Buffy The Vampire Slayer

07/25/2006: End Titles

I noticed something interesting on one of my new colleague’s office walls today. A framed story — just a few sentences long, written in large letters in a shaky hand. I thought at first that it might have been written by his small child. But it was written by HIM when HE was a small child. Isn’t that great? Makes me want to dig out my old stuff. The best part of the framed story was the title. An account of a childhood accident, it was called "The Hammock and the Blood." Wow. Great title. Seriously. A classic structure, a promise of violence, and a concrete visual image — the dangerous dangerous hammock.

One trick I have employed to find a cool and memorable title is to find an unusual and concrete word that connects tangentially to something in the episode. Early on at Buffy, I got to write an episode that involved a creepy guest appearance by Hansel and Gretel. I named the episode "Gingerbread." Love that one.

Later on, I tried the same technique again. I wrote an episode which dealt a little bit with a love triangle. I called it "Triangle." Total failure of a title. The love triangle part of the script wasn’t highlighted enough to make this work. People still ask me where the heck the triangle was hiding in that episode. Win some, lose some.

Okay. One last final point about titles, using another example from my own career:

If your script has a surprise, make sure the title doesn’t give it away. My Buffy episode "The Replacement" was originally called "How the Other Half Lives." The original title is actually more apt, since the episode was really about how Xander’s personality is split in half, and how one half ends up staring in awe at what the other half is able to accomplish. But the episode contained a huge mislead, in which the audience needed to think that Xander was being supplanted by an evil look-alike. The eventual title sold the mislead, and was therefore better.

Is there more to say about titles? Oh, probably. But I do believe I’ll be moving along...

Lunch: a simulated mustard and grilled cheese sandwich created at work by using a combination of toaster-and-microwave technology. Clarification: the mustard wasn’t simulated. The "grilled" was simulated.