History Of Opening Sequences

In modern media texts such as film, television program's and video game's titles are presented at the 'opening' of the production, in which main cast and crew members are titled in, presenting the audience with these key members of the entire production of the media text each audience member is about to view/interact with. This convention of opening title sequences has been seen since the late 70's/early 80's, an example of such can be seen through this 80's title sequence to an American serial drama 'Dallas' in which main cast and only the most important leading members of crew are presented within the opening title sequence -

Almost as a standard these sequences are followed after the main of the media text with a closing title sequence, often refereed to as the 'ending credits'. These credits tend to list smaller actors and crew members with a smaller importance to the pieces production. The ending title sequences is often simply a list of the individuals names as the ending sequences tend to present a larger quantity of those involved in the production of the text. Again this convention of the ending title sequences has been presently developing since the late 70's/ early 80's such as the example shows here of the ending credits to the opening title sequence shown above -

However in films early days with regards to the beginning of film production such as the 'black and white films' and almost up until the 70's opening titles would present a much larger sequence of those involved in the production of the film some lasting around the time of three to four minutes. Within these sequences more crew members and less notable cast would have been listed, in some cases the entire cast and crew would have been presented at the opening as the entire cast and crew was a considerably smaller number than what it is today, leaving the ending to simply comprise of a single title such as 'The End' or 'Fin' etc. An example of such opening title sequences can be seen below from a film produced in 1944 in which viewing you will notice such titles which you'd now expect as standard in the ending title sequence, also it is key to compare this opening title sequence to the opening title sequence presented above with regards to content of titles per slide, notice in the opening titles below more cast and crew members are listed per slide where as the above more current opening title presents one member of cast or crew per slide -



The convention of title sequences as we known them today is believed to have developed with the quantity of films and similar media texts being produced, as well as the short 'shelf life' of films at the theatres in current times all production companies are more focused than arguably ever before in completely grabbing audience attention and want to focus on the media text being viewed and in order to do that a shorter opening title sequence is the answer, in more recent years it has also been seen that opening titles are presented within the starting of the action of the film/programme shortening the need for a separate opening title sequence. As a result audiences also can enjoy the inevitable of walking out of the cinema as the ending title sequences begins to roll, as a result those involved in the production of films and TV programmes alike have almost evolved into a craze to get their names onto the opening titles sequence in order to gain audience acknowledgement, resulting in vast amounts of issues and arguments to be had with those in charge of producing the opening titles sequences.