Intro Sequences: The Good and the Bad
I’m a sucker for a great opening credit sequence in television, especially as they become a dying species.
Showtime and HBO, for instance, deserve considerable praise for some of their excellent opening sequences: The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and the City, Dexter, United States of Tara, Weeds – all had or have superb intros that introduce the style, tone, and character of their shows, giving us a good sense of the kind of world in which they’re set.
So I’m on the watch for great examples of the form on network television. This year’s newcomer on FOX, Human Target, has a beautiful sequence. The animation is an intriguing mix of Chuck, Bond, and an edgy, grown-up graphic novel, hence promising an interesting marriage of fun, humor, action, and a little bit of darkness. Turn the sound off and it’s one of the better opening sequences on television.
But if you turn the sound on, it’s not only bad, but boring. Somebody at FOX put all the money into the visuals and forgot about sound. It sounds like the cheesy music you’d hear in low-budget war movie. Thus not only does it short-circuit all the beautiful workmanship of the animation, but it creates tonal problems. Test this out – listen to it with your eyes closed and ask yourself whether you’d watch or change the channel.
So let’s go back to Showtime for some remedial lessons: United States of Tara also has an animated intro, very different style, yet suitably quirky. The pop-up book sensibility neatly suggests the character’s multiple characters while also gesturing to her “three dimensionality.” The quick movements also note how quickly things can change for Tara and for the viewer. It all encourages us to watch for changes, depth, and connections. And yet the music works with the visuals, preeminently odd, setting the tone not ruining it. FOX, please take note.
No mention of True Blood?!? One of the few intros that I watch all the way through for each and every episode. I also enjoy the quietude of the FNL intro.
Not a list — just a sample
Well you´re right the opening of Human Target is graphically good but the music is so lame, slowing doing the rest and making it boring as death!
It is not even cheesy it´s corny!
Thanks for the post anyway as I enjoyed it
Have you written on the way TV intros work before? It seems to me they are in some ways an even more central paratext than trailers, as they help shape your emotional response right before you view the program, and for repeat viewers help get you in a familiar frame of mind. (I’m just discovering your work via Jenkins now, so maybe you have made this *exact* point). They also seem to have evolved from an example like Friends (which is well done and iconic, but more or less simply a series of clips) to more abstract and symbology based, helping to set the tone of what is to come. Do you have an analysis on this?
Another great new intro is for the HBO’s “How to Make it in America”.
I think your description of intro as chuck/bond/comic was freakishly good – though, of course, it is indeed based on a comic series. Music truly awful.