TK: Analysis of Title Sequence - Luther (BBC TV Drama)

Luther is a BBC produced psychological crime thriller drama, that began in 2010 and has been renewed for three seasons, with a fourth currently in production. It contains a lot of the conventions of crime and psychological thriller films, and relates to the iconography and visual style used in them with bleak settings and colour schemes, heavy themes and dark, morally ambiguous characters.

1 - Order of titles
     Idris Elba

     Ruth Wilson
     Steven Mackintosh, Indira Varma
     Paul McGann, Saskia Reeves

     Warren Brown
     Series created & written by Neil Cross
     Produced by Katie Swinden

     Directed by Brian Kirk
     Luther

The titles begin with cast members, names appearing on their own denoting major actors (Elba, Wilson and Brown all play main characters in the series) whilst the names appearing in pairs denote minor roles. The three last titles are related to institutional context, denoting the creator/writer of the series, the producer and the director (in last position). The last thing to appear is the title 'Luther'. Each of the titles appear after intervals of approximately five seconds, and are on screen for around two seconds each. 

2 - Typography

The typography appears in block capitals for every letter, except in some cases such as 'Paul McGann' in which the c is lower case. The font remains the same for both the titles and the series title at the end. Titles are placed in seemingly random places without any sort of sequence, but generally fit onto the rule of thirds, or directly centre frame such as with the 'Luther' title. 

The typography itself is blocky, coloured flatly in white which stands out well against the dark and dimly lit backdrop images of the opening. The lettering is connotative of military or police forces, icons of the crime and psychological thriller genre.

3 - Visuals

Behind the text there is a complex and heavily layered montage of images and splash colours that shift and bleed over the screen, connoting ideas of blood splatters seeping or dropping onto a surface. The images are mainly focused on two things; The show's setting of London, and it's iconic landmarks (such as the Tube, the financial district, etc,) and iconography of crime thrillers, featuring dead bodies, fingerprints, forensic chemicals, barbed wire prison fences, lifeless eyes, motionless hands and bullet holes in windows. The images are very stylised, with a lot of contrast and dark shadows, which blend well with the silhouette of the show's titular character, which is prevalent in the opening, placed within the cityscape images. 

4 - Own design

For this part of the task I was inspired by the True Detective Opening titles, in which the forms of the characters are blended transparently over images of the various locations in the show, and overall it is a very visual and artistic opening. I attempted to emulate this using photographs from my previous photography shoot. I also wanted to use a dark and saturated colour scheme that had forensic and scientific connotations. 

The typography itself is sleek and slim, the title appearing in block capitals and the subtitle appearing regularly. The slim text has connotations of modern and contemporary design, reminiscent of modern urban based thriller films and settings.

The title 'Black Box' refers to the device in an aircraft that records all data and communications received by the plane, and is only retrieved in the event of the plane crashing. The idea of it containing dangerous and possibly scandalous information is thematically relevant of thriller plots, and the idea of a black box being a macguffin in the film is something interesting to me.