I read in a couple of the screenwriting how-to books published lately that if you have something you think is a very good idea for a credit sequence and sets the tone for your piece, to just go ahead and do it - that if any producer or director doesn't like your idea, they just won't use it... but if it's a great idea, they might end up using it afterall. I wonder if the school of thought on this is divided or if bad advice is floating around out there re: credit sequences....

Annika, call me old school, old hat, or old fart, but while I generally subscribe to the hippie theory of screenwriting -- if it feels good, do it -- when it comes to the 'conventional wisdom' of format, style, etc, there are a few things I just can't wrap my head around. Specifying something as an actual credit sequence in a script is one of them. It may be the greatest idea for a credit sequence since The Pink Panther series, but I just don't see the upside for including it in a spec script. Far too many professional script readers at the rep, producer, and/or studio level will immediately -- I mean right up front in their read -- think, "This writer is an amateur."

Is that really the first impression one wants to make?

If it's such a great sequence, why not consider what I suggested to Gregaria in the OP: use it to introduce character sans "credits."

But here's the thing: I know now I've thrown down the gauntlet, tomorrow morning we'll read about a $2M spec script deal in which some representative of the buyer will say, "My God, they had this incredible credit sequence, so I was absolutely hooked right from the start."

Consider it my humble way of giving the spec script market a jolt!

(It's 1:00am here in the UK, am at work launching a major website.)

Mostly I wouldn't dream of writing anything for a credit sequence BUT I did for a TV series.

It was a sort of historical TV/newspaper montage getting the reader up to speed on the setting.

I crammed it into 6 lines after the 1 page action teaser.

I just finished reading an early draft of Tombstone the other day and the opening scene is possibly similar to the passage described. Check it out

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/tomb_stone.html

One of my favorite movies of all time...

-CJevy
www.writesomehorror.blogspot.com

I know now that I've thrown down the gauntlet, tomorrow morning we will read on a door of $ 2 million spec script with representatives of the buyer to say
Motorcycle Parts

Accepted wisdom aside, I like how they writers of 500 Days Of Summer offered a credit sequence, but also specified that they were sure the director/producers could come up with something better. Kind of having their cake and eating it too.

Thank you!

WAR OF THE WORLDS starts with a voice-over and shots of microbes in a water droplet. The camera pulls out until we see the earth as a tiny dot in black space. Then a montage:

A busy traffic-choked street.
View from a high building of pedestrians crossing an intersection.
Aerial view of a clover-leaf highway intersection.
A child pitches a baseball in an open field
The field is Central Park surrounded by skyscrapers
A historic building in India
A busy street market
The Arc de Triomf
Starry space seen past the disc of earth
The distant sliver of a planet's edge
The light of a sun rising from behind the planet
The planet is the earth
The sun rays fill the screen with light

The voice-over ends and...
FADE TO "WAR OF THE WORLDS" TITLE

@Martin_B: Thanks for posting. However I need to note that the WOTW script is a development draft or a production draft. In either case, different than the original question which is should they include a credit sequence in a spec (selling) script.

Once a project is set up, writers can - at some point - work with the director in writing out a credit sequence. Alternatively editors will just cut the sequence in post. It all depends upon the director's vision for the movie. Evidently per WOTW, Spielberg had a specific idea in mind for the credits and talked it through with the screenwriter to get it down on the page.

I think it is the same as with writing camera direction. I think it is fun. And my first attempts in screenwriting were riddled with credit sequences and CRANE and DOLLY. Because I wanted to direct my own movie on the page. I still think it is fun stuff to play with but when I try to cobble a story together I concentrate on telling it in a straight way without the fancy stuff.

Maybe you can trick the director into using a well written passage for the credit sequence you want to see. I also hide lines of songs that I would like to hear in certain passages in the stage direction. Just to remind myself what I had in mind for it. And maybe somebody will pick up the cue and go for it.
(And lets face it, I don't expect to sell a script of mine, ever. So basically I can do whatever I want. MUAHAHAHA! Oh, sweet freedom...)

@Scott: You're right. I have no idea if the WOTW montage was in the original script or a production decision.

But staying with SciFi, here's the opening of CONTACT:

UNIVERSE - EIGHT BILLION LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH

The cosmos on the grandest scale we know. Clusters of
galaxies strewn like sea froth; whorls and smudges of
light representing hundreds of billions of stars each.

MILKY WAY GALAXY

A view from the edge. We DRIFT ABOVE the majestic,
spiraling disk, tens of thousands of light years across.

RING NEBULA (M57) - CONSTELLATION LYRA

A local group of stars, the brightest of which is a point
of hot, blue-white light...

VEGA

Rings of glowing gas and debris surround the giant, blue-
white star... and then we notice something ahead of us in
polar orbit.

CLOSER

An immense, world-sized construct gleams in Vega's blue
light. Far too big to be artificial, by human standards
-- but this wasn't built to human standards.

Bowl-shaped transmitters cover the quicksilver gel-like
surface of the polyhedron, forming then vanishing again.
We DESCEND INTO one vast bowl as it deepens --

-- then silently convulses. A lost chord. We SWING
AROUND, assuming a breathtaking, MOVING POV --

A message begins its journey.

DISSOLVE TO:

SUBTERRANEAN DARKNESS

Shadows appear, dark and murky. Slowly we become aware of
a MUFFLED, PULSING sound; like a DISTANT, BOOMING
HEARTBEAT.

Suddenly a bright light unzips the amniotic darkness; two
great hands reach in to assist what we now realize is a
Caesarean birth.

ELLIE ARROWAY

age five seconds, opens her eyes wide.

Martin: I have no problem with that introduction ("Contact"), in fact I quite like it. It's visual, lays out one of the story's central themes -- the wonders of outer space -- and it's compelling. Also note, nowhere does it say the words "CREDIT SEQUENCE." Savvy readers may assume it is intended to be a credit sequence, however because of the reasons listed above and the fact it has a beginning, middle, and ending, transitioning to the story's Protagonist, I think it stands on its own two celestial feet.

Thanks for the example, Martin. I'll post it at some point today or tomorrow as an example of credit sequence that doesn't say it's a credit sequence.

Scott: I don't know if it was used as a credit sequence -- I saw CONTACT too long ago to remember.

You asked for "examples of movies that start with some sort of series of scenes or montage, even ones that don't have credits over them."

Great writing, though.

Details about the situation: If for some reason it feels very much like the opening can not act unless it is written so the sequence of credit.
Dreambox

I've thrown down the gauntlet.I still think it is fun stuff to play with but when I try to cobble a story together I concentrate on telling it in a straight way without the fancy stuff.