Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Oily ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ Sequence

By Maryann Yin 

David Fincher‘s adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opens with a dark and oil-splattered title sequence. According to a WIRED magazine feature, the director hired Blur Studios to create the project.

In the video embedded above, you can see how they rendered the opening visuals. The title sequence references all three books in Stieg Larsson‘s Millennium trilogy; some of the pieces used in it include a pressed flower, wasps, hacking tools, Lisbeth Salander’s father and the dragon tattoo.

Here’s more from the article: “To get what Fincher wanted, Blur worked with the director to pick out general and specific moments in the trilogy that could be demonstrated visually…Blur ended up with 26 moments approved by Fincher, then composed them into 252 shots of 24 frames or fewer. Each piece was created electronically using 3ds Max, RealFlow (for the oily goo), Softimage and other software, as well as 3-D scans of principal actors Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig (to get their likenesses right).” (via Shelf Awareness)

The American movie adaptation opened on December 20, 2011 and brought in nearly $13 million by Christmas weekend. To date, the film has generated more than $76 million at the box office. It also received two Golden Globe nominations. Rooney Mara is up for “Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama” while Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have been tapped for the “Best Original Score – Motion Picture” category. The awards will be presented this weekend on January 15th.