AKA Jane Roe

The FX original documentary AKA Jane Roe has such an incredible range of focus, capturing it in an overall on-air package proves to be a specific challenge. Narrowly, this is a film about one woman’s story and how it affects an entire county. And yet zoomed out, this is a story concerning a country’s overall conversation about equality, choice, and internal politics. We appreciated the creative challenge this presented and the opportunity the kind folks at FX provided us.

Several concepts were explored with the final look being a photographic reinterpretation of imagery. We used unique and novel lensing techniques to recapture live action series footage and additional US Supreme Court location photography. Custom intermediate lenses crafted of polycarbonate and acrylic were created and combined with fast aperture primes to reinterpret and reframe sequences to be further manipulated via compositing and editing.

Links to Stills and Credits.

You’re the Worst – Season 5

The fifth and final season of You’re the Worst on FXX follows the two narcissistic self-destructive leads, Jimmy and Gretchen, approach towards their impending marriage.

For the episodic package and promos, we spent a couple days shooting thousands of sequential stills on location in Los Angeles throughout the YTW universe. In a broken editorial style we combined the loose photographic compositions of Silver Lake, cast imagery, anonymous wedding moments and letter boards common to the entrance of countless conference rooms, banquet halls, and other rental spaces when converted to wedding reception locations. Additionally, an original typeface was created to match the photographed letter boards and included in the final client toolkit deliverables for later updating of program details.

The reliably blue skied and sun-kissed LA weather let us make time efficient use of our glimmer-glassed, pro-misted, vintage lensed, and color balanced Canon bodies paired with a custom LUT created pre-shoot to unify the color of the final package. We even found ourselves briefly camping inside Ye Rustic Inn to backup flash cards to the cloud, but without getting blacklisted like Gretchen.

Beyond neighborhood specific street photography, further photographic elements like pattern details and obvious, high concept LA scenes of highway traffic, towering palms, distant skylines, etc. were captured and intercut for context.

Link to Stills and Credits.

Knockin’ Boots

The first time you lay your eyes on them, you’re entranced. You’re hypnotized by those delicate calves flexing your direction, but you’re smart and remember there aren’t any muscles in fingers so it’s nothing but all-natural tendons and those hot, hot finger-boots that have you suddenly considering a new future for yourself and this vision of beauty strutting before you.

With moves like The Shy Leg, The Basic Instinct, and The Playful Kitten to name a few, we were happy to get the go-ahead from FX to craft a few temperature raising IDs with all focus on these unexpected steamy getaway sticks. Matched with a laid back R&B track like H-Town’s “Knockin’ Da Boots”, Ginuwine’s “Pony”, Whapp’s “Put It In”, G Gerlz “Ride It and Hide It”, or any number of classic hits, these moves will move.

Get ready to see all the bridesmaids doing The Playful Kitten at the next wedding reception you’re at. Sorry, not sorry.

Link to Stills and Credits.

Sofa King Sexy Pet Sounds for TBS

Welcome to the Thunderfoam? Tee Bee Oh Yes? TB Foam Home? Right to Bare Arms? All potential contenders for titles, but you know Sofa King Sexy is going to win out. We were presented the awesome opportunity to make a handful of short network IDs for the cool crew at TBS earlier in 2018. So, you know we had to move into the wood clad and foam occupied love den for a while and wait for the mood to strike. Everything comes together and makes perfect sense. We said, it makes perfect sense, got it?

In addition to the foam party, we focused some small sensors on some miniscule and micro fauna to pair with audio from TBS series. Unexpected combinations of picture and sound, vivid color, and loose action make for several IDs to stimulate viewers during commercial breaks without explanation.

 
 

Link to Sofa King Sexy Stills and Credits.

Link to Pet Sounds Stills and Credits.

You’re the Worst

For the fourth season of You’re the Worst, we worked with our friends at FX on this package filled with lip bites, eye roll snark, and detached cool.

We were fortunate to snag some time with the FX crew for a quick live action shoot with Chris & Aya to intercut with stylized still photography. Live action mixes with hand crafted type, bound by rhythmic tiling grids in pieces built to surround and support the broadcast series.

We might all be the worst, but hopefully we’re somebody’s worst.

Link to Stills and Credits.

FXX – The Simpsons

When we’re asked to go off-model, we go off-model. To help promote Every Simpsons Ever on FXX, we were asked to craft something new and unexpected that was recognizably Simpsons, but not properly Simpsons. We reduced and reorganized characters and hitched and halted animated movement in an effort to be Simpsons-esque… but, definitely not Simpsons proper. The characters almost merge, but not quite. If one were so daft they may say they are Marging, not merging.

Link to Stills and Credits

FX – The Bridge

To promote the first season of The Bridge on FX, we were provided an illustration of a bisected body and tasked with producing a :15 sec ID/tone piece around this simple image. We did this using sequential photography, painted illustrations, and other live elements selected for their visual connection to the street exteriors of Ciudad Juárez. A matte painted look was sought and combined with in-camera diffusion while a shifting multi-plane arrangement separates and rejoins related elements.

The FX Networks series The Bridge follows two police detectives (one from Mexico, and one from the U.S.) in a joint effort to investigate a serial killer after a woman’s bisected body is found spanning the center of the bridge that links the United States and Mexico between El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez.

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Additional Stills and Credits