Amanda Hughes Loves Art of the Title Sequence

By Venus Zine Staff
Published: October 29th, 2010 | 3:25pm

I’ll always remember the first time I saw John Carpenter’s Halloween. I was 11 years old, it was Halloween week, and I was enjoying a rare lack of parental supervision. I decided to celebrate my newfound freedom by scaring the pants off myself surfing through the glut of horror movies on basic cable. Gory special effects and doomed, doe-eyed heroines flickered onscreen as I clicked through channels until one image caught my eye: a solitary jack o’lantern glowing in the dark, deliciously dated 1970s titles fading in and out, that relentless piano theme building frantically as the screen filled with the pumpkin’s crudely carved face, until only one blazing, irregular eye was in frame. I was hooked.

The power of a great title sequence is hard to underestimate. Too often opening credits are phoned-in—how many romantic comedies begin with a bubbly heroine smiling through the day, on her way to a meet-cute? Done properly, though, a good title sequence can snare the your attention and hold it for the entire film, and a quality TV show intro can take on new, nuanced meaning once you’ve gotten to know the characters.

So, who’s responsible for your favorite title sequences? The show’s creators? A film’s director? Not always. Opening credits are a film making business all their own, with producers, directors, and editors. But you don’t see or hear about these people on TV, which is why I absolutely love The Art of the Title Sequence—hands-down the most addictive site I’ve found in months.

The site profiles all kinds of title sequences from film and TV, giving an in-depth look at their development, creation, and editing. Often you’ll find early, rough-draft versions of your favorite opening credits (like this one from Dexter). Even better, the entire creative team behind each title is credited, and it’s fun to see which opening sequences share common creators—Dexter and True Blood, for example, were both produced by the geniuses at Digital Kitchen.

There’s no discrimination by genre at The Art of the Title Sequence; if an opening is good, it gets the full treatment. I was so excited to find Adventure Time’s hipster titles (by far, the best cartoon show intro since Duck Tales. Woo-o!) right alongside the gorgeous—and unmistakably adult—Deadwood opening sequence.

New posts go up surprisingly often, so check in frequently. And folks at The Art of the Title Sequence, if you’re reading: Do Twin Peaks next!

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Amanda Hughes is Venus Zine’s online fashion editor.