Opening Title sequences research: Aliens

This is the opening title sequence from Aliens (the 1979 Alien sequal), these titles start out just a black screen and all you can hear is a sound like wind blowing. Just this makes the film seem scary already. As the titles show up they are in a very simple white font that makes a big contrast on the black backround this makes you focus on where the names are on the screen and takes your focus off the backround. That is a very good technique that horror films do, they make you look somwhere when somthing else is happening or about to happen in another place on the screen. Then a very mysterious shape appears. It looks very futureistic and appears very softly first then gets clearer and clearer. As this happens there is a soft drum beat that sounds once. This is used to build suspense. And there is a gradual sound that is getting more intense and louder like the shape which is also getting bigger. All of these is used to build suspense. As this shape in the middle of the screen shifts and moves it slowly separates and forms into the letters that make up the word Aliens. The letters are in bright blue. The sound becomes more intesnse and the I in the title starts to open and as the camera goes through the opening in the screen the sound that has been getting bigger turns into a scream, the screen goes white and we are transported into space and the music slowly fades away. As we look into space the camera tilts downwards and we see an extreme long shot of a space ship. The ship is very mysterious and as it gets closer (if you saw the original Alien) we learn that this is the ship that the survivor escaped on. As the ship moves closer there are more credits and they are in the same white font that they were at the beggining.

The ship is now very close and the camera goes into a arial shot and dives into the ship through a window and as it goes in it dissolves so we are now inside the ship. The lighting of the ship is very dark and sinister. The camera starts to move then it is the end of the titles.

The viewer gets hooked on this because the beggining is so mysterious and that we want to know who or what is inside the ship floating in space.