From script to screen: How does the credit sequence from Dexter work?

The ideas for Dexter was originally sparked when Eric Anderson noticed that the title 'DEXTER' could be flipped upside down, yet almost all the letters looked the same, Anderson personified this idea to Dexter, that he had a flip side, which was slightly different and unusual, but hardly noticeable. 

The basis of Dexter was that on the outside he seemed like a normal, middle class man, who worked as a forensics investigator who specialised in blood. However what only the viewer knows is, he has an 'evil' yet somehow loveable side to him, in which he is a serial killer, but a very proficient one, who is good at what he does. Dexter almost manages to make killing non sinister. Anderson's key point was that


"Everything, no matter how mundane or beautiful, has an undercurrent of violence to it. It is just a matter of how closely you look. We are conditioned to see a blossoming flower as beautiful. But if you look closely, if you look differently you will see it more like an explosion. Here we see a mundane morning routine illustrated in extreme close-ups showing the underlying tension found in everyday situations making violence a part of everything."


This seems to be what Dexter is able to do very well, the opening straight away initialises him as this suspicious, odd man who CAN infact make anything he does seem violent. I think also his look as a person helped to add to this feeling, with his small, stocky build and shady eyes, he does not seem like the kind of person you can trust. 

I think that the music played a key part in the opening to establish Dexter's character, the music is sinister yet playful, which I believe, is the actual tone of the whole show. It is slow and suspicious, just like Dexter himself. All the 'every day' actions that Dexter does in the opening are being related to acts of violence, this is done by the extreme close ups, which actually disguise what hes doing and removes human emotion from the scene, so the viewer can focus on how the action is disgusting, a good example of this is when he is squeezing the orange. Also, other than the music, there is a use of over emphasised diegetic sounds which make the actions seem even more malevolent, for example, when Dexter is tying his shoe lace, the noise of the lace going through the whole seems almost evil.