Last night the series premiere of Fringe aired on Fox. Fringe is a new sci-fi thriller/drama that is another product of J.J. Abrams and Co. This show has gained a fair amount of buzz given it’s tie with Abrams and so I figured I’d check it out.

The premise of the show is interesting and last night’s premiere was pretty good, but I wasn’t blown away. Still, I think it’s worth following for a bit to see how it pans out as the idea is solid and the cast features enough talent to encourage me to stay.

But what stood out to me the most was how they merged the location title graphics in with the live action shots. Reminiscent of the brilliant opening title sequence of Panic Room, Fringe incorporates extruded text of the various locations into the moving scenes and pulls off that effect very nicely. The colors, perspective and camera tracking are perfect as well as how the camera sometimes panned through the location titles. Such a nice touch and way to immerse the viewer into the scene. You were able to learn where the story was taking place seamlessly to the point where the titles actually looked as if they truly existed in those environments.

My particular favorite location title was the one for Baghdad. The title was overlaid over an aerial shot of the city and remained after the cut from that helicopter shot above the city to the ground shot looking back up at the helicopters. Now that’s attention to detail.

But enough talk, on with the examples: