Title cards

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi!

I hope that I don’t repeat myself, but I have not found a similar thread…
…back in the days, there have been various „title generators“ for movie cameras. The simplest ones have been basically only a holder for a postcard-sized „title card“. Here’s one made by Hama that included an optional macro lens attachment (for cameras without macro lens): It was also sold under other brand names here in Germany (herma, Revue, …). And of course, there are at least similar devices made in USA and Japan.
To come back to the topic: Some of these holders came with a nice set of „title cards“. Many of them are now faded or damaged. I tried to „restore“ them… I'll start with Disney:

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Chinon and Bell&Howell:

[Joerg Polzfusz]

As there’s a maximum of 15 attachments, here’s the last image.

Funny observation: The texts are the same, only the images and layouts differ between the three sets. I wonder whether they have all been made by the same OEM (that also produced the titler)?!

[Steve Klare]

Hi Joerg,

Back when I was a teenager I had the plastic board with the case of insertable letters for making movie titles. I bought it at a department store, which shows how long ago that was!

I still have the films (You can't beat decades old Kodachrome!): the titling isn't that great, but at least 17 year old me got the spelling and grammar OK!

Naturally, when I started making films again in my 40s, I needed to do something a little more...advanced and creative.

I tried laser printing as small as possible text on transparent film, superimposing them on 35mm slides, projecting them on screen and then filming the screen.

-it was difficult and they didn't look that great either, so I made exactly one film like that and decided to work on the problem some more.


After that I went all Microsoft Word on it:

• Insert a picture on a landscape formatted sheet.
• Draw a textbox over it, format it "no color" and "no line"
• Put in whatever text I want over the picture arranged as big and in whatever font and located wherever I wanted it.
• Print and Film it

I've been pretty pleased with the results:
.

(Apologies to the folks at Aardman Studios!)

.

I don't make as many films these days, but this actually is still useful. To this day, when I do "CineSea in Pictures", I always make something that looks like this:
.

-so in a way, when these show up here, they are still movie titles. Making titles for Super-8 was where I learned how to do it.

I always wanted to make animated titles by filming a monitor, but never worked out a good method.

[Brian Fretwell]

I remember adverts of stock and made to order titles to splice into home movies being offered in the UK. The name J.J Secombe Cine Services comes to mind.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Animated stock titles have been available at least from hama, Kaiser, Revue and ROWI in Western Germany and by DEFA Heimfilm in Eastern Germany.
But I don’t remember any German services that sold „Made to order“ titles. Hence, I only read about Kodak’s titling service in the USA and Canada, e.g. here:
https://archive.org/details/MakingTi...e/n27/mode/1up

Of course, today, you can send some videos of your own to Italy to get them transferred to S8/16mm.

[Douglas Meltzer]

I thought those title cards looked familiar.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Yes. That’s where they’re from. (Looks like yours are in mint condition.) But it is strange that there are always only eight cards per set, isn’t it? There’s always no „Easter“, no „trip to Disneyland/-world“, no „baby is born“, no „first day at school“, no „wedding“, no „Thanksgiving“, no „independence day“, …

[Dave Bickford]

When I was a kid (15-17) I made my own titles. Very crude, but at the time I thought they were awesome! Mostly hand-scrawled on poster board or stencils or a combo. Some screenshots from terrible telecine transfers from 20 years ago...

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Personally, I don’t like the „trip to California“ as it looks like it was made in a hurry. But the other ones are simply great!

[Dave Bickford]

Personally, I don’t like the „trip to California“ as it looks like it was made in a hurry. But the other ones are simply great!

lol, yah. Not my best work. It was probably one of those times I needed to use up the film so I could send it out for processing ASAP. The end credit for that particular film had some crude animation. I may post that later.

The “Animal Antics” title was supposed to be superimposed over something else. I had been experimenting with backwinding for such purposes at the time, but I guess I never got around to it with that particular film. I do have an example of backwinding fun. May post that video later too.