#12 Title Analysis

 This takes me back to freshman year...when my class was tasked with annotating a short story, so obviously my mind   went to the first paragraph, but when my teacher began going over our annotations, guess where she started: the TITLE. I initially though it was a waste of time to spend more than 15 minutes analyzing a title, but fast forward to now, they are more important than ever.

 

Why titles are important...

So why? The title is the first thing that catches an audience's/reader's eye, and what describes a story, without describing a whole story... It not only sets the tone for the media text but also reflects the style in which the director/author has when it comes to storytelling. 

A title can be a character's name such as Harry Potter or the Sherlock Holmes. Or it can be an important object such as The Notebook or The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. These are more straightforward in meaning, whereas some titles take more time to understand, such as John Dies at the End. This movie gives a presumed spoiler at the end, although seeming like a straightforward movie, it follows a non-linear narrative while distorting time and reality. So instead of John dying at the end, he dies in the middle. The title drew audiences in and had them expecting a certain plot, yet the moviemakers delivered a different one. So, titles can be used in various of ways.

short and sweet? 

Not the Sabrina Carpenter album (although that is smart marketing because when you see those two words, you instantly think of her), but is something most films/shows/books stick to, so people remember those pieces easily. Such as Avengers or Squid Game or Gladiator or Flight Risk. Normally, with longer titles --or longer anything because people's attention span has been seriously depleting-- it is more difficult to connect with an audience.

Some more disadvantages of having a long title: they sound "generic" or "unappealing", and the audience will simply skim through it, most likely remembering the first and last word (most like just the first and be like: "do you know that movie The Rise of the blah blah blah, like elves or something"). With the impact of the digital age, like I mentioned before, the overall attention span of humans is decreasing to SECONDS (for example, at this point as writing this blog, I at least picked up my phone 3 times). To reach an AUDIENCE, certain choices must be done, like shortening a title, using certain songs, edit in a way that keeps the audience intrigued for longer.  

What is my title? 

For my film intro, I have a couple ideas on the title...To keep them short n' sweet here they are:

1.Is it Love?

2.Unrequited.

3.She and He.

4.It's a Game Of?

5.So Close yet So Far.

Again, these are simply ideas [that I came up with on the spot], they can change as soon as I post this blog, or after I film, or even days before the submission date. Depending on a title, it can alter a storyline, bring in/turn away audiences or it can have no meaning to a story (because Hollywood can do what it wants, I guess). Catch my blog next time when I post on the complications of editing.