Counterpart (2017)

“There was one reality. And then it duplicated.” — Howard Silk

What if you could live your life differently? How many different ways could you live? These are the questions at the heart of Counterpart, Starz’s new show, as well as the prompts used by Creative Director Karin Fong to produce its Emmy Award-winning title sequence.

In the Cold War-espionage series headed by showrunner Justin Marks, actor J.K. Simmons plays Howard Silk, a man with an interesting job. Howard discovers that the agency he has laboured within for years hides a grave secret: a passage to another, parallel world, featuring another, parallel Howard. Think: the slow-burn pacing of the 1979 BBC miniseries Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy meets the 1998 parallel-Gwyneths film Sliding Doors with a dash of science fiction.

For its opener, Fong and the team at studio Imaginary Forces create a smooth and stark sequence that looks forward while looking back. Full of images shot on the show’s retro-futuristic set, a brilliant feat of production design by Knut Loewe and Dan Bishop and with decoration by Dianna Freas and Ingeborg Heinemann, the sequence presents a fascinating world of vintage machinery alongside modern tech. Watching these interior images glide effortlessly into giant, abstract landscapes peppered by small, lonely figures is a treat. As Fong says, this is very much an editor’s piece and it’s thanks to editor Zach Kilroy's keen eye and clever match cuts that the sequence flows so fluidly, macro shots slipping gracefully into grand landscapes. We caught up with Karin Fong to discuss the making of the sequence, winning her second title design Emmy, and the key to building great teams.

A discussion with Counterpart title sequence director KARIN FONG of Imaginary Forces.

The last time that we chatted for Art of the Title was in 2014, about your work on Black Sails (2014). So that was a while ago!

Karin: Oh wow! Yeah. [laughs] I’ve been doing more work at Imaginary Forces, continuing always to do title design but also a ton of other work. We’re doing a lot of things for the tech industry and still continuing to shoot.

Congratulations on your Emmy win! The award for Counterpart is your second title design Emmy win, right?

Karin: Yeah, it’s…

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