Concept and creative process
Opening titles for a classic 1970s drama serial. The series portrayed historical events from 1848 to 1918, the final decades of the ruling dynasties of the declining empires of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia. Each empire had the imperial eagle as its heraldic emblem, and it was this communality that inspired the opening titles for the series. The sequence was shot live in a studio with three specially sculpted heraldic shields, dramatically lit with lighting changes timed to the music of Mahler’s Trauermarsch.