You Read It Here First

You may find yourself doing something different at the movies these days: reading.

The written word has become the hottest ticket in selling and telling part of a movie’s story; it’s being used increasingly in movie trailers and in visually enhanced main title sequences.

The creators of trailers and titles say dramatic use of words on the screen mixed with fleeting, powerful images has the greatest impact on movie audiences, which these days are bombarded with up to 20 minutes of commercials, promotional tie-ins, information about the sound system and movie previews before the feature starts.

Like subliminal messages in early advertising campaigns, word graphics in trailers and titles often appear and disappear so quickly that they work on an almost subconscious level. Sometimes, as in the title credits of “Seven” or “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” they provide clues to solve mysteries; in others, such as the trailer for the upcoming “The Patriot,” they implant the film’s message with sudden power.

In trailers, the use of words embedded in images means “you have to work at [understanding them],” says David Garber, head of Creative Domain Motion, the graphics arm of trailer house Creative Domain. And that’s a good thing, he says.

“When you read the words, it pulls you into the message,” he says. “By reading it, you experience it. By experiencing it, you remember it. And that sets your message apart from the rest.”

The teaser trailer (the first-look preview) for DreamWorks’ upcoming “Gladiator” shows how the mix of words, images and music is being used to stimulate audience anticipation for a film. Directed by Ridley Scott, “Gladiator” is a Roman Empire tale of courage and revenge that stars Russell Crowe and opens in May; Crowe’s Maximus, an exiled-general-turned-gladiator, is hellbent on killing Commodus, the odious heir to the crown.

The trailer, done by Kaleidoscope Films, a preview and main title production company, is punched up with snippets of dialogue and a score that invokes “Ben-Hur.” Its key phrasing--”The General” . . . “Who Became a Slave” . . . “The Slave” . . . “Who Became a Gladiator,” . . . “The Gladiator” . . . “Who Defied an Empire”--appears on screen in between shots of Maximus fallen, enslaved, defiant and victorious. His spoken line, “In this life or the next I will have my vengeance,” comes between the written words “This Summer” . . . “A Hero Will Rise.”

Or consider the teaser trailer for Morgan Creek’s teen thriller “In Crowd,” a Warner Bros. release set for April. Intercut between scenes of sexual innuendo, dead bodies and wild partying are the words “seduction,” “obsession,” “deception” and “murder,” fading in and out, until the tag line appears: “How far would you go to get in?”

In older films, words were sometimes used in previews. Often they were read by a stentorian-voiced narrator who would intone phrases like, “In a story that took years to get to the big screen. . . .” Now the words are short, sharp, pungent and mixed in with equally powerful images.

“Right now it’s tough to gauge how effective [the mix of words and images] is long term,” says Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations.

“Since words are static, it’s tough to make them visually exciting. When it works, it adds to the visceral-visual sell in a subliminal way that can be very effective, especially when you consider how sophisticated and jaded audiences are today about trailers. They literally boo and cheer them, something they don’t even do for the movie. Remember, people paid the price of a regular ticket just to see the [“Star Wars” prequel] ‘Phantom Menace’ trailer.

“The importance of trailers cannot be overstated,” Dergarabedian says. “They can make or break a movie’s opening weekend. And if words get you there, well . . .”

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The trailer for Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” had what even competitors praise as a perfect mix of words and images. Dana Precious, Columbia Pictures’ senior vice president of worldwide marketing, notes the abundance of words proved literary ties did bind in one of the film’s trailers, a teaser crafted by DreamWorks’ creative director David Sameth and Creative Domain. Overlapping condolence letters interwoven with their authors’ voices provided the eloquent setup revealing one mother’s tragic loss of three sons in World War II and a quest to find her fourth and last.

But Precious says there are limits to the use of words and graphics in trailers. “There is a trend now for using graphics in trailers to further illustrate your point,” she says. “But you have to be judicious about it. You don’t want to saturate the audience or you defeat the purpose.”

Main title credits also are experiencing a word revolution; filmmakers use them to set the mood and reveal a film’s back story without any words being spoken. In main titles, “the images intertwined with the words get you into the movie faster,” says title designer Nina Saxon of New Wave Entertainment, a graphics house for titles and credits.

Until fairly recently, most filmmakers treated the credit sequences as an afterthought. Designers were paid whatever production money was left to create the film’s titles. The norm was to work from the film’s story line and the designers’ own imagination in crafting the critical opening moments of the movie.

But a film like “A Few Good Men” showed how a title sequence can be as memorable as the film itself. Intralink’s use of titles, in which a Marine drill squad’s maneuvers played in lock-step to the opening credits, is one that many rival designers and studio marketing executives hail as proving how powerful these opening moments can be. Director Rob Reiner jumped at Intralink’s idea, which was never part of the film, and “immersed himself in the shooting of this sequence that ran four to five days,” recalls Intralink President Anthony Goldschmidt.

