Carnivale - Opening Credits

Opening credit sequence of HBO epic series Carnivale. http://www.hbo.com/carnivale/

Wikipedia states:
Carnivàle's opening title sequence was created by A52, a visual effects and design company based in Los Angeles, and featured music composed by Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman. The opening title sequence won an Emmy for "Outstanding Main Title Design" in 2004.


One frame of Carnivàle's opening title sequenceThe production team of A52 had intended to "create a title sequence that grounded viewers in the mid-1930s, but that also allowed people to feel a larger presence of good and evil over all of time." A52 then pitched their idea to Carnivàle executives in early 2003, who felt that the company's proposal was the most creative for the series' concept. The actual production included scanned transparencies of famous pieces of artwork, each scanned transparency being up to 300 MB in size. The resulting images were photoshopped and digitally rendered. A last step involved stock footage clips being compiled and digitally incorporated into the sequence.

The opening title sequence itself begins with a deck of Tarot cards falling into the sand, while the camera moves in and enters one card into a separate world presenting layers of artwork and footage from iconic moments of the American Depression era; the camera then moves back out of a different card and repeats the procedure several times. The sequence ends with the camera shifting from the "Judgement" Tarot card to the "Moon" and the "Sun", identifying the Devil and God respectively, until the wind blows away all cards and the underlying sand to reveal the Carnivàle title artwork. More details http://www.darnellworks.com/a52/nr0052.htm

VFX Supervisor: Patrick Murphy, Simon Brewster
2D VFX Artist: Ben Looram
3D VFX Lead Artist: Denis Gauthier
3D VFX Artist: Westley Sarokin, Jeff Willette
VFX Executive Producer: Darcy Leslie Parsons
VFX Producer: Scott Boyajan
Managing Director: Rick Hassen

Agency: HBO
Creative Director: Angus Wall, Vonetta Taylor

Production Company: Carnivale
Executive Producer: Ronald D. Moore, Daniel Knauf, Howard Klein
Editor: JD Smyth
Design: Jesse Monsour, Ryan Gibson
Design Producer: Lisa Beroud