‘Mozart In The Jungle’: All About Those Cool New Title Card Sequences

When you tune into Mozart in the Jungle‘s second season, you’ll notice something a wee bit different up top. In season one, each episode would start with a theme and then cut to the title cards. This year the show has decided to start every episode with a unique title card sequence set to a variation on Phoenix’s “Lisztomania.” That means there are ten different title card sequences for the entire second season. What’s the inspiration behind this new look?

“Last year, for a number of reasons, we didn’t get to fully articulate the titles,” executive producer and writer Jason Schwartzman told Decider. “I suppose also a big part of it was we have this Phoenix song called ‘Lisztomania,’ and last year we had this really long arrangement of it that was super beautiful, but we weren’t able to use it.”

Schwartzman said he was leaning towards not ever giving the show a theme song, but his co-showrunner Paul Weitz disagreed. Weitz, though, credits Schwartzman’s creativity for spearheading the title card approach. “He wanted something different and exciting about the titles — something that was creatively satisfying.”

“So, Jason at first,” said Weitz, “he wanted it to be something like an orchestra warming up.”

“And Paul said, ‘That is not a good idea!'” joked Schwartzman.

“It might have been a good idea!”

“He was so right!” Schwartzman argued. “But then he said, ‘Is there something we can do with “Lizstomania?”‘ And that led to what we have now!”

Of course, they had the song from Phoenix to play with, but they didn’t have the visual component. Teddy Blanks, co-founder of the Brooklyn-based design studio CHIPS, was brought in to work on what these title cards would actually look like.

“Jason had seen the work I did for Listen Up Philip, a movie he starred in that I designed titles for, and he invited me to pitch a few ideas for Mozart‘s new title sequence. He, Paul and Roman [Coppola] already knew that they wanted to change the title sequence for each episode to match the variations in the theme song they were having orchestrated. I had the idea of doing colorful abstract animations that would respond in time with the music, and then Jason and I worked together to determine the parameters of that idea,” said Blanks. “After that, they sort of just let me run with it.”

Blanks looked at classical LP covers from the ’40s and ’50s for inspiration. He said, “A lot of them have really cool geometric designs. I loved the faded colors, and the dusty grays of the aged paper.”

“Each instrument is represented by a different shape, but the colors vary from episode to episode. So part of the challenge was to stick to the rules I had created for myself, but not too closely; I wanted each episode’s opening to stand on its own but also feel like it adheres to an overall system.”

Which is his favorite? Episode 206’s. “Everything is a different shade of blue on a black background. It’s very symmetrical, except for a kind of squiggly line that comes in at the end,” said Blanks.

For more on Teddy Blanks’ work, visit chips.nyc.

Season one and two of Mozart In The Jungle are now streaming.

[Watch Mozart In The Jungle on Prime Video]