Semiotics and Title Sequences: Text–Image Composites in Motion Graphics

✍ Scribed by Michael Betancourt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 145
• Series: Routledge Studies in Media Theory & Practice 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Title sequences are the most obvious place where photography and typography combine on-screen, yet they are also a commonly neglected part of film studies. Semiotics and Title Sequences presents the first theoretical model and historical consideration of how text and image combine to create meaning in title sequences for film and television, before extending its analysis to include subtitles, intertitles, and the narrative role for typography. Detailed close readings of classic films starting with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and including To Kill A Mockingbird, Dr. Strangelove, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, along with designs from television programs such as Magnum P.I., Castle, and Vikings present a critical assessment of title sequences as both an independent art form and an introduction to the film that follows.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
1
Theory and Design
Semiotics and Visual Form
Traditional Conceptions of Title Sequences
The Image–Animation Problem
2
The Figure–Ground Mode
Title Montages
Television Opener Montages
3
The Calligram Mode
The “Cut Scene” Montage
Documentary Realism
4
The Rebus Mode
Text as Graphic Transition
Text as Image
5
Subtitles and Calligrams
Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Typography
Diegetic Subtitles
6
The Importance of Theory
The Irrelevance of Productive Technologies
The Constraints of Narrative Function
Index