You see this same idea echoed in season two’s sequence, but this time Clair used David Maisel’s stunning aerial photographs of iconic California scenery (with a few Jake Sargeant shots as well) to build his collages. Clair and his team placed these photos on top of slowed-down footage from the show to create what he describes as “living photographs.” The result is an opening sequence that seems to reside somewhere between still images and video footage. “It’s really about trying to make it feel like you’re journeying through a photograph,” he explains. “You don’t want it to be as crazy and intense as watching footage, because footage is about a series of events happening, whereas this is just about the compositions themselves.”
– From this WIRED piece on True Detective’s latest season.
As the use of visual imagery and tools become more and more entrenched in our world (human beings naturally relate to the senses – sight, touch), it’s interesting to see the evolution of static images to gifs, then cinemagraphs and looped short-form video à la Vine and Instagram Video. This quote above sums up the direction we’re heading in beautifully for me: ‘living photographs’. Cinemagraphs are glitched photographs in a sense; an entire opening sequence like this more a wrapped-up collage of ‘living’ photographs.
Enthralling, in any case. The design inspiration is great as well.
True Detective Season 2 Main Titles from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.
One Size Fits One 