Explore great title sequences and learn how to create your own.

Opening credits have to convey key information like the production company, the title of the film or video, director, cinematographer, lead actors, and others, but the best title sequences creatively capture the essence of the project. Consider the following elements as you begin to brainstorm.

The first decision a title designer has to make is whether to create a sequence driven by graphics or by live action footage. If you choose live footage, do you include clips from the main action? The TV show Parks and Recreation takes the live action approach to an extreme, introducing characters and setting with quick clips that play simultaneously in different parts of the frame alongside stock video of parks and nature.

Another option is to use B-roll footage that sets the scene without giving much away. The Walking Dead doesn’t reveal any characters or main action, but the empty streets, scenes of ruin, and a freeway jammed with abandoned cars leaving the city prepare the viewer for a zombie apocalypse. 

Think about the platform, genre, and length of the work. A DIY web series with ten-minute episodes should have a very short main title sequence, while feature films or dramatic TV shows can devote more time to their opening credits. Shows that stream on platforms like Netflix can go totally wild with their intros because people have the option to skip them.

“Generally, a title sequence shouldn’t be longer than two minutes,” says editor and producer Yazmon Ector. “You want to grab attention, but you don’t want the title sequence to draw too much attention away from the actual story.”

A good opening credit sequence matches the tone and production design of the project. Fast-moving animation and an up-tempo theme song may work perfectly for a thriller or adventure film, but they might  give a viewer the wrong impression if they introduced an existential drama about a man searching for his stolen bicycle.

In the David Fincher film Se7en (1995), title designer Kyle Cooper built a perfectly horrific opening with tight shots of hands and the villain’s obsessively constructed notebooks. Under ominous, industrial music, the opening credits flash with glitchy video effects, between quick live-action cuts of dirty fingers holding a razor blade, then bandaged fingers handling strange photos and pages full of dense writing or redacted text. The viewer senses that bad things are about to happen, and the film maintains that dark tone and delivers on its promise.

Along with the imagery, the background music establishes a mood and generates emotion. The animated title sequence for Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me if You Can (2002) begins with a cool, jazzy song that perfectly sets up the 1960s-era cat-and-mouse game between a con artist and an FBI agent, which plays out in the titles and the film that follows.

Danny Elfman’s score for Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988) is another classic. The titles begin with high, trilling notes and the first lines of Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat (Day-O)” before the main title card appears. Then the whole orchestra launches into a zany romp while the camera pans over a rural New England town. Energetic horns, strings, and drums accompany the camera as it flies out of town and the landscape morphs into a 3D model of a house. The music fades out just as a seemingly giant spider climbs over the roof, setting up the spooky, funny action to come.

Animation is a great way to pull viewers in while you show the credits, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. In the title sequence for the classic Alfred Hitchcock film North by Northwest (1959), graphic designer Saul Bass creates intersecting lines that spread across the frame. Steeply angled titles drop in from above or rise from below before the main title floats up from the bottom of the frame. The lines then cross dissolve into the windows of an office building reflecting the lights of city traffic.

Maurice Binder, the title designer behind several James Bond movies, used more complicated animation for Dr. No (1962). Influenced by modernist art, Binder employed colorful circles and squares in motion, moving across the frame, stacking and flashing in time with the theme song. Then colorful silhouettes of women dancing to drums  give viewers a sense of the festive island setting for this spy adventure.

The title sequence for Crazy Rich Asians (2018) is a perfect example of more recent creative use of motion graphics. In time with joyful music, gemstones, butterflies, bracelets, lotus flowers, and synchronized swimmers dance in circles and swirling rows behind the opening credits. “The music is great, but it’s also the assets and how they respond to the music in interesting patterns that pull you in for the ride,” Ector says. 

Whether you juxtapose hand-drawn lettering with a standard font like in Se7en or lengthen the letters so they become elements in the animated illustrations, like in Catch Me if You Can, you can have a lot of fun with fonts in title sequences.

If your budget is limited, you can create a memorable title sequence using typography only. For inspiration, look at the titles for Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void (2019), which set strobing typography to a song that sounds like a dying truck engine. Multiple typefaces in several colors and three languages (French, English, and Japanese) flash quickly on screen and off, preparing the viewer for a film that will shock and confuse them as it follows a Tokyo drug dealer’s life after death.