Film Titles

Well i've been interested in this for a long time now and i though why not ask it here. I love watching old movies. Silent films especially. Now one thing that always sticks out in my mind when i watch one is the titles. I always ask what font do they use but my main question is how do they did they do it? Now a days all a person has to do is go into photoshop or even simpler just go to the text function in your editor of choice. I've been searching this online and haven't found much on this subject. Maybe I'm not asking the right questions. I though maybe someone on here might be able to tell me how they did all the old school titling in silent films.
Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd5q7g1xvjE
Or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCtcgI4BcIQ

I find both those title sequences to be fantastic! I wanna do something like that. An old style title sequence for a little summer project or maybe even a film. I'll continue to research this and maybe add to what i find.
 
In the silent area calligraphers would write the letters on black
card stock and they would be filmed. It was more complicated
when placing titles over images. They did a holdout matte - they
would make an interpositive of the background plate and an
interpositive of the artwork titles against black then they would
create negative and positive holdout matte so that they can
print the foreground titles over the background plate with no
transparency.
 
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