The lost art of the credit sequence

[Ian]

"Anything can happen in the next half hour!" There was a time when such a boast would be accompanied by a cascade of swift edits and well crafted graphics, along with a dynamic ear-worm of a theme tune to set the pulse racing. These days, when audiences have an attention span of micro-seconds, the credit sequence seems to have become a thing of the past. For me, the glory days of the credit sequence was surely the 1960s-1970s, with such shows as "The Avengers" "Department S" "Survivors" (depicting the end of the world in two minutes) and "The Sweeney". But the king of the credit sequence was surely Gerry Anderson. Not only did Thunderbirds (the proper version, not the dismal re-make) have the greatest theme tune of all time, courtesy of Barry Gray, it also had the best credit sequence, with honourable mentions to UFO, Space:1999 and Stingray ("Stand-by for action!") Any favourites you recall?

 

[JunkMonkey]

I hated them. I didn't want to know ANYTHING about the episode I was about to watch until the events in it unfolded at their own pace. When Daughter #2 and I watched Battlestar Galactica we learned pretty quickly when to shut our eyes and miss the frantic spoilers.

Even worse is the more modern habit of showing you half of next week's episode before the end credits start rolling. Doctor Who I'm looking at you. Took all the anticipation and mystery out of the show and was a major contribution to me giving up on it.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I don't remember the Avengers having an 'In this episode' montage. I'm pretty sure it just had a pre-credit teaser.

 

[Dave]

I know this isn't quite what you asked for, but I'll nominate the Adam West Batman two-part stories anyway. They had the best teasers for the next episode ever. When repeated as one-hour-long episodes they were never the same.

Like @JunkMonkey I don't like being spoiled before the episode I'm just about to watch, and I really dislike knowing too much about the next episode. If I can then I'll quickly turn it off. What is worst of all though, is a comedy film where the three best jokes in the entire film make it into the film trailer. You are lead to believe that this is the funniest film ever made, when in actual fact, you have no further reasons to watch it at all.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I think I've misread your intention, @Ian - you weren't necessarily talking about the montage of clips from 'this week's episode' at the start but rather the whole opening credit sequence.

I don't think their demise has anything to do with shortening attention spans; it has to do with the way people watch TV these days. When TV was scheduled broadcast only, and there was no guarantee that the program would be repeated, the credit sequence and opening theme were there to give notice that the show was about to begin.

"Hurry up! It's about to start!"

These days, when everything is on demand, or available on replay, or on disc or even - for Luddites like me - on tape, there is no real need for them. The TV waits for us to be ready and press [play], and technological advances have made it easier and cheaper to run credits under an opening sequence than it used to be.

And if swishy credit sequences are there it's easy to fast forward through them - something which would impossible back in the 60s and 70s - before the VHS made even the concept of skipping forward or rewinding TV possible.

 

[Pyan]

Top Gear did it best. The first programme of each new series would have a 3-5 minute montage of highlights from the upcoming episodes, but that was all you got. Each new episode would just have the main theme and music, followed by a silly 5 second clip for each presenter, which gave nothing away about the actual piece they were from.
You'd get something like "In this week's show: Jeremy wears a hat... James points at a tree...and Richard sees a llama."*


*Except, using this example, you'd obviously know that the show would somewhere include a hat, a tree, and a llama...

 

[Pyan]

And if swishy credit sequences are there it's easy to fast forward through them - something which would impossible back in the 60s and 70s - before the VHS made even the concept of skipping forward or rewinding TV possible.

And,of course all the streaming services these days seem to have a single button push *Skip Intro* function built in.

 

[Dave]

If we are merely discussing the quality of the opening title sequences then I don't see a huge difference from today to yesterday across the board. Individually, some are not so good, but isn't that always so?. Yes, you can skip the intro now if you wish, but I like to watch/listen to some of them - What We Do In the Shadows? or Peaky Blinders - come to mind. I think it is much more a question of the budget available. If you have a shoestring budget then you would cut out the unnecessary - Actors wages versus music score and animated graphics. They say that you can tell a great film by the opening title sequence because it shows the amount of time it spent in post-production. If they ran out of money, it went immediately to the cinema screen with poor editing and cheap titles. If it was edited until perfect, and they took time on the choice of the music, and designed animated credits, then it was much better loved and probably also had better scriptwriting, directing and shooting locations.

 

[CupofJoe]

I can live with or without the credits but I do miss the credit songs.
Wonderfalls, Veronica Mars, Buffy, Angel, Charmed, even Friends* all had great theme songs.
for me The Ballard of Serenity from Firefly is a great song in its own right.
Now if you are lucky you get a 10 second ringtone.
* I think I am showing my age here.

