Any binge TV-watcher knows the rules (and the advantages) of marathon viewing–top of list, skip the opening credits, at least once you’ve seen them the first time. But occasionally an opening sequence is engaging enough that fast-forward is not engaged, or at least not with every episode.

Such is the case with this summer’s wildly hyped Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, which tracks Piper Chapman’s time in a woman’s federal prison for college drug crimes that caught up with her years later. The show’s opening credit sequence, designed by Thomas Cobb Group, has become a Thing in itself–winning nearly 78,000 YouTube views (about 15,000 more than the Emmy-laden and months-older House of Cards, the other hit from the house of Netflix. Also exceptional, the credits, and usually the Regina Spektor song written specifically for the series, have been noted in nearly every Orange review.

The credits boldly spill out the insides of what creator Jenji Kohan called her “Trojan Horse:” Orange sneaks in real, non-TV women of all breeds and creeds under the cover of “the girl next door, the cool blonde” lead of Piper, played by Taylor Schilling.

And credit where credit’s due: Thomas Cobb Group is the independent production and design company also responsible for the 9/11-themed photomontage that opens Homeland, and the Emmy-nominated, pot leaf-growing title sequence of Weeds (the latter show also a Jenji Kohan creation). Gary Bryman, executive producer at the Marina Del Rey, California-based TCG, tells Co.Design about Orange, “Our initial concept was to create a semi-surreal main title sequence of images from Piper’s point of view that would starkly contrast the hard, cold reality of her new imprisoned life against the imagined luxuries of her previous life.”

But creator Kohan wanted a title sequence suggesting the show would tell many incarcerated women’s stories, not just Piper’s. TCG’s solution was to photograph a full range of real women who had been in prison–from a most intimate, up-close, not typically TV-ready perspective, moles and all.

Michael Trim photographed nine women in New York, including Piper Kerman on whose memoir the series is based (she’s the blue-eyed one who blinks). In LA, Thomas Cobb photographed 52 women who he found via Homeboy Industries, an organization that helps the previously incarcerated and gang-involved redirect their lives with education and employment services, therapy, tattoo removal, and case management.

Bryman says, “Thomas directed each woman to visualize in their mind three emotive thoughts: Think of a peaceful place, think of a person who makes you laugh, and think of something that you want to forget. He apologized ahead of time for the last question but found it was incredibly effective in evoking a wide range of unfortunate memories.”