Citizen Kane and The Godfather. However, it was with the release of Lethal Weapon 2 in 1989 that the "title only" opening became an established form for summer blockbusters. Clint Eastwood has done away with opening credits (except for the title) in every film that he has directed since approximately 1982. Fahrenheit 451 uses spoken opening credits insted of written ones, to provide a taste of what life is like in a non-literate culture.

Credit only

With regard to television series, it is now an accepted practice to credit regular cast members for every episode of a season, even if they did not appear in each episode. For example, during the second season of Lost, the complete credited cast appeared in only two episodes out of twenty-three.

See also

• Closing credits
• Title sequence
• Billing (film)
• Production logo

External links

• Article: The Art of Retro Title Sequences
• Novelty Title Sequences in Classical Hollywood Cinema
• Original Doctor Who opening credits
• A collection of title sequences and interviews with designers