Jason Reitman practices a lost art: opening credits.

The director of "Thank You For Smoking" and the upcoming "Juno" has made a point of introducing each of his feature-length movies with substantial, imaginative title sequences that set a mood and tone for the film to follow.

"I'm a big fan of opening credits," Reitman said. "You walk out of your regular life, you walk into the cinema, and you want something that separates people from the commercials and the trailers for other films."

They were once an admired component for big Hollywood movies. Saul Bass was known for his credits for Otto Preminger and Alfred Hitchcock including "North by Northwest," and Maurice Binder gave our culture the trademark James Bond franchise openings.

But in the past two decades, more and more films have started lurching immediately into action with no text at all, or quickly flashing lead actors and the movie title -- just enough let you know you're in the right theater.

(For some exceptions, visit http://www.submarinechannel.com/titlesequences/ which is curating a growing collection of opening titles.)

The result: Directors get credited immediately at the conclusion of the film, then stars, then the full roll of cast and crew (which in some early Hollywood films was entirely at the beginning).

Reitman, whose "Juno" played at the Toronto Film Festival and will be released in December, says the new approach is ego-driven.

"Directors like to have their name be the first thing that comes up when the movie's done," he said. "At the beginning, the titles happen and the movie starts, and that's when you start paying attention. ... When you put that at the end, it's like 'You just watched the movie. Just a reminder, it's ME who did it.'"

The titles on each of Reitman's movies were done by Los Angeles-based Shadowplay Studio, whose co-founder Gareth Smith met Reitman when both were on the festival circuit with short movies -- Smith with the green screen-created "This Guy is Falling" and Reitman with "In God We Trust."

The memorable "Thank You For Smoking" credits, featuring classic cigarette pack-styled text and graphics, were created largely in PhotoShop and After Effects, Smith said. A Harvard professor mentioned them in a textbook, Reitman said, and Smith says he still gets inquiries about the titles from graphic design grad students. (The sequence can be seen at http://www.shadowplaystudio.com/smoking.html .)

A whimsical song plays over the text, which Reitman used to make it clear to viewers that he hadn't created a heavy-handed political film.

The titles for "Juno," created very differently, are just as singular.

Reitman sent Shadowplay the script of "Juno" just after he agreed to direct it, and invited them onto the Vancouver set early in production.

Revolving around a teen who decides to give her baby up for adoption, the film features quirky, slang-spouting characters and blends a storybook-type approach with some dark, emotional realism. The cast includes Michael Cera and Jason Bateman of "Arrested Development" fame, Jennifer Garner and Ellen Page.

"From day one we knew it needed to be something that was very lo-fi, very low tech, and had a lot of texture," Smith said. "We wanted to sit in front of the computer less and do something that was made by hand."

Artists photographed Page walking and taking swigs from a jug of Sunny Delight.

They printed out some 900 still images, then repeatedly put each through a "bad Xerox machine" till they looked nearly hand-drawn, Reitman said. Smith invited friends over to his apartment to cut out the images of Page, which he then scanned back into a computer and linked together to create a stop-motion animation.

The background was then filled in with scanned photos, prints and more cutouts.

"There's this kind of cut-and-paste environment that we created with the music that's in the film, which has this home recording feel," Reitman said. "And there's Juno herself, whose life has that kind of feel, and I wanted the opening title sequence to be sweet and homemade, and put you in a specific mood, almost put you into Juno's head."

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Staff reporter Ryan Pearson covered the Toronto Film Festival for asap.

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