The implication is that this wretched past, overseen by the ominous presence of their father, is what made them into broken, venal adults.īut then, just when we think we've got a handle on the tone, the intro cuts to a clip from an ATN News broadcast. On one hand, it uses home movie-like footage to suggest we're seeing the Roy children in an airless world of privilege. The show's opening sequence, created by Picturemill, cheekily prods that debate. In the same way that people argue about whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich, there are people on the internet who love to debate whether Succession is a comedy. It reinforces the idea that all the characters are doing their best to force their lives into a shape they can control. And it's no accident that during the show proper, we see Selena Gomez's character painting a mural that looks like a still from this sequence. The immaculate design of these titles, created by Lisa Bolan and the team at the design firm Prologue, enhances that impact. Even though it's about murder and the entertainment products that spring up to fetishize it, it's also about the way that so many of us frame our lives to make them seem like adventures. As we take a tour of the Arconia, the show's titular building, it's almost like we're looking at a picture postcard of New York, and that gets at the series' off-kilter essence.
There's something about the animation here style - the crisp colors, the paper doll quality of the figures - that feels nostalgic. In that moment, it's like the metaphor of the credits has leached into the rest of the show. This definitely includes the black goo, which oozes through several moments of the credits and is later hallucinated by John Turturro's character in the show itself. The surreal images surrounding Mark have the same sinister edge as the all-too-tidy corporate office where Lumen puts its severed workers. That's an appropriate metaphor for the entire series. Representing his daily routine as two people living in one body, the beautiful but creepy animation style makes Adam Scott's character Mark seem like a herky-jerky automaton who has maybe lost his humanity.
Severance (Apple TV+)Ĭreated by Oliver Latta (an artist who also goes by the name extraweg), this astonishing sequence perfectly captures the disembodied world of the show about employees who have their work memories "severed" from their personal memories. Here are five recent examples of great opening title sequences advancing the form: 1. While it's true that these same platforms provide viewers with an option to skip the intro, that seems to have only upped the ante for creatives, as there are quite a few title sequences that demand our attention, even mid-binge. The streaming era has reversed this trend, with services like Netflix and Hulu borrowing a page from the HBO's of the world and giving producers all the time they need to set the mood for their shows with a lavish introduction. Meanwhile, as the number of commercials per hour increased, creatives welcomed having that minute back for storytelling. This was largely about economics: As competition for our attention increased, broadcast networks in particular came to view extended opening credit sequences as a speedbump - an opportunity for viewers to switch the channel.
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For every Mad Men or Boardwalk Empire taking 75 seconds to visually distill a series while showing us the names of the people who made it, there were dozens of shows that just slapped names on the bottom of the screen in an episode's opening minutes.
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For a while there, it looked like the TV title sequence was headed the way of the dinosaur.