Pre-production is one of the mysterious things about filmmaking that few people outside the industry understand. It’s not really covered in “behind the scenes” clips and “making of” documentaries. We’re currently in full pre-production mode on “Love and War” so I thought I’d take a picture of some of the things I use. Hope this helps clear it up.

I’m seeing too many of my fellow students’ excellent short films marred by shitty titles. Coming from a graphic design background I’m easily distracted by this. It’s like seeing a beautiful face with a jagged scar across it.

I know a section on typography is outside the scope of our program, but titles are a part of the film. And given the amount of work that you put into the rest of your film, you can’t afford to let the titles be an afterthought. It really does detract from the “professional” appearance.

Let me give you some tips.

Fonts you must NEVER EVER USE:

Papyrus

I’ve seen this in a few titles already. And that’s ok… but it must never happen again. Papyrus is a horribly overused font. Ethnic restaurants for some reason are particularly susceptible. But I’ve also seen it used in high end salons and in people’s living rooms. Don’t bring your film down to this level. Don’t use Papyrus.

Comic Sans

This is probably the most universally reviled font in history. It is both technically and aesthetically atrocious. Never ever use it.

Curlz

This is another inexplicably overused font. Something about it reeks of desperation and an eagerness to appear fun and carefree and hip, like a high school counselor.

Fonts that are ok, but have better alternatives.

Arial

Arial was designed as a sans serif font for web text. It’s fine as such, but not really appropriate for other uses. Even if you plan to put your film on the web, it’s not the same thing. Your titles are already rendered in your video file; Arial was made to be rendered by a browser.

Instead, use: Helvetica

This is the font that Arial was based on. It’s the real thing, and it’s installed on most computers.

Times New Roman

Times New Roman is the default font in MS Word. Thus, it gets used a lot. Overused fonts are to be avoided.

Instead, use: Garamond

Garamond comes from the same historical period as TNR, but it’s much classier. If you want a serif font, use this one.

Zapfino

Zapfino is actually a pretty good font, the only trouble is it comes installed on every Mac, and therefore tends to get overused. It’s pretty and looks like handwriting and it’s everywhere.

Instead, use: Bickham Script

While handwriting-style fonts are generally to be avoided, Bickham Script is a less ubiquitous option. Even so, don’t use it unless you really know what you’re doing.

A few more nice ones

Futura

Wes Anderson loves this font. It’s been in every single one of his movies, most notably the book covers in “The Royal Tenenbaums”. For a sans serif, it’s a pretty lively typeface.

Trajan

Trajan is based on Roman stone-carved lettering. It’s good for giving titles an epic, historical feel. It’s been used a lot in movie posters and trailers, but I think it still has some mileage left. And it’s still better than papyrus.

In conclusion
This might all seem trivial. Sure, when you make it big, you’ll have a designer do it for you anyway. But then you’ll also have an art director and a DP and a production manager, etc. Take the time now, while you’re doing everything yourself, to craft quality titles for your films. It may just help you get to the point where you can pay someone else to worry about it.

While I’m ranting… Only the absolute minimum number of titles should be used. On feature films, the titles may crawl on for many minutes, but even that is the bare minimum required by contracts. It may be tempting to emulate that look but writing “Lautaro Gabriel Gonda presents a film by Lautaro Gabriel Gonda written and directed by Lautaro Gabriel Gonda” is just self-indulgent. Give credit where it’s due, but don’t overdo it. It looks amateurish.

Another thing, nobody is fooled by your fake production company. I don’t care if it has a clever name and you made a cool logo for it. If you don’t actually have a production company, don’t pretend that you do. It’s not adding credibility to your work, which should speak for itself.

So here’s a little graphic I made about screenplay structure.  This is based on what I’ve absorbed from books, classes, and writing my own.  I don’t take credit for any of the ideas presented here, I just thought It’d be fun to mash them all together in a graphical way.

This file is fully editable in Illustrator.

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