Agreed. It’s feasible, certainly. It does impose a slight writing constraint in the form of a requirement for scene continuity of some kind (having a traditional title sequence does permit a greater break between scenes I think, because it is itself an interruption), but that doesn’t make it impossible.
And I suppose it does mean an extra minute of budget for whatever resources are necessary to create it, but thats small in proportion to the total.
I’m surprised nobody has done it (not fully in the way I described, as far as I know)
Perhaps so, but that total is a big number, and even a small proportion of it is lots of bucks. Remember shows get sold for a set amount, and spending more on them is money right out of the bottom line of the production company.
I’d imagine that the fairly new method of running credits under the action both saves money on credit production and makes it less likely for viewers to switch to another show during them. Or skipping them entirely if viewing on a DVR.
I’m not. The titles are a distraction from the action happening on screen. I remember Joss Whedon saying when he wrote “The Body” (The BtVS episode in which Buffy’s mom died) he decided he needed an otherwise unnecessary flashback to use as a backdrop over which to play the extra variable opening credits. Guest stars, writer, director, etc. He would rather have put those at the end for that episode, but WGA and/or SAG rules prevented it.
An extra minute of production budget in an episode doesn’t sound like much. But if you’re making a half-hour show (which means 22 or 23 minutes runtime, minus commercials), over a traditional 20-plus episode season, an extra minute each episode means you’re making a whole extra episode every season.
Considering TV producers already do things like clip shows and bottle shows to stretch their budget over the season, asking for the equivalent of an entire extra episode is significant.
I’d still say it’s probably just that nobody wanted to do it enough to make an argument that it was worth doing. Maybe it’s not worth doing, but I feel like if a prominent director decided it was worth it, it would have happened, even though it costs.