Barcelona studio Brut Works envisions climber, BASE jumper, highliner and all-around thrill seeker Dean Potter as a crow in these intense main titles for HBO’s four-part documentary series, The Dark Wizard. 

The main-title sequence includes images of Potter rendered as misty memories and set in all of the places where he loved to climb high and fly. 

It’s accompanied by a lyrically perfect track from American composer Dan Deacon, who writes: “I dreamt about climbing into the night sky/ and I said all my prayers because surely I’ll die/ If I crash down and smash into earth, into dirt/ how my skin will explode leaving only my shirt.”

Potter, who spent his life free-climbing peaks in Yosemite, Utah, Switzerland and elsewhere died on May 16, 2015, when he and his partner that day, Graham Hunt, attempted to thread a narrow notch in a ridgeline while traveling more than 100 miles an hour in wingsuits. Instead of threading that needle, however, both hit the wall, dying instantly. 

While Potter’s death was a tragedy and the end of one of free-climbing’s most exciting careers, it was not unexpected by those who truly knew him. The man had been dodging the odds for years, walking on lines high above the Yosemite Valley without leashing in, zipping through valleys wearing only a wingsuit, and pursuing an activity he called FreeBASE that combines two truly insane activities: free-climbing with BASE (buildings, antennas, spans (bridges) and earth (cliffs)) jumping. Potter also contended with some mental-health demons, which the film explores. 

Sender Films, producer of The Dark Wizard, commissioned Brut Works to create the documentary’s title sequence, intro, series logo, and typographic identity. Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen directed the docuseries, which premiered at SXSW and launched on HBO and HBO Max on April 14.

READ MORE: Stash