For my title sequence review I looked at the Mad Men. The show is in its second season and it is about the biggest ad men in New York in the 1960’s, about their lives at work and at home and the general culture of those people at that time.
I happen to really like the show, but I think the title sequence is a great piece of work on its own. It opens with cartoonish office and a man standing with his back to us putting his brief case down. I think the contrast of the man in black and white and the cartoonish room are very suggestive, the men in the show are always dressed to the t and doing things the way they should, but to them life is all a game and despite whatever they see on the outside, or how things around them might look, they are definitely suffering inside. The contrast of the two different styles draws attention to the man but entices us to look at his office as well. The things on his desk are only in a faint outline and the whole opening has a very eerie feel to it.
The framing of the words is the next thing I noticed, they did a really interesting job with this. They played with color to emphasis the people’s first names and highlighted the names by having them each appear off center next to whatever was happening, offsetting the action a little.
The music is a fantastic choice in my opinion; RJD2’s a Beautiful mind. Its ascending tones match perfectly the businessman falling, but it also sounds classic and clean not panicked, just eerie.
As for the fall itself, it’s a metaphor for many things and works very well visually in my opinion. I believe the creators looked at a bunch of live action shots and then created an animatic sequence on the computer, which makes it look so real. Slowing it down also allowed the viewer to wonder whether it was supposed to be a dream or reality. I think the fluidity of the fall in contrast with the sharp lines of the silhouette of the man work well together too.
As the man falls, the ads that have consumed his life fall around him, I wish I could see their detail more clearly, that the color would be more vibrant.
Over all, the design choices were good ones in my opinion but I think it is the choice of action that really tells the story of don draper the main character and pushes you (or lets you fall) right into the story. The many is falling through is life, through the ads he creates but at the end he is suddenly sitting in such a confident position with a cigarette in his hand and we are left wondering if maybe it is all in his head. Several references in different interviews are also made to connections between this title sequence and images of the stock market crashing or 9/11 which add a lot of depth and power to this particular sequence in our society and our country.