“It was all about setting the mood for what the audience was about to see. That is what great credit sequences do.”

In Imaginary Forces’ groundbreaking “Seven” credits, bouncing, jagged graphics spiked between grisly images revealed clues to the killer, all played out against a disturbing score. Imaginary Forces is the same firm that created the jumpy standout titles for such edgy TV shows as “Homicide” and “Ally McBeal.” But it was “Seven” that broke the mold in giving credit to credits as an underused storytelling element.

Its competitors are quick to note the company wasn’t the first to change the titles formula. For example, the late credits guru Saul Bass elevated titles into a highly stylized mini-genre with Otto Preminger’s “The Man With the Golden Arm.” In that 1955 film, starring Frank Sinatra as a heroin addict, Bass used a distorted arm as the moving backdrop for opening credits. Three years later, he planted the credits to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” in a spinning icon of black and white, an image so powerful that it has become synonymous with the vertigo condition.

Although graphics used as a subliminal tool in trailers may be new, Madison Avenue discovered the advantages of this stealth peddle in the late 1950s when a market researcher claimed an increase in popcorn sales after audiences got glimpses of an imperceptible sales message on the screen.

Use of subliminal advertising caused an uproar and fell out of favor for many years, but by the ‘70s, a resurgence began. By the ‘90s, Madison Avenue was back in the swing of it, with Seagram’s running a gin ad in magazines featuring a scantily clad woman floating in a liquor-filled glass. The subliminal sexual message was underlined in the ad copy: “Can you spot the hidden pleasure in a refreshing Seagram’s gin?” Coca-Cola followed with claims of spiked theater concession sales from hidden “thirsty” messages flashed on the screen.

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But the recent surge of this word-image interplay in trailers and main titles is really due to television, contends Precious. “TV utilized it for years, and the audience became conditioned,” she says.

“The reason you didn’t see as much of it in movies before is because the visuals had to be shot on film and the graphics later added, which was costly and time-consuming,” Precious says. “In TV, video was used, which was easier, faster and cheaper. That made it affordable to experiment with the mix, which is why it became commonplace in TV. Then MTV came along and took this [conditioning] to another level.”

Film marketers realized the MTV crowd is a core demographic of the moviegoing audience and began targeting their expectations. Younger audiences were hooked on the adrenaline rush of lightning-fast images, music and words hitting them at once, even if that meant they had to sort out the meaning afterward.

Still, there are legal limits to how stimulating the visuals and graphics can be for title credits, notes New Wave’s Saxon, who’s best-known for designing the searching flashlight behind the large block letters in “The Fugitive” and the floating feather drifting over the opening credits to “Forest Gump.” Hollywood contracts require that credits for actors, directors and producers must always be legible on the screen.

“Really what a title designer has to do is always keep that in mind, while bringing forth the subtle layers of the story through credits,” says title designer Debra Ross, of Debra Ross Film Design and Saxon’s former partner.

Saxon experienced how filmmakers’ attitude have changed toward credits. “Bowfinger” director Frank Oz hired her before production wrapped to help block out a live-action sequence shot to showcase the opening titles. Steve Martin, who starred in the 1999 film, wrote the dialogue for the sequence.

“Frank literally set up the scene, staged it and blocked it with credits in mind,” Saxon says. “In the 21 years I’ve been doing this, this has never happened. Obviously, cred- its are being given more weight than ever before. I don’t think you’ll find anyone arguing against it.”

Certainly not director Anthony Minghella, an Oscar winner who hired Ross to design the credits to “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” Like Oz with Saxon, he brought Ross on board during the filming of “Ripley.” (She had collaborated with him on “The English Patient.”)

“The whole opening of this film is designed as a credit sequence, and it is very long, about five minutes,” Minghella says. “One of the obligations of the titles sequence is to lay down the terms of the movie, to give you a taste of what kind of film you are about to see. You literally establish the lexicon of the film in the first few minutes, which is so important.”

For that reason, Minghella believes it is critical to include a title designer during filming so he or she can have a proper feel for the film’s story, provide creative input and request additional footage.

“I think one of the roles of a good director is to exploit the talent around you, and that’s why you want to have a clever designer involved,” he says.

In the case of “Ripley,” clues unveiled in the opening credits come full circle in the tragic ending. A tip? Note the adjectives that spin over the word “Talented” when the film’s title appears. They reveal Ripley’s true nature. The shards of images that cut across his face in the beginning mirror the last dramatic moments of the movie.

“I’m obsessed with openings and closings,” Minghella says. “You can’t have a good story without them.”

That rule also applies to tweaking films already in theaters. Disney rolled out a new version of “Toy Story 2”--one with amusing outtakes played over the end credits. They even hyped the addition on the Internet.

“When you see studios use credit sequences to keep films fresh that are already a hit in the marketplace, that tells you something,” Dergarabedian says. “Instead of heading for the exit, credits, like great trailers, are something to watch.”