"Advertising is based on one thing: Happiness." - Don Draper

A shadowed figure enters his office, sets down his briefcase, and the room collapses around him. As he tumbles through a chasm of diamond rings, happy families, and women in pantyhose, the glossy veneer of advertising gives way, revealing the rough humanity of a man lost. RJD2’s jazzy “A Beautiful Mine” conducts the viewer through the parallel worlds of the philandering, chain-smoking Madison Avenue boys' club and the idyllic nuclear family, introducing us to some of the themes underpinning the Emmy award-winning show, Mad Men.

Art of the Title spoke with Cara McKenney, Mark Gardner and Steve Fuller about the brainstorms and battles that went into this refined and cryptic opening title sequence, produced by Imaginary Forces.

Baptismal and greasy war-streaked faces of mothers’ sons were rendered by Steve Fuller -then in his eighth year at Imaginary Forces, this his final project- and continued by Ahmet Ahmet, using charcoal on tracing paper then scanned and overlaid back into the provided original footage. Hans Zimmer’s score plays with a dignity that is on par with To Kill A Mockingbird (and it’s own legendary opening).

The visuals, profound; the sky-soiling blood sun, a singular helmet strap that seems to drain from the man, from his horrors, the variations of charcoal dust analogical to the volcanic sand of the Pacific islands -all blending and fueling the notion that life runs from our sons and the sons of our enemies then as now.

What immediately comes to mind upon viewing these end titles as a stand alone consideration, is that there is great discipline in the master calligrapher's graceful yet contrasting Chinese brush strokes.

His magic carpet ride reminds one of Masaki Kobayashi's "Hoichi the Earless"; only here the Chinese characters -and Kanji, respectively- become life-taking daggers rather than a life-saving shield. Too, I am reminded of splattered ink at the point of impact and the panning flight of a classic aircraft -both seen in the aforeposted "El Don," in addition to owing an incalculable debt to the "300" end titles and, in a true sense, to Frank Miller.

While some frames seem partially rendered (exploding diamond? the odd alignment and spacing of the trekkers? an uninspired mouth of a cave?) others offer flashes of originality (snake-strokes from a blood sun, lettered mountaintop, inkblot blood of fleshless adversaries, a halved opponent, yetis in profile).