House of the Dragon’s main title designer explains the concept behind the opening visuals

Game of Thrones had one of the best openings to a TV show, and its prequel House of the Dragon is closely following in its footsteps. Both the title themes have scores orchestrated by the famous composer Ramin Djawadi. And both of them show the history of what has happened so far in the show. Elastic’s Kirk Shintani, who helped in designing the title intros of both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, recently opened up on how they came up with such unique designs.

How House of the Dragon’s opening ties into Game of Thrones

Shintani recently chatted with Deadline and revealed, “Originally, we tried to find a balance between the story we needed to tell but we also had to be really aware that it needed to have some tie to the original show. The concept boiled down to the family tree and how we show the relationships between the different members of the warring families.”

The language used in Game of Thrones franchise’s intros

He also revealed that there is a hidden language used to create the Game of Thrones opening theme, “There is a big thing that maybe people don’t consciously think about as Game of Thrones. There is a specific language that we’ve built with these flyover cameras, moving from place to place, and that’s something we definitely wanted to keep in the show.”

“The world map was very much intentional of showing people where you are in each episode,” he says about the original Game of Thrones title. “Whereas for this one, the world’s already been defined and the key locators that we’re trying to explain aren’t locations, it’s the people’s positions in the family line.” 

How House of the Dragon’s intro adds to its narrative

Shintani added, “One of the things that we really want to emphasize with our main titles, specifically speaking about House of the Dragon is that we wanted to be able to lean on the idea that the title changes every episode and gives the viewers something else to look forward to. We really wanted to add to the narrative of the show in our own little way.”

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