Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1144162
Working at Territory's San Francisco office with a small team gave Romances an opportunity to learn about technology as it was being developed. He encountered "crazier shit than we're doing in movies." He addresses the design of fictional interfac- es as if he were building the real thing. In fact, in his work on The Martian, he says they worked from the real-life controls of machines built by NASA; sometimes they reskinned NASA controls. And even though he is creating digital controls and screens, Romances tries to work within physical constraints, to be sure they are plausible and understandable, as are the actions and reactions of the characters with their tools. "An interface is like a joke," he says. "If you have to explain it, it doesn't work." NEW AGE OF MOTION DESIGN As motion graphics has become more powerful and accessible in soware tools from Maxon, Adobe, Blackmagic, Foundry, and Autodesk, the art of motion design has taken off and has become attractive to the thoughtful appreciation of audienc- es. Elastic, for example, has broken new ground with its titles by Patrick Clair for True Detective, while Territory Studio made the bleak credits for Bruno Centofanti's How to be Human. Karin Fong, founding member of creative company Imaginary Forces, also spoke at the Motion Plus Design festival in LA about her work as creative director (with Michelle Dougherty) on the titles for Boardwalk Empire. Fong's work covers a range of styles. Her titles for the dual universe TV show Counterpart have a Bassian quality to them, but for the swashbuckling pirate show Black Sails, she used the style of religious sculp- ture to describe her beautiful terrible pirates and pull together the sacred and the pro- fane into a dance of warring powers. For the video game God of War II, she went full-on red-fire hell god, and clearly enjoyed herself. And on A Monster Calls, a quirky story about animation coming to life for a child, she was able to indulge her love for typography and create beautiful animations using drawings and paint. When Fong came to the Boardwalk Empire project, she had plenty of resources to work with, maybe too many. They were working on the titles as director Martin Scorsese was finishing up the first episode, so they had plenty of preliminary work to go on, including the set, a beautiful re-creation of the Atlantic City boardwalk, and a wealth of historical artifacts from the era and the painstaking work of the art department. According to Fong, Scorsese had thought they would use the boardwalk set for the show's titles, and, she was in love with the set and all the detail that had gone into creating it. Her idea was to contrast the old-fashioned good-time fun of carny America of the '20s in the daytime, with the sleazy glamor of the boardwalk at night. As they worked on ideas for the titles, though, they began to realize they didn't want to be tied too much to the tropes of the '20s. As the work for Boardwalk Empire unfold- ed, the team went through multiple ideas, creating several sets of storyboards but gradually coming around to center in on the lead character, Nucky Thompson, played by Steve Buscemi. And, instead of creating a period piece in sync with the series, they decided to combine a modern soundtrack by Brian Jonestown Massacre, with straight ELASTIC HAS BROKEN NEW GROUND IN TITLES, SUCH AS FOR TRUE DETECTIVE. AMONG THE AMAZING WORK BY KARIN FONG OF IMAGINARY FORCES IS THE OPENING CREDITS TO HBO'S BOARDWALK EMPIRE.