American Horror Story is an American television anthology series, with each season conceived as a self-contained miniseries, following a disparate set of characters and settings, and a storyline with its own "beginning, middle, and end." The unnerving bohemian storytelling is perfect for the unhinged style of Kyle Cooper.
The title sequence was composed by Kyle Cooper and his group of creative specialists, to bring together this artistic masterpiece. With a very similar style to Se7en's title sequence Kyle Cooper captures mysterious lab of sorts with disturbing substances and jars, to instigate the feeling of uneasiness.
How Cooper pulls these feeling from his audience is with his unique style. In the opening titles of American Horror Story he uses his choppy editing style, which keeps the view on the edge of their seat, due to the spontaneity of the pace of the cuts. The audience is made to hold there view for too long, till there is montage of many image images spliced together, flashing into the audience's eyes, not exactly knowing what they have seen. This can make the audience more and more intrigued due to our brains not liking us knowing what we just saw. While to a third part the title sequence clips seem very random, however it's the complete opposite as Ryan Murphy said about the opening credits "The title sequence is almost like a mystery. By the time you see the ninth episode of this season, every image in that title sequence will be explained." This mystery will keep audience's clinging on to each episode wanting to know more and never happy with what they are told.
The sound within the opening title sequence is key to all of Coopers work. The song in the background was created by Cesar Davila-Irizarry, who is a friend of "Prologue" editor Gabriel Diaz, and musician Charlie Clouser, formerly of Nine Inch Nails and is called "American Horror Story". The song heightens the unnerving feeling and sense to the opening sequence, and they especially emphasis this with the interesting use of Foley that disorientates the viewer.
The camera use and mise en scene within the sequence is used in particular ways that evoke many emotions from the audience. The shadows of someone but never seeing someone, the flicking through different clips and the film burns create a shady unnerving feeling within the audience. The mise on scene is mostly centered around the taboo of babies, making theme look evil, burning the pictures and suggesting their death, demonstrates what kind of television show American Horror Story aims to be. The film burn effect used on the clips, is a process used back in the days of when projector work was an art, and if you didn't look after the projector the light within the projector could burn away the film, this effect is used throughout the opening title sequence, however the audience never gets bored of it. This emphasis the unnerving and intriguing scenes. All these techniques used creates another Cooper masterpiece.
