From Script To Screen: How Does The Credit Sequence From Dexter Work?

Where did the creative ideas come from?
When watching the opening sequence from 'Dexter', it is quite easy to believe that the time taken to create this was minimal as the ideas gone into it are quite basic ones. However this is not the case according to Eric Anderson, the creative director of the film. He believes that all the ideas began with a simple phone call. 
After being approached by the show creators and discussing the character of Dexter, Eric began to jot down his initial ideas and as soon as he wrote down the title of the film, ideas came flooding to him, one in particular. He was amazed at how the letters formed in 'Dexter' were nearly identical right-side up as they are up-side down, much like 'Dexter' the character. He found that the character of 'Dexter' doesn't go through a massive transformation when he becomes the serial killer. He remains the exact same person, just comes across as there being something wrong with him. This for Eric was how he wanted the title to be portrayed (seen below), and he did so successfully.

When hearing the words 'Mudane' and 'Six feet under', it brought back Eric's childhood memories, the days when he used to sit with his Grandfather and look through his 'True Detective Collection' magazines. It was when thinking about these magazines that he soon came to realise just how much he loved crime scene photography. He believed the crime scene photography created this feeling of overwhelming and sinister importance and from the process of photographic evidence comes an 'edgy antiaesthetic rawness'. This to him proved to be a very important piece into the making of this opening sequence.

Below is an image of crime scene photography. Although it may appear a 'normal' window, it is not until you find out that it is the same window from which Martin Luther King was shot, that makes it more sinister.

Following on from looking at crime scene photography, Eric came across two other artists that made him think more about the film. Looking at David Byrne's book, 'Strange Ritual' he found it was a book containing millions of images of  'nothing' and Mike Kelley was able to make the cutest most usually things incredibly naughty in the simplest of ways.
After studying these artists, he gathered a small creative team together and worked on all ideas they had, even if they pointed them in a 'loose direction'. Although they went through many ideas such as turning everything upside down like the title, they soon decided that perhaps they should go down the route of examining normal everyday things that could also be portrayed as horrific. It was at this point that one of Eric's assistants came up with the idea of a morning routine, where they would have the character of Dexter doing these normal things, but in a violent way to reflect him. When examining crime photography, they found it worked in the same way, in that the photograph came across as a normal photograph, but when uncovered for its true identity, they found it to be more horrific and sinister.
Below is an image of everyday situations, that have been made to look more horrific and sinister, just by the way they have been photographed.

A famous saying about this sequence by Eric Anderson
"Everything, no matter how mundane or beautiful, has an undercurrent of violence to it. It is just a matter of how closely you look. We are conditioned to see a blossoming flower as beautiful. But if you look closely, if you look differently you will see it more like an explosion. Here we see a mundane morning routine illustrated in extreme close-ups showing the underlying tension found in everyday situations making violence a part of everything."


In this opening sequence, Eric used noir lighting in the 'wides', as well as shallow depth of field shots. One reason for doing this was because the producing company was on a low budget. However Eric soon came to realise that having the noir lighting on the 'wides' helped to create this eerie atmosphere to the shots and made the shots more sinister, just as he had found the crime photography did. Supporting this was the use of shallow depth of field shots that made identifying the items used in the shots very difficult, but at the same time, made the sequence more mysterious and again created this eerie atmosphere. As well as this, these feature helped to disguise the jump cuts used in the sequence.
Below is an image from the sequence that shows both the noir lighting on the 'wides' and shallow depth of field shots used and by combining them together, helped to make this shot look more sinister.

When it came to choosing music for the sequence, Eric and his team found there were so many ideas to chose from that they struggled to know which lead to go with. It all started with a song called 'Miami Beach Rhumba' by Xavier Cugat which they found had a too 'jolly feel' to it and so they went down the path of Bernard Herman music which had a jazzy suspense feel to it. Eric found he was a big fan of Bernard Herman's piece and decided to go down this route of a 'psycho' theme tune to represent Dexter. However when he thought about it, he decided that it came across as being too 'psycho' feeling and this wasn't following the theme of normality. Neither was the track 'More Powah To Yah' by the band Xploding Plastix's. He found this had too much suspense to it and gave away the idea too much, this being that Dexter was a serial killer. In the end, he used a piece of music created by Rolfe Kent as this came across as a normal piece of music, but when combined with the sinister shots, made it a more eerie piece of music to reflect Dexter.
Below is the piece of music, 'Miami Beach Rhumba' that was first thought about for the opening sequence. 

Below is the piece of music, 'Psycho' that was another option for the music of the opening sequence.

This music was one of the final pieces to be considered for the opening sequence, but in the end, came across as being too sinister.

This was the final piece used to create the opening sequence of Dexter.