 

[Dave]

Thinking more on this, wasn't the opening credits to The Prisoner the best of all - the whole story, music, car and style?

Thinking even more - someone on X posted about "why we don't have any good situation comedies like in the '70's and '80's?" I think we sometimes have a very selective memory. There were plenty of bad credit sequences and situation comedies in the past. We just remember the best of them and forget those that were bad. Only the best are repeated.

 

[ReTech]

The term for that: "80's Mid Movie Montage". They all suffered from the malady. It was a cheap way to pay writers. Since action sequences do not get billed by writers there are no residuals. Vs. paying (essentially) per word and then the residuals for that in lost future revenue. The Mid Movie Montage was designed to reduce the film by 20+ minutes (run time also has a revenue cost) and not have to create a script for that reduced time.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Thinking more on this, wasn't the opening credits to The Prisoner the best of all - the whole story, music, car and style?

Thinking even more - someone on X posted about "why we don't have any good situation comedies like in the '70's and '80's?" I think we sometimes have a very selective memory. There were plenty of bad credit sequences and situation comedies in the past. We just remember the best of them and forget those that were bad. Only the best are repeated.

Sturgeon's Law comes to mind.

 

[Swank]

This is the single best title sequence I've ever seen, and it is recent:

 

[KGeo777]

It's the lack of enthusiasm.
It is very hard to be enthusiastic--both as a creator or an audience member.
It would be funny to take a show like Nurse Ratchet and make a 60s-70s style intro for it.

The lack of quality musical scores is probably the most telling sign.

What comes close to a great intro like...

 

[paranoid marvin]

Red Dwarf was always worth watching for Norman Lovett/Holly's intro.

I also enjoyed the abstract images/scenes shown at the beginning of episodes of Breaking Bad, which could sometimes take several episodes to resolve.

As mentioned The Prisoner had a very stylish 60s intro which explained how Number 6 ended up in the Village.

There used to be some great music/graphical intros to tv programmes, and that often doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Shows like X Files, Sapphire & Steel, Blakes 7, Star Trek, Monkey Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes and really set the scene and got you in the right mood for the programme to come.

These days with people able to skip/fast forward through openings, they may potentially inly ever watch them once, so hardly worth bothering spending the time and money on them.

What really annoys me though are two things. Firstly the habit of starting programmes with the first five minutes telling you all about the programme you are about to watch. Secondly the squeezing of credits and voiceover at the end of programmes telling you what's on next. This spoils some really cool closing credits of older programmes. But I guess is a necessary evil in today's channel hopping society.

 

[Pyan]

What really annoys me though are two things. Firstly the habit of starting programmes with the first five minutes telling you all about the programme you are about to watch. Secondly the squeezing of credits and voiceover at the end of programmes telling you what's on next. This spoils some really cool closing credits of older programmes. But I guess is a necessary evil in today's channel hopping society.

This. I always feel that the squeezing of the closing credits to be disrespectful to the people involved in that programme.

One of the most evocative opening themes, IMHO, was the David Suchet Poirot series - summed up the 20's/30's both musically and visually, especially the Deco Battersea Power Station/ocean liner/streamlined train/early aeroplane sequence.

 

[Danny McG]

The ultimate in action opening credits:-

 

[Toby Frost]

The Jeeves and Wooster opening credits are a thing of art.

I think good credits prime you for what's to come: not by telling you outright but by setting a scene and mood. I was once told that the opening titles for the remake of Dawn of the Dead, which I think are the best bit of the whole film, would have been made by a different director to the rest of the film. I'm not sure if that's true with most films.

 

[Ian]

The ultimate in action opening credits:-

Ooooh - thanks for that! Other favourites are the Kid's TV show "Magpie" with the groovy Spencer-Davis song and of course, "Tomorrow's World" with the immortal Johnny Dankworth jazz tune. Mind you, I daresay anyone born after 1980 is wondering what on earth all this waffle is about.

 

[Orcadian]

...
Even worse is the more modern habit of showing you half of next week's episode before the end credits start rolling. Doctor Who I'm looking at you. Took all the anticipation and mystery out of the show and was a major contribution to me giving up on it.

And EVEN WORSE is the replacement of the end credits by teasers for the next episode, or adverts for other stuff they want you to watch. I ALWAYS want to see the cast, including any guests, plus where it was filmed and when. And, As @Pyan says, to remove or obscure them is disrespectful to everyone involved. The clue is in the name.