Bond's journey through the desert symbolized him at his most desolate. 

BD: Without the classic gun barrel sequence at the beginning, it was really a nice consolation to at least see you playing with the interlocking circles.

TF: Yeah, this is the first time it has been [saved for the end] and has been greeted with a bit of controversy by the Bond fans. But I think it was a very wise decision since it calls out to people that this is the first direct sequel. It feels like you should watch [Casino Royale and Quantum] back-to-back.

BD: But you got to creatively mess around with the design of the barrel sequence, which symbolically closes the book on Bond's rite of passage.

BR: It helps in working with Marc that he is such a connoisseur of modern design and architecture because he is so aware of the historical relevance of the franchise. And I think in a lot of ways how we approach our projects where we push ourselves technically and creatively but then we also like to keep a foot in the past and pay homage the title sequences that Tim had mentioned. So, it was a very good partnership with Marc.

BD: What was it like working with the main title song, "Another Way to Die"?

TF: After the debacle with Amy Winehouse, who signed on and then had to back out for personal reasons, Jack White and Alicia Keys were brought in a bit late and that slowed down the process. But, for the most part, the title sequence was designed with the track in mind. We had a good idea of what the tempo was going to be, so during pre-production we were working with a general understanding of the musical direction.

The color palate of a sunset, with oranges, reds and pale blues, were used also as a metaphor for Bond's journey through the film. 

BD: Let's talk about the style and narrative.

BR: Essentially, when we started thinking about the title sequence it was as a self-contained short story and we set it over a particular time frame: It begins at sunset and the core of it happens during the evening and toward the end we have the sunrise, which, I think works both as a color palette and also as a metaphor for what we were hoping to accomplish. So we chose a lot of colors that were twilight based: oranges and reds, pale blues.

SH: With a lot of high contrast.

TF: It feels like a parallel, yet gives the emotional state of Bond, which is very [complex] with the loss of Vesper.

BD: And it's really nice how you incorporated the return of the naked ladies again after a break in the Casino Royale title sequence.

BR: That's an homage to the past, obviously, but I think thematically it works really well with his emotional state and his reaction to them. The conceptual basis for this is this weak environment that kind of turns on him, and his relationship with women, whether it's M or Vesper or any new girl, what have you.