Settle down to watch Amazon’s new original series Goliath, and you will find yourself greeted by a gritty opening title sequence in which Goliath lead Billy Bob Thornton strolls through an underwater world teeming with fire and smoke. Produced out of Los Angeles–based content creation studio GenPop, the underwater photography lends the black-and-white visuals an atmospheric vibe, while the backing song “Bartholomew,” from rock band The Silent Comedy, grounds it in a down-and-dirty rhythm. The ominous backdrop is the perfect foil for Thornton’s role as down-and-out lawyer Billy McBride, while visuals from award-winning filmmaker and editor Bill Yukich, who helmed the titles, strike a delicate balance between dreamlike and menacing.

The approved concept called for a dry shoot, so Yukich came up with solutions to make it seem like the sequence was filmed underwater. Shot on a RED camera, Yukich employed a variety of in-camera techniques to achieve the illusion of water, smoke and fire existing within the same world, including the ingenious use of smoke to mimic the movement of crashing waves.

After wrapping the live-action shoot, Yukich edited and color corrected the sequence. The VFX work was mostly supplementary, used to enhance the practical effects which were captured on-set, such as adding extra fireballs into the frame to make the pyrotechnics feel fuller.

Once post-production was complete, Yukich projected the sequence onto a screen submerged underwater and reshot projected footage. Though technically challenging, this Inception-style method of reshooting the footage gave the titles the organic quality Yukich was looking for—and imparts viewers with a feeling perfect to ease them into each new epsiode of Goliath.

genpop.tv