The competition for the best opening credits sequence of 2022 has some promising contenders, but so far, nothing has topped Severance.
Apple TV+'s dystopian sci-fi series follows Mark (Adam Scott), a "Severed" employee at Lumon Industries, who has agreed to separate his memories of work from his memories of his personal life. Every element of the show, from the writing to the performances to the production design, is stellar — and that includes the credits.
Severance's opening takes us on a surreal journey through Mark's workday, all while illustrating the tension between his personal life and work life. CGI animated versions of Mark stumble through snowy landscapes and starkly lit corporate spaces. They multiply and ooze together in time with Theodore Shapiro's score.
The sequence comes courtesy of Oliver Latta (aka Extraweg), an artist based in Berlin whose work plays with bodies in ways that are at once grotesque and entrancing. In "Human Paste," humans flop out of tubes. In "Angry," a figure grinds and gnashes their teeth... which are actually screaming heads. Like Severance, Latta's pieces are deeply strange yet still hold traces of the familiar.
"I enjoy playing with common situations and presenting them in an ambiguous and uncomfortable way," Latta told Mashable via e-mail.
We can see this already in the opening credits: A trip to the recycling bin is interrupted by a menacing black goop. A mug on an office desk overflows not with coffee, but with hundreds of tiny suited Marks piled one on top of the other.
Ben Stiller, who directed six of Severance's nine episodes and also serves as an executive producer, reached out to Latta because he'd seen his work on social media. Their first call about the project was in April 2020. Stiller sent Latta the script of the pilot so he could get a feel for the show. Latta also referenced Severance's production deck in order to match its style.
Otherwise, Latta said Stiller gave him quite a bit of creative freedom. He drew from his prior work to create some of the opening's most arresting images. For example, the moment where Mark carries floating duplicates of his own body behind him recalls Latta's "Past."
The weird Mark flesh balloon is one of several instances throughout the sequence where Mark grapples with the weight of his dual life. For the most part, Mark's work self and life self — or his "Innie" and "Outie" — are separated by their clothing or by walls. However, here, he is unable to completely leave his work self behind. Later, he struggles to escape the grip of the goop from the recycling bin, which has taken on the shape of his Innie.
"The production process was different in comparison to the commercial projects I usually do," Latta said. "I started to do a lot of movement animation tests at a really early stage, even before we had a proper storyboard."
Movement is one of the most striking elements of these this opening sequence. In some instances, like when the bodies tumble from the coffee cup or get sucked up through a syringe, the motion is similar to that of ragdoll physics from video game deaths. Elsewhere, when various clones of Mark shamble through a line of elevators, their gait is jerky, as if they aren't fully in control of their own limbs and are instead being toyed with by higher powers. These movements, coupled with the CGI version of Scott, place us squarely in the uncanny valley. Just like with Lumon Industries, we know something is off, and we're immediately uneasy.
While Mark's movements are purposefully strange, the rest of the titles are full of dynamic transitions that draw the eye: a couch melts down into a ceiling, a small Mark jumps into his own head. They sync up nicely with Shapiro's score for inspiration, which Latta was given ahead of time so he could animate with the music in mind.
"[The music] was a huge help to define the flow and timing of this sequence," he said. "It's actually the kind of music I usually listen to every day while creating my art, so it was a perfect fit and it inspired me a lot."
Between Latta's animation, Shapiro's score, and typography by Teddy Blanks, the Severance opening credits are a master class in establishing a show's tone and what makes it special. We get a visual representation of the Severance procedure and a refresher on the main character's inner conflict, all wrapped up in visuals that evoke corporate sterility and the sinister secret it hides. We may be extremely disconcerted, but we're on the edge of our seat, ready to watch more.
Severance is now streaming on Apple TV+, with new episodes weekly.
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