MAKE Welcomes Lucia Naples and Rebekah Hartwig to Production Team
December 15, 2025
Stash has covered our share of ambitious and intricate zoetrope-inspired films but these opening titles for the Netflix historical drama miniseries Death by Lightning is the first we’ve seen to use the device for an era-appropriate project.
Rick Gledhill: “We wanted to capture the spirit of the era without turning it into a museum exhibit. The zoetrope gave us a foundation that could hold the emotional weight of the series and the repetition of the machine creates a rhythm that feels permanent and inevitable.
“The series is a psychological and historical exploration of the relationship between President James A. Garfield and his assassin, Charles Guiteau. The zoetrope transforms nineteenth century politics into a meticulously crafted mechanical world. Invented shortly after Garfield’s birth in 1831, the device serves as both narrative engine and visual metaphor.
“The development process began with deep historical research into early animation devices, political cartoons, industrial machinery, and the social climate surrounding the assassination.”
“While the original device relies on simple static objects, we expanded it into a sprawling mechanical landscape filled with gears, pistons, ropes and pulleys. None of these components are required for a zoetrope to function, which made them perfect symbols of the political machinery that shaped both Garfield and Guiteau.
“The development process began with deep historical research into early animation devices, political cartoons, industrial machinery, and the social climate surrounding the assassination. These references guided the visual language of the sequence.
“Each slice of the zoetrope tells its own story. Garfield unicycles a tightrope surrounded with knives drawn from political cartoons of the era. Guiteau hops across piles of cash away from the cops. Shadowy bankers quietly pocket coins. Even the strangest beats, like a head being chopped off by a feather, are rooted in real attitudes or events of the time.”
Client: Netflix
Creator: Mike Makowski
EP: David Benioff, D. B. Weiss.
Production: King+Country
Director/CD: Rick Gledhill
EP: Jerry Torgerson
Animation Supervisor: Andrew Cook
Producer: Ryan Lowrie
Art Director: KA Batcha
Designer: Josh Lewis, Jason Guerrero
3d Animator/Modeler: Saman Khorram
Animator/Compositor: Hugo Codinach, Rafael Monguilhott, Tom Kenney
Editor: Hans Carillo
Music: Hanni El Khatib “You Rascal You”
