Title Sequence Analysis

The Conjuring (2013)

The Conjuring is a 'James Wan' paranormal horror film released in 2013. The entire sequence is in black and white and uses documentary type images alongside the newspaper style titles. In this picture they use typical iconography of a haunted house to indicate that this is indeed a horror film; the picture and simplistic font giving off an eerie vibe.

The images contain themes that are common of horror films. For example in the next few images there are news articles that headlines ghost hauntings and sacrificial rituals. Throughout the titles there is eerie music with synchronous sound effects of drums and crows; crows often being used as a sound effect in movies as they are ominous creatures that symbolise death.

 The words are written in a white font which allows its to stand out from the dark images. Everything is also written in uppercase and font size is used to reduce of importance of other words, for example, producers and the directors names are in a lot bigger font. As said, the images are genre signifiers of horror and contains images that are emblematic to horror movies.

 The audience are introduced to the names of the families the film is based on. This is significant as it conveys to the audience that the film is based on a true story, inevitably making the film more scary. The newspapers also contribute to the reality of it, again designed to frighten the audience; this would appeal to them as it would allow them to experience to a greater amount of fear.

The screen begins black and fades in the image with the titles left on the screen a little longer before then proceeding to fade out as well. This process is repeated multiple times and is used to slow down the pace of the sequence. It also allows the titles to be more spaced out and thus more attention is brought to each part; allowing the audience to read the headlines of the articles.


The final part to the opening sequence in cooperates more iconography with the initial image being a large house in the woods. Because of it's location the audience are more than aware of the genre. From this they would be likely to assume the house is haunted or that it is the residence of one of the families introduced in the beginning. The audience then notice a hangman's knot which indicates the theme of death.