Style Frames NYC

Opening Titles

Conference openers have become the vehicle of choice for many studios to show what they can do without an overbearing client or agency brief hemming them in. The creative constraints for conference openers are usually very loose, inviting experimentation and risk-taking that’s hard to find in the commercial world.

While the budgets may be low, the expectations are very high. And for a conference about “the art of the pitch,” the expectations are unusually high.

Motionographer Interview & Behind the Scenes Feature

Tendril’s longtime friend and collaborator John Black (of CypherAudio) was approached by Stash Magazine editor and STYLE FRAMES executive producer Stephen Price to create a musical framework for the show’s opening titles. John recommended Tendril as a great partner to create a visual, and soon after we were meeting with Stephen to discuss.

After some initial brainstorming at the studio, our Creative Director Chris Bahry reached out to the ultra talented filmmaker, designer and musician Anthony Scott Burns. Anthony had left commercial work to pursue feature film, and to us this project and client seemed like the perfect chance for an overdue collaboration.

Together we came up with the self-referential story of a person creating a pitch, and the nightmarish encounters he has with himself and five ‘Gods’ that represent aspects of his creative psyche – the ‘Gods’ represent flesh/blood; technology/power; rest/play; form/function; love/passion.

We figured that anyone who has engaged in a pitch or any kind of creative process under pressure will identify with aspects of the ‘Ritual’ that plays out over the course of the sequence. With pitches, we put the best of ourselves out there to be the ones selected for a project and it’s a painful and exhilarating experience. It’s the nerd/artist’s equivalent of extreme sports. It’s not meant to be a message that pitching is bad at all; but when we really got into it, things quickly became visceral and dark. We wanted to be true to the subject and this is what came out.

Behind the scenes

For the gods we used a teeter totter rig, which allowed us to lift our two actors off the ground for the shot where we see the gods creeping up from behind. We also made a chest harness with aircraft cable that allowed our actors to lean forward.

For the flying shots, we’d do a pass on the dolly track and then we’d position that tracking data in 3D along with the footage and add a 3D camera to make it feel like the gods were moving through the space and not the camera! It’s almost a miracle that it worked as well as it did.