Mean Streets (1973) — Art of the Title

To view the opening title sequence of Mean Streets; please click the link below:
Mean Streets (1973) — Art of the Title

The film begins with the logo and name of the production company, which is in this particular film, was the parent company of Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Music Group; Warner Communications company. As the production company allows films to change the colour of the background and the logo itself to relate to the film. Therefore; the hue bright red connotes blood, love and rage, whereas, this deeper, darker red connotes power and lust.

The opening title sequence begins with a voice over from the director; Martin Scorsese. This technical code helps to illustrate the tone of film and the major themes. Scorsese begins with "You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home", this reveals to the audience that religion and life on the "streets" conflict with each other and that the protagonist will experience some form of moral dilemma. The life on the streets itself connotes danger, possible gangster/mafia activity and the character's association with a mafia, or, possibly him trying to escape from the mafia.

Scorsese uses diegetic sound of the protagonist, Charlie, shuffling through his bedroom. The use of diegetic gives the film verismilitude and the sound of police sirens tells the audience Charlie lives in an area where crime is frequent and the police patrol the streets; this relates back to the title Mean Streets. Charlie's blase attitude to the police sirens shows that Charlie is accustomed to the noise of sirens.

Scorsese uses match-on-action of Charlie lying in bed and resting his bed on a pillow. However the cutting between shots is delayed by 0.5 seconds so it gives the sequence a feel of repetition of Charlie resting his head on a pillow, but between every cut on the match-on-action closes in on Charlie's face, moving from a close-up to an XCU.

Scorsese then uses The Ronettes - Be My Baby as a sound bridge to the actual title opening sequence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-0upHlWfQ4

The production teams credits are overlaid in front of a film projector, this is clever as the object (projector) is commonly associated with the roles of the director and producers.

This image below names the production company (distributors). It also informs the public and other production companies that the rights to this film (art); Mean Streets are exclusively's Warner Bros. Studios. The cinematographer used a grainy yellow/green filter so it appears this sequence was actually shown from a projector, but also it makes the image of the streets look dirty, again tying the image back to the title. It also helps set the location for the audience, as they can now clearly see the film was hot in New York. The text for the title of Mean Streets is placed over the image in bright red emphasizing the genre of the film.

In regards to crediting the actors, the names are placed around the action taking place. This shows the resourcefulness of the editing team as they understood the limitations of a film projector (the action may not fill the whole screen, so you're left with darkness around the shots) and turned the limitations into advantages.