The Staircase
It’s still a bit of a mystery, or matter of perspective, as to how Kathleen Peterson died. It’s been twenty years but it’s still a fascinating story replete with ambiguities and differing points of view. In creating this series director Antonio Campos wanted to defy the typical tropes of true-crime television and instead approach the story through the characters, their different motivations and experiences.
In a similar way the title sequence needed to be something that played with these ideas of ambiguity and stood outside of genre definitions.
The house itself needed to feel like a presence throughout the sequence as its geography played an important role in the trial—what was possible, what could someone see, what could they hear? The original idea suggested by Campos and executive producer Maggie Cohn was to explore the visuals that might be associated with a courtroom model of the crime scene and the house itself. This inspired the core of the acrylic, semi-transparent house.
Development
As I explored, the material became even more important. The idea of glass was quite metaphorically rich and interesting. Glass can both reveal, but also withhold—it can distort perspective even while promising transparency. Then of course there is the ‘people who live in glass houses’ adage—it’s fragile and breakable, not a material you would expect to build a solid home in.
Sketches & Other Ideas
A lot of sketching and exploration went into finding the right imagery and understanding the ways in which we could use perspective, material, and light to evoke the complex human relationships between the characters.
Credits
Executive Creative Director Erin Sarofsky
Executive Producer Steven Anderson
Creative Director Stefan Draht
Producer Dylan Ptak
Editor Tom Pastorelle
Finishing Cory Davis
3D Animation
Nik Braatz
Andrea Braga
Oskar Fülöp
Dean Ripper
Jake Thomas
Tanner Wickware
Typography Cat McCarthy
Concept Development & Design
Andrea Braga
Stefan Draht
Cat McCarthy
João Vaz Oliveira
Storyboard Artist Tricia Kleinot