When Apple created its most powerful Mac ever, few artists realized its capabilities. And so it was that Apple came to Erin Sarofsky with a simple request: Show the world what iMacPro can do. Erin’s film for Apple’s Artist Film series does just that with a magical mix of live action, CG (both photo-real and illustrated) and compositing.  Her simple concept? Bring an old sketchbook and its array of contents to life.

In Marvel Studio’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, straight-shooting ‘40s-era hero Steve Rogers aka Captain America has to confront all kinds of conundrums to save a world where everything’s upside down. Thrust from a simpler past into a 21st century zeitgeist where bad guys pose as good, good guys spy and lie, and nobody’s sure who to trust, Rogers has one hell of a mess to sort. For starters? The espionage agency where he works has been infiltrated by yet-to-be-exposed evil forces. His boss brands him a criminal fugitive.  His most reliable ally is a female spy with a questionable moral compass. And he has to dodge the bullets of a brainwashed hitman who used to be his best friend. Things just get more complicated from there.Directed by the Russo Brothers, the film’s character-driven plot of intrigue and espionage makes it more of a 70s conspiracy thriller than the typical super-hero movie. We wanted our main-on-end title sequence to reflect that.  To get there, we distilled the complexity of the story themes and characters down to their most basic elements. Working in a simple style with bold graphics and strong, legible typography, we created iconographic vignettes representing the actors and themes. Combined with our use of positive and negative space, the finished sequence has a Russian constructivist feel that pushes the principals of gestalt to their fullest potential. There are stars and there are stripes, shifting gears and winding tentacles, swirling shields and  shattering panels, as heroes and villains battle in a shifting sequence of white on black on red. Everything moves with the tense, throbbing musical score from Henry Jackman that builds along with our story. Taking such a minimalist approach with this main-on-end sequence proved to be the perfect resolution for the film. Boldly contrasting heroes and villains, good and evil, the sequence reinforced the films themes simply and clearly.

A monumental surprise awaited viewers of the Emmy Award-winning Full Frontal with Samantha Bee when the show’s new main title sequence was released. Designed and directed by our illustrious leader, Erin Sarofsky,  the highly stylized 20-second introduction presents Samantha the way the world increasingly sees her: A curious giant in the cultural landscape.