Font: Serif Gothic Extra Bold
Font: Probably just Helvetica with an outline (see comments)
Font: Franklin Gothic Demi
Font: Gill Sans (or something close)
Font: Helvetica(Incidentally, Kubrick's self-proclaimed favourite typeface was Futura Extra Bold)
Analysis:
80% of my top 5 favorite horror movies use a white title on a solid black background.
60% utilize their "official" typeface (the same one from the posters and other marketing paraphernalia). For some reason I've always thought that it's kind of cool when movies don't use their official typeface on their title screen. (A fact probably best kept to myself.)
20% employ a serifed font.
100% of this post is utterly useless information.
80% of my top 5 favorite horror movies use a white title on a solid black background.
60% utilize their "official" typeface (the same one from the posters and other marketing paraphernalia). For some reason I've always thought that it's kind of cool when movies don't use their official typeface on their title screen. (A fact probably best kept to myself.)
20% employ a serifed font.
100% of this post is utterly useless information.
I also like it when a film's title screen doesn't use same the fonts and packaging as all of its promotional material. I find it interesting for some reason.
ReplyDeletePoltergeist is the scariest PG-rated movie ever. Period.
It took me years, but I finally figured out the font that John Carpenter used on so many of his movies back in the 1980s. I can't remember what it is right now, but I know it's somewhere in my font folder on my PC.
ReplyDeleteExcellent top scary movies, and it's cool to see the fonts.
ReplyDeleteThese are some of the toughest movie spooks to battle. My weapons of choice to battle monsters--GladeTM air freshener and my vaudeville routine--might only work on Jack Nicholson.
Speaking of typography in film, have you seen this?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ms-studio.com/typecasting.html
Your font ID skills are exemplary- but I would actually bet that the Poltergeist font is merely Helvetica that has been given a "stroke" around it- but then, Carbono looks much like Helvetica with a stroke on it. This is the nerd in me coming out, but I looked up Carbono, and found out Paulo W (from Brasil) designed Carbono in 2005, and much too late to the title page of Poltergeist.
ReplyDeleteI will always be a fan of Pablo Ferro's hand-drawn title typography for Dr. Strangelove.
You got me!
ReplyDeletecdp- yeah, I wonder why that is. It's sort of like "now that you've paid for the movie, you can see the REAL way the title's supposed to be" or something
ReplyDeleteretropolitan- And now all those years are wasted! Now I'm curious as to what it was.
sparkle- interesting weapon choices. Interesting and completely baffling.
devlin- very enjoyable link. I hadn't seen that. Thanks for posting.
travis- Yes, but you must be unaware that Paulo W actually created that font in 1981 for Steven Spielberg and.. ok, that's not true, you win. I actually love the fact that you looked that up.
Nice blog , but slightly too AR,
ReplyDeleteI was just wondering if you wear a black polo neck jumper as standard everyday wear .... all the v a retentive typographers and sim., I deal with in the UK do .. just wondering if it is an iternational Typo A retent., fashion item ;)
I'm pretty sure the POLTERGEIST font is Berthold's AG Book.
ReplyDelete