Question: Use or don’t use title cards?

A question via email:

Sticking a literary quotation in a “TITLE CARD” / “SUPER” / “SUPERIMPOSE”.

Use ’em or lose ‘em?

Potentially informative or pretentious as all hell?

In previous drafts I used three (what I considered) highly appropriate
quotes at the start of each of my acts. I used a “TITLE CARD” slug to
indicate that it was to appear on the screen. Reactions from readers
and consultants are generally mixed: some like, some don’t like, some
don’t even mention it.

What I’m thinking about doing, to avoid *any* appearances of, uh, snobbery
and overindulgence, is removing all the “TITLE CARD”s and sticking just the
first quote — which is really the theme of my entire movie — on page 0
for just the reader to see, not the audience. And then, if/when I hit the
lottery and someone wants to make this movie, the producer/director can
decide whether or not they want to use the quote on screen…

What say you?

Let’s start with what John August has to say:

Some writers really frown on using titles, because they feel that it’s the director’s prerogative whether or not they’re needed. I disagree. If it helps the reader understand the flow of the story, and makes the script read more like the final movie you want to make, by all means use them.

Which is exactly my attitude: If they enhance your story and/or make it work better, then go for it. In a perfect world, you can use them to make your script more entertaining. Think of the movie Babe with its chapter titles (incorporating the singing mice) or the script we read for today’s 14 Day challenge (500) Days of Summer) which use the number of the day in Tom’s relationship with Summer to help ‘locate’ scenes as it skips around in time. Another example which comes to mind is Juno which used titles to show passage of time per seasons (i.e., Winter, Spring).

But again, only use them if they make the story work better and/or they enhance the entertainment value of the script.