Patrick Clair is an Australian designer much sought after in the TV industry at the moment. Through his company Antibody he has created promotional material for shows such as Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, The Blacklist with James Spader and forthcoming Eighties tech saga Halt and Catch Fire. However he is probably best known as the director of True Detective’s dark and stunning opening titles. THN caught up with him at his LA office for a chat about Season One and other projects…
Me: At what stage in the True Detective process were you brought in?
Patrick Clair: The way it traditionally works is that a production will go out to a series of design companies and ask them to contribute ideas for the titles and they share various materials at that stage. When I was first approached it was through my wonderful representation here at Elastic… they have a good track record of doing great titles for HBO, Game Of Thrones included which was done by one of the other directors here, so that’s why HBO would have invited Elastic to be part of it. Initially all they sent through was the first three screenplays, so it was great being able to start with sitting down and reading the scripts on paper, getting a really good sense of how the first third of the series played out and I think, most essentially to the titles, what sort of world these characters were inhabiting and a lot about the two characters themselves. One of the things that struck me most was I read the first 20 pages of episode one and you could feel that it was a really slow-burning pace, but even after that first 20 minutes I kind of realised that I knew an enormous amount about these two guys and where they were in their lives and what was happening in the story. That was a real testament to the incredibly powerful and economic storytelling that Nic (Pizzolatto, writer) and Cary (Fukunaga, director) achieved for the project.
Me: Did you know Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey were going to be playing those parts at the time?
PC: I did. True Detective was unusual in a sense in that instead of shooting each episode with a different director and cutting as they went they shot it all with a single director as one large long shoot and then cut the series as a whole basically… so they’d already finished main production by the time they were approaching us, although they still had about six months of post production left before the show’s release.
Me: Reviewing the sequence, the emphasis seems to be faces fused with landscapes, cityscapes, elements such as fire… what was the starting point for the overall concept?
PC: After we’d read the screenplays we jumped on a call with Nic and Cary and they were fantastic in that obviously they’d been really steeped in this world for a long time at that point and were able to upload a lot of information about the themes and motivations of the story, the setting, what they were trying to do on a subtext level. And one of the things which came through is that they were really using the landscape of Louisiana in the Nineties as a metaphor for what’s happening to the characters…
You were looking at this landscape which was polluted by the petrochemical industry, a landscape that had been exploited, a landscape that was poisoned and damaged… and it was really a mirror for a world of characters… characters that in many cases had been, especially in the case of the female characters, exploited and used up, and left to deal with the trauma of that… and with the case of the main characters also very damaged by the experiences they’d been through. It would be fair to say they’re conflicted characters that were divided. So this idea of using landscape as a way of building character… it struck me we could do that quite literally in a graphic sense, and what I thought would be really powerful is if we could build broken portraits of these people out of the landscape… then we’d be doing in a graphic art sense what the show’s creators were doing with the drama.
Me: There seems to be some debate on the internet about the jellyfish which is swimming around inside Michelle Monaghan. What does that signify, if anything?
PC: I think when you’re dealing with imagery like this nothing is ever entirely literal. We talked about a lot of pretty heavy themes when we were putting the titles together… you know, “It’s all about sex and death and religion and exploitation”… and one of the things which came up is the idea that we’re witnessing an apocalypse, but not in a Walking Dead style. We were witnessing a very personal apocalypse for these guys, so that’s what led me towards animal imagery and I think it was a combination of that and the setting around the Gulf… I mean it’s certainly not a literal reference to deep water horizons, but it’s this idea of animals and especially sea creatures associated with the end of the world… the poisoning of the world around was something that echoed a lot with us.
Me: Were there any openings from shows past that were in your mind when you were putting the title sequence together?
PC: When you’re putting together a sequence for me I guess the main goal is to really try and do something different, but that being said there are some sequences which are just giant and no matter what you’re working on they loom large. I think especially in this case because we were doing a show about sex and death in Louisiana that held one particular stand out, but for many years now I have been a huge fan of the work of the teams that put together the titles for Six Feet Under, Dexter and True Blood. I think they are epic sequences that set the tone for what the rest of us have been able to do in the years since.
Me: It’s interesting you mention Six Feet Under, I think it must have been ten years ago now that show came out and it was the first time that I personally saw that cinematic use of opening titles, I don’t know if you noticed the same thing?
PC: Absolutely, I remember watching that sequence over and over again when I was quite a young designer. It’s a beautiful sequence and it perfectly sets the tone for the series… it’s artistically ambitious. HBO have made a really great choice in letting these shows have title sequences that have a bit of room to breathe. They don’t overstay their welcome but they certainly have time to make a statement and draw the audience into the world. I think having that ninety seconds to explore design imagery before diving into the live action drama is kind of a nice experience for an audience each week.
Me: Did the music or the titles come first, and did you have any contact with T Bone Burnett?
PC: What was really great for us in a broad sense with the project is that Nic and Cary gave us almost total freedom as individuals. Their feedback at every stage was amazing, it was really tight and focused, and if anything we probably had shorter discussions with them than we usually have with clients… but they knew how to guide us towards what they wanted, which was great. The one thing they did bring was the song by the Handsome Family, Far From Any Road, and they had that from the first briefing and it was really a huge inspiration to us… then over the course of us doing the titles I believe T Bone rearranged that and helped to shape it from a full song down to the ninety second version that you hear in the titles. It was certainly a key part of the process that guided our visuals.
Me: What role do you like your title sequences to play as the audience are sitting down to watch?
PC: I think that a title sequence should give the audience a chance to settle in and get excited about watching what’s hopefully their favourite show. The magic of a really good title sequence is something that’s striking and interesting the first time you watch it, but then as the series unfolds you find a greater depth, and they seem to reveal something about the story as you go on through the season. I think it’s not an easy thing to do, far be it from me to judge whether ours ever achieved that… that’s certainly what we strive for. Something that echoes fundamental things about what’s going to happen to the characters during a season and that are more satisfying to watch with each viewing as you learn more and more about the story of the show.
Me: Going back to an early age, were there any TV opening sequences that really stuck with you?
PC: That’s a good question. My mind’s gone blank, I’m sure there’s a million things I’d love to pull out…! The X Files was a very important one for me. I was watching that around the same time I decided I wanted to aspire to a career in design and filmmaking and that lives large in my mind. I loved it, it was beautiful and amazing and provocative and I’m sure if we looked at it now it would solidly look a bit dearer. But I thought it was very cool when I was a kid that’s for sure.
Me: What projects do you have coming up and can you tell us anything about True Detective Season 2?
PC: I think I’ll let HBO discuss Season 2! But I can say that we’re really excited because just yesterday Halt and Catch Fire started on AMC and we did the titles for that. It’s a new show that explores a series of characters that are in the computer industry in the early Eighties, at the dawn of the personal computer, and it’s put together by an extremely talented group of showrunners… and we had the great pleasure of being able to create a sequence for them which is thankfully nothing like True Detective, so we hope that it finds a good reception.
True Detective is released on DVD & Blu-ray today. Check out our review here.
