Title Sequence Breakdown: TRUE BLOOD
what "Bad Things" images and editing say about True Blood's themes
The True Blood title sequence is a classic; giving off the sticky, claustrophobic sense of living in a backwoods Southern town, and recognisable enough for a delightful Muppets spoof “True Mud". The sequence was crafted by Digital Kitchen, whose Paul Matthaeus said
“I wanted a sense of the twin polarities of the need for transcendence as it plays out in the rural south — of church and sort of whipping yourself up into an evangelical frenzy, and the honky-tonk on Saturday night where you basically do the same thing only through drugs and hooking up and getting into brawls.”
Let’s look at how it creates those polarities in image, camera movement, and editing.
0:00-0:06 The first shot moves up out of murky water into bright sunlit scenery.
It’s key to show sunlight quickly because the show is about, y’know, vampires. More than just that, it’s about showing how closely dark seediness and bright supposed-cleanliness sit to each other; it’s essentially a ‘reverse Lynch’ (eg Blue Velvet‘s camera starting in crisp, sunny Suburbia before delving into grub-infested earth), with the core concept being juxtaposition.
0:07-0:11 After coming into the sun, the camera moves right-to-left or ‘backwards.’
It’s key that all big establishing shots in the sequence are either static or move R-L.
This signifies though the show is roughly in the present, the town is rooted firmly in the past; including superstition, bigotry, the Klan, etc.
0:12 You must have intertwined bodies promising sex and such; this is HBO, after all. The film effect also signifies decay and corruption.
0:13-0:17 These shots in succession show the church scene and bar scene are inextricably linked; religion and alcohol both ways of life.
0:18-0:20 The relative niceness of peoples’ clothes repeats the concept ‘pretty facades hide despicable things.’
0:21-0:25 The image of a woman in lingerie slowly sinking down cutting to a rattlesnake lashing out intimates the woman is a snake, coiling to strike.
This cut, including the slo-mo, may be my (Mel’s) favourite choice of the sequence.
0:27-0:30 Seeing a child wearing a Klan hood is particularly jarring, presumed innocence wrapped in an overtly hateful symbol.
The boy is shot in black-and-white; the next shot of a middle-aged man is colour. This intimates an older photograph / newer one, so we may assume this is the boy grown up, representing generational hatred sown from childhood.
0:31-0:37 Eating strawberries is a blissful childhood activity, but also juicy vampiric symbolism. The red-stained chin and lip-licking smiles evoke blood and evisceration, leading right into the next shots of a carcass, inner organs, and faint hints of naked bodies.
0:38-0:40 The boy moving forward (L-R) disappears in the blink of a frame, which could intimate growth (as in the Klan boy turning to an adult), abduction, death, ageing, or all of the above.
0:41-0:42 A shot of a woman lying still (with glowsticks casting an eerie, rave-ish light) quick-cuts to a dead possum. Is the woman dead, are women in this world devalued as mere bodies to use and discard, or all of the above again?
0:43-0:47 The “God Hates Fangs” sign is the only shot directly from True Blood’s world, blatantly spelling out the vampires-to-homosexuality metaphor.
0:48-0:56 / 0:57-1:01 Back to the idea from 0:13, this series of images say dancing, flirting, bars, groping, and sex, are all inextricably intertwined, then leads into a section on church as though to say ‘just as the church preaches . . . of course religion also involves sex as well as control over it.’
1:02-1:04 The third time (of four) a woman’s motions are tied to an animal and death; first a rattlesnake, then a possum, now a venus fly trap swallowing a frog.
It took four days and many polaroids to shoot this timelapse involving death and decay of what used to be a hunting creature, reminiscent of a vampire.
1:06-1:09 “Laying on of hands” appears in all three conceits the title sequence ties together: violence, sex, religious furor.
1:10 The emergence from a cocoon is religious imagery; as in emerging from a tomb alive, dying to an old life and coming out a different person. It’s also tied closely to vampire lore as True Blood uses it, the bitten person having to be buried before they can emerge ‘new.’
1:11-1:13 The fourth time nature and women’s bodies are compared is when the writhing-emerging creature cuts to a writhing lady (whether speaking in tongues or possessed by spirits), then to a woman sexually writhing.
1:14-1:16 An extreme closeup of red lips inhaling smoke is sensual, deadly, and again a reversal of norms — literally as the shot is run backwards.
1:17-0:19 Plasma bags wrap and engulf the image, then reveal the show title. This timing comes as the music seems to conclude . . . then winds up for ten more seconds.
1:20-1:21 Two girls drenched in red, a colour sensual or murderous or both.
1:22-1:28 The Baptismal runs the longest any one ‘mini-scene’ — two men pushing a woman underwater reads as both religious and murderous, and to drive it home the struggle is interspersed with flashes of a cross and those ambiguous bodies we’ve seen throughout.
The title card flashes again, coming back to the struggle in a medium-long shot which puts the grouping in the lower third and surrounds them with inky darkness in which you can read the glaring white of the ‘written and directed by.’
The scene jump-cuts back to the medium shot as the woman emerges thrashing away from the two men, emphasising the predatory over the priestly.
1:29-1:30 Scenery and bodies flash along with a brief red medium shot of the woman from the dance floor (seemingly atop the woman from 1:20); the townspeople and landscape both begin and end the sequence.
Summation
The entire 90 seconds — full of duality, micro-flashes, and edits on motion — walks the ‘sensual or murderous’ line, intertwining prejudice and religiosity, holy and profane, sex and death.
Because with vampires, it’s gonna be all of the above.