Manhattan

The ordinary and the unthinkable, living next door.

At Los Alamos, scientists and their families were making a life in a town built around a secret. Dinner, chores and suburban routines sat alongside the development of the atomic bomb.

That proximity became the idea for the titles. I led the team toward a language of diagrams, plans and match cuts, finding connections between everyday objects and the science happening around them. Familiar images took on a more unsettling meaning as the sequence unfolded.

Find the story in the research.

Archival material and architectural thinking informed the drawings. The team explored the planning of the town alongside the planning of the bomb, bringing both into the same visual language.

Filmed figures gave the movement into the final mark a human irregularity.

The aerial image of the Trinity Test informed the closing image.

Carry the idea into the next season.

The title sequence led to key art, promos and out-of-home work for season two. I later directed the cast on set in Santa Fe, with high-speed footage and ash imagery suggesting the consequences of the project in their lives.

The new work developed the show’s atmosphere across different forms while staying close to its central tension.