How to make a Thriller Title

One of the most important advertising tools for a film is the title, after all it is literally the name of the film. While you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, many still do, including myself if I'm being honest, so it is important to make sure that your title is something that interests your intended audience, grabs their attention, and makes them want to watch the movie while also not revealing too much, if anything, about the plot. Because of this I have decided to research how many popular thriller films that did well titled their movies, for instance, the style, font, color, meaning, etc. to see what specific elements of titling help to push a film to success. In this post I will be looking at the titles of Bird Box (2018), Get Out (2017),  and A Quiet Place (2018), three modern thriller films that have done exceptionally well since release.

Bird Box (2018)

  The first title I am going to look at is the title for Bird Box. The font looks very rigid and serious, conveying that it isn't a feel-good movie, but not necessarily a horror movie, as the text is not in a scary looking font. The title ends up being relevant to the movie as it is referring to the birds that alert them when danger is near, but the audience doesn't know that until watching the movie, and then after watching it makes sense to them. The color of the text is white, which doesn't seem to say much apart from the fact that it being such a basic color instead of anything fancy shows seriousness, however that is something minor to pick up on, and the main purpose of it seems to be to provide contrast with the dark background.

Get Out (2017)

    The next title I'm going to analyze is the title for Get Out, which has a very similar style of text as Bird Box, in the sense that it is plain white, and a very rigid and serious looking font again. This is to show the seriousness of the film, and the positioning of the letters underneath eachother makes us look elsewhere to see the title instead of reading in just a straight line, which could imply the fact that this movie is not a simple story and has many twists and turns (yes, this is a stretch but the positioning was something I noticed was done differently). Lastly, the relevance of this title to the film implies what the general idea of this movie is, which is that the character is trapped somewhere dangerous and needs to escape. This doesn't reveal anything specific to the story itself but it makes it easier for the viewers to know what kind of film they are going to see.

A Quiet Place (2018) 

  The last title I'm going to look at, A Quiet Place, seems a little bit different than the other two. To spot a clear difference, the word 'Quiet' is red, while 'A' and 'Place'  are white. This draws attention and emphasis on the word 'Quiet' which ties into the relevancy of the title to the film, as the whole premise of the story is that they have to stay quiet or else monsters will be attracted to them. Again, this gives a general idea to the audience that there is some reason that the setting of the story is a place that is quiet (obviously), but they won't understand why it is quiet until after watching, which seems to be a common trend of the titles of thriller movies. Also, the font again looks sharp and serious, another common thriller convention as they want to show the seriousness of the film. The positioning of the title is also important as it is put on the bottom to be moved out of the way of the picture of the woman covering her mouth, which further conveys the meaning of the story and shows that the reason for being quiet is probably extremely serious, as her scared look and tears suggest.

 Overall, there are a few common conventions that I have noticed while looking at thriller titles. For one, the font is always very serious and rigid, not being rounded or fun looking in the slightest, which is something they avoid because the movies are not feel good in nature and they do not want to mislead the audience. Font colors are also simple, usually being white, red or black to highlight the serious and creepy nature to the movie, and the relevance of the titles to the film is always loose, as it often very generally describes the premise or something of importance in the story, but the audience won't know exactly what it means until watching. This is helpful to me as a few days ago I decided to make a possible cover for our movie, Lucid Elucidations (shown below), and looking back at it the titling conventions are slightly off.

In making the title, the font I chose looks very wavy and rounded, with a pattern of purple and green for the lettering, which may look a bit more lighthearted than our film may be. However, there are no ideas set in stone yet, but if our title sequence is something involving a dream sequence, the title could potentially convey that. I am going to make a new one once our title sequence is fully completed, and I have taken note of titling conventions of thriller films and may make changes if necessary, for example, if we choose to follow conventions instead of challenging them, or if it has a correlation to the theme of the story.