The Secrets of Hillsong

The FX documentary series, The Secrets of Hillsong explores the scandals and criticisms of an American clout-priest and the Australian group’s religious founders he aligned with.

Our motivation for the concept and design of the episodic package came from the language of these franchised hype-churches, these digital revival tents. Where in the past spitting preachers were enough, now lights, lasers, LED panels and screens command the congregations.

We created a package primarily using in-camera, photographic effects. Real lasers, real smoke, real LED effects, real aberrations of light and lenses were captured and sequenced to deliver a predator and prey narrative, all in keeping with Sunday school traditions. Custom cut screens were intricately built to allow for novel transitions between cruciforms and live action plates. These screens echo the massive electronic onstage LED panels used by these church groups and also the low tech dividers of traditional church confessional booths. Further manipulations were performed with motorized acrylic and glass lens elements between live action plates and high output light setups. As the series exposes the charlatans as constructions, so too does this majority analog package we assembled for FX.

“You know there’s a lot of people wanting someone, to tell them what to do.”

Link to more stills, etc.

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.

The League – Seasons 6 & 7

If fantasy football is hybrid of the little guys wanting to be like the big guys, then why not have a package that itself is a hybrid of big and small.

For season six of the FXX series The League, we created an episodic package made up of several micro-vignettes. Tiny hairstyles, tiny toilets, tiny nudity, and tiny trophies are all there. It has everything except overwhelming scale.

The package was captured entirely as live action. All optical effects captured in camera.

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Link to additional Season 6 Stills and Credits.

 

Below is a montage of the episodic package and promos we created for the seventh and final season of the The League on FXX.

It may be the final season in the trophy room, but the gang of The League isn’t going to go out quietly. Handcrafted busts get theirs when hundreds of gallons of Rafi-Ade explodes across the scene. A celebratory tsunami of orange drink sees the distinguished arrangement sink as FXX closes the book, and the EBDB, on the long fantasy run of The League.

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Link to additional Season 7 Stills and Credits.

The League Season 5

We’ve been sitting on a stash of trophies.

For season 5 of the FX series The League, we created an episodic package for the semi-improvised comedy about 6 friends going to absurd lengths to be crowned the winner of their fantasy football league, and thus win the coveted “Shiva” trophy.

Season 5 also saw the series move from FX to FXX. In keeping with the new network’s tone, we used a pointed color treatment, loose analog lens effects, and varied sequential capture methods to complete the package. It’s all about the win, so we built a ton of custom trophies to share the stage with the ever present Shiva. Trophies and other oddities from a non-sequitur sort of man-cave all mix and mingle in the package.

We also crafted the package for Season 6 which we’ll share more about soon.

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Additional Stills and Credits

FX – Fargo

Oh yeah, you betcha. This winter, we were given the great opportunity to collaborate with the team at FX to design, direct, and deliver the episodic package for the new FX series Fargo. Restrained type, analog ice effects, and stark photography provided by FX and additional shots captured by ourselves all came together in this project. The package is comprised of several individual pieces including editable project files for further customization and updating.

Interestingly, the package includes snow footage from three geographically distant and distinct locales: Fargo, Calgary, and of all places…Portland. The secrets out, just don’t tip off Malvo.

Aces!

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Some roads you shouldn’t go down. Because maps used to say “There be dragons here.” Now they don’t. But that don’t mean the dragons aren’t there.

Additional Stills and Credits

POST UPDATED 06/07/16 with montage of the episodic package and promos.