Timeline of a Title Sequence and the Conventions of Title sequences

Timeline of a title sequence: Marathon Man (1976)

Research on the Marathon Man title sequence details how and when the Title appears along with other information such as the cast names and the directors names, a films title should appear near the start.

Here show the timeline of the film the Marathon Man and some screen garbs of the actual title sequence.

production company logo 0.04, production company name 0.16, director 0.22

cast names 0.45-0.56, title 1.05, co-starring 1.24

music composed and conducted by 1.29, edited by 1.31, production designer 1.34, associated 1.38, director of photography 1.41, screenplay 2.05, producers 2.08 and director 2.15.

The title sequence in the Marathon Man is conventional to the 'norm' of tile sequences. Most title sequences like the one for The Stepfather (2009) has the production companies and the distributors first, followed by the title and the cast names, costume, production designers, music and directors of photography last. Marathon Man is only slightly different to this as the cast names come before the title. This is done as the film includes some famous actors known around that time and putting the characters names before the actual title shows off the film before it starts to attract viewers, however this may represent struggle between 'who is the most important and who should be mentioned first'. After the title co-starring is then shown and additional features such as associated producer and screenplay are added to. Institutional information such as the production company and the directors names always appear twice in the ident and in the title sequence itself, in the Marathon Man the directors names shows at the beginning and the end of the title sequence. This is done to show how big and powerful they are. The font of the tile and the credits are all lower case and white and the title appears to run along the screen, on a slide from left to right.