Picturemill + Hyperobject + HBO

Picturemill was thrilled to collaborate with the creative minds at MacGruber to craft the opening credits for their new series following the continuing adventures of the iconic character. The showrunners wanted to build an opening that brought the inner world of the hero into the spotlight. Getting to the heart of MacGruber meant working with the legend himself, Will Forte, to capture the many sides and emotions of the beloved character. Picturemill shot footage with Will Forte to reveal more of MacGruber than we had ever seen before in this explosive sequence that is as cool as MacGruber knows himself to be.

Picturemill packed our bags and shook our feet to bring life to the opening title sequence for Netflix’s “A Week Away” camp musical. The filmmakers wanted to celebrate the cast of characters and foreshadow the fun that awaited viewers at the camp they would soon see. Using stop motion animation, Picturemill created dynamic moments of dancing shoes, wiggling sunblock, licorice trails, polaroids of past camp memories, and much more bouncing to the beat of the music. It all crescendos with a camera move into a Nashville city sticker that seamlessly becomes moving footage.

To promote Paramount’s new film Sonic the Hedgehog, Picturemill was approached to conceive and execute a high energy music video merging film footage, custom footage of the artists’ performances and homages to Sonic’s 16bit legacy.

Working closely with Paramount Music and the filmmakers of Sonic the Hedgehog, Picturemill supervised a live action shoot with the artists Wiz Khalifa, Ty Dolla $ign, Lil Yachty and Sueco the Child. Once filming completed, we handled all editorial and post production on the video. Custom avatars for each artist were designed and animated before integration into Sonic’s 16bit world, while live-action footage of the artists were composited against fun 16bit backgrounds.

Dubbed by The Verge as “a fever dream of a music video” and “pure nonsensical fun” the final video has quickly gone viral, racking up over 10 million views on YouTube alone since its release.

HBO’s Succession tells the story of a powerful international media mogul and the dysfunctional family politics around his impending retirement. Mirroring the themes of the series, this title sequence shows the emotional isolation of the father from his children amid a world of wealth and power.

Rather than constructing an elaborate metaphor, Picturemill literally created a past holiday event for the family, filmed with authentic 8mm cameras, to highlight the cross-generational story. To further heighten the separation from past and present, the high-resolution, widescreen modern footage is juxtaposed with the 8mm vintage pillar boxed 4×3 film.

For the series’ second season, Picturemill evolved the sequence while maintaining the Emmy award-winning theme by composer Nicholas Britell. Seamlessly incorporating new footage filmed by Picturemill on authentic VHS cameras, a typical weekend at the family’s summer home is shown. As time has passed the children from Season 1 have grown to teenagers, with the innocent playtime of their youth replaced by conflict and disillusionment.

Though separated by decades, the past and present are shown to be nearly identical for this powerful family, with time deepening wounds instead of healing them.

We worked in large scale to capture the fantastical yet familiar world of Bright. Produced and filmed on location, the sequence takes viewers on a tour of Los Angeles. Once photography was complete, Picturemill handled editorial duties on the sequence and added custom street graffiti hinting at the backstory of Bright’s world throughout via compositing and CG.

Continue down to check out our behind the scenes look at the sequence.