We Are Royale’s Opening for CIA Reveals Shred of Truth
We Are Royale (WAR) created the opening title design for CIA, a new crime drama from Emmy Award-winning executive producer Dick Wolf. A spin-off of Wolf Entertainment’s FBI franchise, CIA follows by-the-book FBI Special Agent Bill Goodman (Nick Gehlfuss), who is loaned to a clandestine CIA/FBI task force for covert operations uncovering international plots, terrorist cells, and geopolitical secrets. The opening titles convey the CIA’s unsung work in the shadows of New York City’s underbelly to keep America safe. CIA premiered on February 23rd on CBS @10PM. Weekly episodes can be streamed the next day on Paramount+.
Feeding into the murky world Goodman is led into by roguish CIA case officer Colin Glass (Tom Ellis), We Are Royale mixed still photography, redacted classified documents, and the final logo in shredded paper that symbolizes the secrecy of the agency.
“We were honored to collaborate with Wolf Entertainment and set the stage for CIA, a thrilling new chapter in the company’s rich tradition of crime dramas we all love to binge on,” says We Are Royale Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer Brien Holman. “It's a clever, high-stakes spy drama that probes the shadowy depths of New York City through the investigations of two unlikely CIA partners. The opening visually expresses this, revealing 'shreds' of truth and redacted documents, suggesting mystery and moral ambiguity.”
We Are Royale blended curated footage with fabricated CIA documents to create the lenticular-style animation. The paper strips animate across the images horizontally and vertically, obscuring and revealing elements of each layer before morphing into ribbon-like curls of real shredded paper.
“We emphasized the tactile detail of the paper—texture, relief, and especially shadows—to suggest what’s lurking beneath the city’s glamour,” concludes Holman. “Once everything dissolves into the shadows, the CIA logo is revealed in a subtle, 2D red on black interpretation of the shredded paper effect.”
CREDITS
Executive Producers: Dick Wolf, Mike Weiss, Ken Girotti, Paul Cabbad, Nicole Perlman, David Chasteen, Anastasia Puglisi and Peter Jankowski
Project: CIA Main Title
Client: Wolf Entertainment & CBS
Production Company: We Are Royale
Chief Creative Officer, Partner: Brien Holman
Chief Executive Officer, Partner: Jennifer Lucero
Executive Creative Director: Brien Holman AND Loren Judah Creative Director
Managing Director: Beck Henderer-Peña
Executive Producer: Asheley Hu Roe
Head of Production: Kelley McDermott
Producer: Deb Presburger
Animator and Compositor: Hein Hamers
