The last few years have been a boom time for title sequence design, as broadcasters and streaming services have competed for audiences’ attention and loyalty. As shows like Game of Thrones and Stranger Things have shown, the opening credits can become a key part of the experience.

“It’s about whetting the appetite, and teasing and giving a sense of the mood of the show,” says Paul Mitchell, a director at Los Angeles studio Elastic, which received four Emmy nominations for title sequences this year. “It brings you in and sparks your curiosity. Once your eyeballs are on the screen, it’s our job to draw you in and bring you into the story.”

Elastic has worked with companies including Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV+ and HBO, on shows that range from Watchmen and Game of Thrones to The Morning Show and His Dark Materials. According to the studio’s senior executive producer, Luke Colson, it’s a competitive part of the design world, with title sequences still considered “coveted” projects.

Elastic pitches its ideas based on a pilot script, a handful of episodes or a lookbook of sets and costumes, as well as any extra information the team can glean from the show’s director or showrunner. And briefs vary hugely. Often, says Colson, broadcasters and streaming services approach Elastic with a completely blank canvas, allowing them to propose everything from how long the sequence should be, to what format it should take.

“It’s a completely open book,” says Colson. “Streaming services don’t necessarily have a specific time frame around how long a main title should be – some people want a small title card animation, some want a 90-second prologue-esque sequence that takes you all the way through to the show and gives you insight into what you’re going to be seeing.

“In The Morning Show you’ve got these motion graphics and a light, punchy, bubbly title sequence. The Politician is a mixture of live action and CG, and Carnival Row is more dark and macabre. The Watchmen has a series of title cards that evolve throughout the series, and I think that’s the first time a show has done that.”

Arguably, title sequences now have to work harder than ever before, particularly considering people’s dwindling attention spans and patience. They’re often called upon to perform as a kind of mini intro – filling in the blanks for viewers, and sharing parts of the story that couldn’t quite fit into the show itself. It’s something Elastic had to contend with for His Dark Materials which, as Colson explains, had to “unpack three monstrous novels in 73 seconds of motion design and include clever easter eggs that showed fans that we knew what we were doing”.

They’re also, in some cases, becoming a bigger part of the marketing around a show – for example, the titles for Netflix’s Ratched being shared a couple of weeks before the show’s premiere.

“That’s why designing the main titles is extremely difficult,” says Hazel Baird, a director at the studio that’s worked on shows including The Morning Show and Nancy Drew. “You’re practically branding their show for people to see what the tone might be like.”

According to Baird and Mitchell, despite the rise in streaming, the creative process hasn’t changed much. It still requires designers to immerse themselves in a show – as much as possible with the material available. “You have to do your research, like anything, so you can understand what you’re getting into and extrapolate out from that,” says Mitchell. “Then you can say this is what the themes are, this is the essence of it, and build around it and find interesting ways to produce it. You’re in service to the show.”

And while the work behind the scenes continues as before, albeit at a more furious pace, Baird does see title sequences evolving as a direct result of the influx of new broadcasters and storytellers. She says more streaming services are revisiting titles to redesign or rejig them for second or third seasons of an existing show – something Elastic is doing for His Dark Materials. There’s also still room for surprising interpretations of the medium as well – as demonstrated by The Morning Show’s titles, where the abstract use of dots is a particularly unconventional approach for a drama series.

There’s always the looming threat of the ‘skip now’ button, but neither Baird nor Mitchell seem particularly worried about its presence. While they admit that title sequences in general have become shorter – and very short sequences could be one way of catching people’s attention before they skip ahead – they seem confident there’s still a place for rich, engaging sequences that set the scene for the narrative. “If it’s something beautiful, I’ll watch it again and again because I like to get into the mood,” says Mitchell.

“I just let it play, turn down the lights, listen to the music, and that will get me into it. But I don’t need it for everything. If you don’t get something that’s interesting in the first five seconds, people switch off or turn their attention away. But I still think you want pacing, and to bring people on a journey and tell them a story.”

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