Dexter title sequence re-edit: Evaluation

1. Summarise the conventions of title sequences that were most important to this task.
Title sequences are important for crediting the people behind the scenes as well as on screen in a film, and can also be used to help establish the genre through using a certain font, colour or technique. They should add to the sequence rather than distract the viewer from what is happening, but can be the main feature of the sequence, depending on what kind of opening it is.

2. How did your group plan to edit the title sequence? (consider timings, industry requirements etc). 
The task was simple enough for us to complete it in the one lesson we were given, so there was no need to plan out how much time to spend on each aspect of the editing. We took it in turns to do one title each at a time, rotating round our group of three. We planned on having quite a few titles as lots are needed to credit the main people involved. At the beginning of the task, we thought we should have titles constantly on the screen over the shots, but after testing this by having one credit last for two shots, we decided it looked a bit strange and so decided to only have titles over shots that lasted long enough.

3. Explain the creative decisions made by your group.
Our group agreed that we wanted the titles to portray the genre, which in this case was crime/horror/thriller. We took some inspiration from the main 'Dexter' title card at the beginning, and decided to use a grungy font in a dark red, a colour which reflects the violence of the programme and ties in with the bloody images featured in the title shots. The actual footage was a very important part to this sequence and we didn't want to distract from it too much, so we decided that the best place for most titles would be the bottom or the corners of the screen. They were still visible, but it is obvious that they are not intended to be the main focus.

 4. How does your re-edit compare to the original?
Our edit fits the genre well and our ideas were creative, but I think that the original title sequence is more effective. The original uses different transitions for each title and a simpler font, which doesn't distract the eye as much as ours does, and the transitions we chose to use were all simple fade ins and fade outs, which aren't as creative or interesting. The original also contains more titles than our version due to time constraints, and I think this adds to its effectiveness as it is more informative, which is one of the main purposes of a title sequence. However, our titles are more continuous in size and placement and so flow better throughout the sequence.