glee.tv

An opening sequence is something almost every movie and TV show has: a musical trailer introducing us to cast and crew of said movie or TV show, which lasts from 30 second to up to 2 minutes. Tim Burton does them with pure excellence, and most modern day superhero movies get them to look pretty cool too. But I actually don’t care about opening sequences in movies that much, because you only have to watch those once.

TV shows are a different case; the opening sequence of a TV show has to be watched over and over and over again. For a lot of TV shows they stay the same through it’s entire run, other TV shows change them almost every season (e.g. Sabrina the Teenage Witch) and yet others just modify them to make them up-to-date. Some TV shows start directly with the opening sequence every time (e.g. The Sopranos), but most start with a “cold opening”, a plot that evolves before the opening sequence and is continued after it.

Opening sequences have a long history, and their main purpose remains to introduce the makers of the show to the audience. Some have even evolved into art, while others are noticable quick and dirty productions. Some producers have taken a step further and put gimmicks into them which change with every episode. The Simpsons or Futurama are the best examples. Weeds does the opposite and has the same visuals and the same song every time, but the song is always interpreted by a different artist. Either way, some opening titles annoy me to death while others remain pure joy to watch, even after the 100th time.

But there also seems to be a recent trend among TV shows to not have any real opening titles at all. Instead, the show starts with some sort of narration, with “previously on…”, with a scene only remotely related to the main plot or with a song, either of which is then followed by a short display of the show’s logo. Heroes is a strong fan of the narration, followed by a five second screen of the Heroes logo. Pushing Daisies usually did the same. Blackpool, a BBC sing-along murder mystery with blackjack and hookers, used it’s sing-along trademark as the opening. Every episode starts with a song, but it’s a different song, sung-along by different characters every time, always somehow matching the plot of the episode. Lastly, Season 1 of The L Word showed a cold opening only remotely related to the main plot, followed by a 10 second screen of lots of words with L turning into the logo and accompanied by simple electric sounds. As lame and cheap as it seems, I actually liked that opening much better than the S2-6 opening.

Despite the occasional brilliance among cheap opening sequences, a good opening sequence seems to be a matter of how much money is available to the producers. Lower funded TV networks tend to have the worst ones; Fox, CBS, ABC, whatever they’re all called. Cable channels like HBO or Showtime on the other hand, usually have the most enjoyable opening sequences. There are exceptions of course, and this trend doesn’t apply as often as you’d think… Some excellent TV shows suffer from a terrible opening scene, while a cool opening scene doesn’t always make a cool TV show.

The most important thing about an opening sequence is the music. The music will burn itself into your brain, and as soon as you see a picture from the opening sequence, you’ll hear the song in your mind. While I was creating the pictures for this post, the tunes were tootling away in my mind and there was nothing I could do to stop it – whether I hated the song or not. Therefore, bad music is the curse of many opening scenes. Even those with clever visuals can be completely destroyed by the wrong background music! Eek!

The usually most unsatisfactory opening sequences are those where every actor is introduced with their name and with a scene of them flashing us their blinding white teeth (the latter usually applies to American shows more that European shows). Those opening sequences are usually accompanied by some horribly mainstream pop song. In between the introductions are random scenes, also from various episodes, usually cut together so fast that you can hardly register them (or it takes you 20 times of watching to recognize them). These sequences used to be pretty much standard among network shows for the last 20 years. Though there might also be good opening sequences of this kind, all of the ones I can think of are bad. Usually because of the music.

