The fast-forward button is right there. At multiple points during a hard-core TV binge-watch – at least the kind that involves a DVR or streaming video – the binger has the option to press those two rightward-pointing triangles, scoot past the opening titles and immediately continue consuming episodes.
Yet even after barreling through, say, seven hours of “Game of Thrones” and immediately settling in for an eighth, viewers often don’t bother to push that button. Instead, they dig into, over and over, the title sequences that usher audiences into each new installment of their favorite television shows.
That’s because those intros are often as compelling, visually inventive and worthy of deep analysis as the original dramas and comedies they introduce. We may still be in the midst of what’s been dubbed the third golden age of television, that post-“Sopranos,” anti-hero-dominated era that has served up more quality, buzzed-about programming than anyone can reasonably cram onto a TiVo. But we’re also currently experiencing another television renaissance of sorts: a new golden age for TV opening titles.
Certainly, plenty of shows, especially on network TV, still kick-start with a standard “meet the cast”-style montage. Others flash their title card with a flourish, a la the in-your-face all-caps of HBO’s “Girls.” But increasingly, especially on cable and emerging programming platforms such as Netflix, opening sequences are becoming clever, visionary and cinematic in scope.
For proof, just watch the hypnotic, overlapping Southern gothic imagery in HBO’s “True Detective,” the cheeky visual double entendres in Showtime’s “Masters of Sex,” the moving close-ups of female ex-convicts in Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black,” or the Saul Bass-esque, now-iconic-in-its-own-right opening of “Mad Men.”
Ian Albinson, editor in chief of Art of the Title, a website that explores title design in television, film and other media, says multiple factors have led to this burst of TV introductory energy. Among them: emerging technology that has enabled designers to more easily create high-quality motion graphics, and increased collaboration between those designers and the TV showrunners intent on crafting the perfect frames for their weekly works of art.
A strong title sequence serves as an explainer, a mini-movie that gives viewers a sense of where the narrative is about to take them. No current sequence illustrates that as literally or eye-poppingly as the constantly evolving computer-graphic one that opens HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
At its most basic, a title sequence should tell us what we’re about to watch and whom we’re about to see. That’s why most intros, even very good ones, highlight the show’s stars.
The weekly preamble to Showtime’s “Homeland,” another creation of the Thomas Cobb Group, helps viewers understand the characters by burrowing into the mind of bipolar CIA agent Carrie Mathison via a journey through her childhood, the key news events that shaped her worldview and the jarring realities of her adult life.
An unforgettable title sequence aims to match the emotions and overall vibe of the TV show into which it leads.
In other words, the watching of a sequence over and over, without ever hitting fast-forward.