Could streaming services kill off the art of the title sequence?
Jayne Nelson writes: I do it. I’m sure you do it too. You press the “Skip intro” button on Netflix and suddenly you’re watching the show, title sequence completely bypassed. In this age of instant streaming, even the time spent fast-forwarding feels like a pain, so that handy button is a godsend. But this is actually becoming a rather large problem, because not only are we missing out on some truly great art thanks to our impatience... it could be lost for good.
“Skip intro”-ing is denying us so much beauty. Consider the opening credits for Star
Trek: Discovery. They’re gorgeous: a collection of blueprints for all sorts of beautiful Trek tech. The colour-coded opening credits of Netflix’s Marvel shows are wonderfully evocative. And while it’s not a Netflix series, you can bet people skip the Westworld credits; my favourite of recent years, they couple Ramin Djawadi’s haunting theme with creepy, stunning imagery. (They’ve also changed for season two: reflecting its focus on motherhood, they’ve thrown a baby in there – proving that credits can be more than just a pretty intro, dropping hints at things to come.)
But we’re now on dangerous ground. Netflix, no doubt, take note of how many people skip these sequences. Will they respond by tightening their credit budgets? Why spend so much money on something viewers don’t watch? It doesn’t make financial sense! So we’ve created a very real problem: every time we skip the credits, we could kill a joyous opening to a future show. Sure, some still get noticed. The credits for
Stranger Things, for example, have inspired a million font imitations. But they were simple... and short, coming in at under a minute. Anything that length seems unusual these days – just think of the near-two-minute saga that is the ever-morphing opening to Game Of
Thrones. We should make a point of cherishing that time, because sprawling opening credits are an artform we can’t afford to lose.