H.P - Analysis of Title Sequence: Alien (Scott, 1979)

Order of Titles and Durations

The 'Alien' title is slowly appearing line by line for the duration of the sequence, which itself is comprised of only one clip of the camera slowly panning past a planet in space.

Titles Featured are:

•  0:04-0:07 - "a Brandywine - Ronald Shusett production" (Production Company)
• 0:09-0:12 - "a Ridley Scott film" (Director)
• 0:18-0:21 - "Tom Skerritt" (Cast)
• 0:23-0:26 - "Sigourney Weaver" (Cast)
• 0:28-0:32 - "Veronica Cartwright" (Cast)
• 0:34-0:37 - "Harry Dean Stanton" (Cast)
• 0:39-0:43 - "John Hurt" (Cast)
• 0:45-0:48 - "Ian Holm" (Cast)
• 0:50-0:54 - "an Yaphet Kotto as Parker" (Cast)
• 0:56-1:00 - "music by Jerry Goldsmith/conducted by Lionel Newman/original music copyright 1979 Fox Fanfare Music Inc" (Music Composer and company)
• 1:03-1:07 - "executive producer Ronald Shusett" (Executive Producer)
• 1:10-1:14 - "screenplay by Dan O'Bannon/story by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett" (Screenplay/Writers)
• 1:18-1:22 - "produced by Gordon Carroll/David Giler/and/Walter Hill" (Producers)
• 1:25-1:29 - "directed by Ridley Scott" (Director)

Typography

•  The titles have a distinct blankness to them, being white and of a regular Ariel like font and only the names of people feature capital letters, the starts of the titles have no capital letters.
• This feeds into the sense of isolation and sci-fi theming in the opening sequence and the film as a whole
• All the titles appear in the centre of the frame, again suggesting an atmosphere of isolation and loneliness.
• Each title quickly fades in, stays for around 3 seconds, then fades out again.
• The background is a slowly tracking image of a planet in space, with the titles all overlaid on top of this. The titles do not give way to the background image, always appearing in the middle and over the background. 

The exception to all these traits is the 'Alien' film title. This is slowly appearing, one line segment at a time, from 0:13 (after the first two production credits) until the end of the sequence. This connotes the building of tension and the slow formation of danger which are very important themes and aspects of the film.

• The font of this title is bold and block-like, with every letter a capital. This is a complete contrast to the production credits, which suggests that the threat in the film is stronger and more violent than the protagonists. 
• The text is also white and overlaid on to the image of the planet, giving the same sci-fi theme as the credits.
• However this title spreads from one side of the frame to the other and is situated at the top of the frame. Also the letter spacing is large, all contributing to the same feeling that the 'Alien' is an overbearing presence in the film and a great threat.

 Text Relationship

• From this sequence I can see that it is important to match the text in a title sequence to the style of the visuals that accompany them.
• This creates a strong relationship between the text and visuals, solidifying the themes, style and genre of the piece. In the case of Alien the text and visuals create a theme of isolation, a bold and modern style and place the film in the sci-fi/horror genre.
• The slow, suspenseful building of the title is similar to the title sequence of  The Dead Zone (Cronenberg, 1983). Both films exhibit a tense and suspenseful atmosphere, with their titles sequences foreshadowing this.

How can this research help our production?

• While our theme is miles apart from the space set sci-fi of Alien, the construction of tension and speed of action will show distinct parallels to that of Alien.
• The main aspect that we can take from this analysis of titles is that our font and placement of titles must reflect the theme of the film.
• Even with very little visuals on the screen the titles do not overpower this sequence, which is a key point to take for our own opening titles.