Mill+ co-director Ben Smith with co-director Bryce Wymer teamed up with Netflix to create the stunning title sequence for Marco Polo, a new original series for Netflix, written by John Fusco and produced by The Weinstein Group. The series is based on the famed explorer's adventures in Kublai Khan's court in 13th century China, and exudes lavish and rich aesthetics.
Director:
Ben Smith, Bryce Wymer
Production:
Mill+
Agency:
Netflix / The Weinstein Group
The Mill+ team wanted to visually represent the metaphors of the show with themes of greed, betrayal, sexual intrigue and rivalry by contrasting them with images of beauty, grace in the authenticity of the time.
Ben developed the use of traditional Chinese painting, an ancient decorative art form using ink pictures to tell the story in the titles. The ink creates abstract shapes that transition into 'traditional decorative paintings', but then as the images become clear and take on form, the audience is introduced to dark and forbidden images to match the shows central themes.
The ink paintings were shot mostly in camera with The Mill's 2D team compositing in the wider images of the army, the bird, a severed head and fighting wolves.
The result creates a sequence that contains a duality of visuals; the ink paintings that include slight and subtle subliminal imagery that in turn invites the audience to feel Marco Polo's influence and be a part of his world.
See our behind the scenes blog post here.
Agency: Netflix / The Weinstein Group
Producer: Stuart Burkin
Production: Mill+
Director: Ben Smith, Bryce Wymer
Executive Producer: Danielle Amaral
Live-Action Producer: Tia Perkins
Director of Photography: Adam Carboni
Art Director: Michael Marsicano
Editing Company: Mill+
Editor: Charlotte Carr
Edit Assist: Leanne Belgiorno
VFX & Design: The Mill
Executive Producer: Danielle Amaral
VFX Producer: Carl Walters
Shoot Supervisor: Daniel Giraldo
Creative Directors: Ben Smith, Bryce Wymer
2D Lead Artist: Antoine Douadi
2D Artists: Daniel Giraldo, Yoon-sun Bae, Dan DiFelice
Motion Graphics: Chet Hirsch, Tetsuro Mise
Production Coordinator: Tarun Charaipotra
Illustration: Bryce Wymer, Michael Marsicano
Designer: Gera Frascaroli