OUAN603 - Considering Story Titles & The Importance of a Strong Title

'The Broadcast of the Disappearance of Masumi Miyamoto'

Around half way through the project I was spending time attempting to figure out what the best arrangement of media may be as a an example of how best to portray the world I was creating. The idea came to me that I had a working title for the project overall, but each outlet may benefit from having its own name and 'title' that could distinguish it from the main body of the project, rather than labelling everything under the same umbrella name and have several stories spread across different media outlets indistinguishable from one another in terms of the allocated title.

In my mind, and without spending too much time thinking about the title alone with so much to get on with I decided that there were two paths I could take. The title of the project could either be blatantly descriptive, and all encompassing or it could reference a key aspect or recurring theme of the narrative. Ultimately, I believe that based on the story I have outlined, 'The Children Who Dream of Cicada' gives insight into a key part of the recurring narrative whilst also describing the story, at least to some extent. Overall, my intention was that by observing the title the audience would somewhat be able to gauge the type of story it is that they are deciding to dive into.

Following the established project title, I wanted to follow a similar route for the sub titles allocated to the different media and stories branching off from the main narrative. The title for the short animation I'm producing more or less explicitly states the content of the piece, which I found quite interesting upon reflection. By stating the content of the piece it feels like you're almost building to a particular event that the audience is anticipating because of the information conveyed through the name of the animation. In this case, the animation attempts to reveal the scene where Takahiro finds out from the television news that his classmate, Masumi Miyamoto is missing. Hence the title of the animation - 'The Broadcast of the Disappearance of Masumi Miyamoto, which also follows a similar structure to the project title.