Titles & Credits

The titles and credits are a very important part of every movie. It lets the audience know the ascociated actors/actresses or directors/producers and lets them know what to expect. The titles and credits of a movie can put across the genre if a movie without revealing too much. This can be done by using different colours, fonts and music that relate to certain genres of media products and all of these features can help an audience member to easily recogonise the overall genre, as well as any sub-genres.

Grown Ups: Title Sequence Analysis

Grown Ups is all about a group of friends that were a basketball team as kids meeting up in their later lives. The reason for the meet up is their old team coach has passed away, and they all go and stay at a cabin they stayed at when they were in the team. The opening titles of this movie lead onto the rest of the film very well. The titles show up next to every character over a video of the team in a completion final, in which they win (shown below).

In the movie, we see the younger version of the characters before seeing the main actors playing the older versions. Even though we haven’t seen the main actors yet, we know who every kid will be played by as during the match the video pauses for a split second after every character makes a signature move or says a line that sums them up. For example, when number 15 is said to have ‘double dribbled’ during the game, he turns round and confronts the referee by saying “Why? Cause I’m black?!”, the video then pauses in his face and the actors name, Chris Rock, pops up next to him in a simple white font. This happens for every character and clearly shows the characters personality. Also, if you know the actor from previous work, you would probably see the resemblance in the younger characters appearance. The routine in which the team use to win the final game is then mimicked later on in the movie when the team is older and they are challenged to a rematch by the team they previously won against.

Other than the actors names that pop up next to the characters in the opening scene, other information such as the production company (Happy Madison Productions) show up at points during the game randomly. Some Adam Sandler fans might see the production company and automatically relate the characters to previous movies under the production company’s name. This is because the company uses a range of reoccurring actors and actresses throughout its movies as Adam Sandler is the founder of the company.

I think that the colours and mood of the opening titles introduce the genre very well. The colours are fairly bright to reflect the happiness of the team and crowd when the game is won and this works very well as the bright orange uniform reinforces this. Simple body language and facial expressions help with getting the comedy aspect across as all the characters are happy, with the exception of the losing team. This slightly puts across the message that the winners are the good guys and the losers are enemies and this all relates to the late scenes in the movie when the two teams meet in later life and have a rematch.

Overall, this title sequence opens the movie very well and introduces the characters by relating to the genre and creates a happy mood for the viewer by using the comedy aspect with the young children using adult humour.

                                                                                                                               


I used the Grown Ups opening titles for my analysis (above) as I think that it clearly and simply puts across the genre to the audience. It does this by using colours and dialougue and I think that these are the two main ways of doing so, therefore I think that these two aspects make up genre.

The titles and credits for Grown Ups are very simple however, when mixed with the opening sequence (video) they make a good mixture and really show the mood.