Kommissar Rex is an Austrian show from 1994 which makes use of this kind of opening titles. In this case, the scenes were specifically shot for the opening sequence, in what looks like a quick-and-dirty studio shoot but with a bit of a fun factor. Rex, the main character, mischieviously steals Stockinger’s Wurstsemmel and interferes with Max’s game of billiard. With Moser’s gun and Leo’s inspection of the knife, the crime factor is added. There are also a few hardly noticable location shots of Vienna in between the introductions, but they don’t do much to improve this otherwise mostly lame opening sequence. It works well for it’s time, but the music is annoying beyond good and evil, thanks to that untalented singer and that poppy tune. Maybe they should just have stuck to Strauss’ The Blue Danube?!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is another good bad example. Geniously brilliant show, but I’ve hated the BtVS opening scene for as long as I can think. It’s not exactly suitable for watching in a brightly lit room, since the risk of not seeing what’s happening on screen is high. Most scenes are related to the Slayer mythology and slaying in general. All the remaining ones are just the introductions and some ass-kicking. If the visuals weren’t so desperately dark they might work, but what absolutely doesn’t work is the music. Though the music is acceptable but gets annoying after a while, and I really hate it’s silly classic horror movie organ intro. Altogether it makes the whole thing so annoying that I’ve skipped the titles every time I watched an episode. If you have a show about Slayers, why not use Slayer as the opening music? How about an Angel of Death or a bit of a Reign in Blood?!

Introductory titles have another disadvantage: once a cast member leaves the show, you’ll need new ones. BtVS knows this best: Though Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicholas Brendon and Alyson Hannigan have remained in the show for all seasons, through the years many of the supporting cast had to be exchanged and new opening titles had to be made. Sometimes even mid-season.

Another problem of those titles is that there’s only room for the cast and creator. Guest stars, writers, producers and directors are then listed after the opening scene in on-screen credits while the actual episode has already started.

A great number of TV shows suffer from “Let me introduce” titles scenes combined with dreadful music. Angel, Friends, Charmed or Firefly are no different. Even though some shows such as Firefly had their opening music specifically composed for the show, it still doesn’t make them suitable for frequent watching. Joss Whedon did put some noticable effort into the Firefly opening sequence with all the fancy font effects, the color effects and the grungy western-movie style, but it definitely didn’t make my favorite list. There’s nothing really special or majorly artistic about it.

Sam Tyler had an accident and woke up in 1973. Is he mad, in a coma or back in time? Whatever happened, it’s like he landed on a different planet – that’s the narration how every episode of Life on Mars (UK) opens. Though the idea to explain the (admittely whacked) concept of the show to new watchers and refresh the minds of the frequent watchers is nice, it gets really annoying after the third time. The remaining opening sequences is a pretty much standard introductory; every cast member is shown with their name and a picture. The pictures have a fancy “tons of TV screens” effect, which leaves the creators the freedom to show the lead character in the smaller boxes while most of the screen is devoted to the currently introduced cast member. As opposed to BtVS or similar titles, general scenes are used to list writers, producers and directors, so in this case the crediting does not continue after the opening sequence. The music is acceptable as well – thankfully it doesn’t include any singing, it’s merely a general tune with matching on-screen sound effects. Allover a good, creative opening sequence – if it weren’t for that narration at the beginning.

A recent trend among TV shows are opening credits which do show the actors (or just some of the actors), but don’t match their names. Seriously, that is the stupidest and most confusing thing ever. If audiences are used to the introductory format, then why screw this so majorly up?! The L Word is good at screwing up; not only their Season 2-6 storylines, but also their Season 2-6 opening sequences. They do exactly what I just described: show their actors, dressed up fancy (some of them are dressed up so fancy that you don’t even recognize them), in scenes specifically shot for the opening scene. But the pictures don’t match the names. They show Leisha Haley when it says Laurel Holloman on the screen and they show Laurel Holloman when it says Mia Kirshner on the screen. The music is specifically written for the opening sequence and the lyrics are an homage to My favorite things from The Sound of Music, but without the melody and a singer who can actually sing, they’re no good at all. They’re just a horrible pain in my ears. I don’t understand the purpose of these opening titles, aside from making men (and lesbians) horny.

Dollhouse takes a bit of a similar approach, but focuses entirely on Echo (Why? The other characters are important too!). While pretty pictures of Echo are shown, the actor’s names are alternating with text saying “active located”, “active engaged”, etc. The background music is literally just some annoying “la la la”. Sorry Joss, but this is probably the most inane opening sequence you’ve ever come up with. I can’t see anything artistic or profound in it and it’s perfectly skippable. The only good thing is the is the fading xylophone melody at the very end of the sequence.

And with this concludes part one of this insanely long blog entry essay. To continue reading, go to part two.