‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt is a 1992 novel set in a private Vermont university called Hampden College. The novel is told from the perspective of Richard Papen, a student from California with an obsession for “the picturesque at all costs.” He studies Greek for two years at a community college before becoming bored and dissatisfied. He receives a scholarship and escapes his dull hometown, enrolling at Hampden with the intent to study classics. Circumstances land Richard in an elite group with an eclectic group of students who idolize the ways of Ancient Greece. Obsession and a desire for complete release eventually lead these students down an increasingly dark path and Richard’s idyllic college life suddenly becomes twisted and dangerous. A movie adaptation of this novel would likely share some qualities with Donna Tartt’s other movie adaptation, the recent ‘Goldfinch,’ and as such, shares directors and producers. Other crew member names come from people who worked on ‘The Dead Poets Society,’ another story idealizing academia.
For this title sequence, I focused on the idea of the classic, academic, and innocent becoming twisted and dark. I used footage of academic settings and prey animals becoming disrupted by shots of violent Enlightenment and Renaissance paintings and predator animals to carry out this idea. In split second moments, I also distorted these works of art by flipping heads or removing the heads entirely. For the type, I translated content roughly into Greek and then had them be deciphered into English, referencing the students in the novel translating Greek to English.
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