Silent Film Intertitle vs Title Sequence
サイレント映画の字幕カード / タイトルシーケンス
Silent Film Intertitle comes from Film Technology and Title Sequence from Broadcast Design. One is technique and the other style. They are reached for with different intent, which is the fastest way to tell them apart.
Silent Film Intertitle
.jpg)
Dialogue and description were cut into the film as separate cards of type. This is where cinema and typography first met.
Title Sequence
%20movie%20logo.png)
A film's opening minutes designed as a work in their own right, with shape, type and music synchronized to state the theme before the story does. Saul Bass redefined the title as a prologue rather than a preview.
| Silent Film Intertitle | Title Sequence | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1900s–1920s | 1955– |
| Family | Film Technology | Broadcast Design |
| Kind | Technique | Style |
| Cues | Text cards on black / Ornamental frames / Hand lettering / Alternating rhythm with the action | Cut-paper shapes / Type synced to music / The theme compressed / Art independent of the feature |
| Best used for | Short films watched without sound that need dialogue on separate cards · Chapter breaks and advertising borrowing the manner of the silent era | Handing over a work's theme and temperature before the story starts · Redesigning the obligation of credits as a piece in its own right |
| Type | Different faces for speech and narration, trimmed to fit one card | One face only, entrances and exits designed to the musical beat |
| Composition | Center the text and keep even space on all four sides | Hand the names to the moving shapes, fix one reading position |
| Material | White out of black, with a faint film weave and gate flicker | Art built apart from the feature, few colors, one repeated motif |
| Caution | Cards that explain too much stop the flow every time they appear, and the film turns into something to be read rather than watched. | Decoration unrelated to the feature is not the form, since only the structure that summarizes the theme survives, and when moving the names becomes the point there is no time to read them. |