BRACAU 27 BLOG'S

Adam Stjärnljus graduated from Hyper Island's Digital Media program (Crew 12) in 2008, and has worked at Waytion since.
Waytion recently released a title sequence for Swedish television program Babel, which Adam worked on. We wanted to catch up with Adam to find out more about the project:

How did you end up at Waytion?
The first time I came in contact with Waytion were back in 2004. I studied at Medieprogrammet in Kalmar and did my 3 month internship at Waytion. I heard about them through the school as a couple of the guys went there themselves. Two years went by and then I started studying at Hyper Island in Karlskrona. I then did my 7 month internship at Waytion, and they asked me if I wanted to stay, which I did. I'm sitting here both as a freelancer and as a part of the company.

How did you come up with the idea of letters floating in the title sequence?
The letter idea was something that we elaborated out together with the producers at SVT. The previous title sequence had letters traveling over the world since Babel used to be a show where they covered authors living all over the globe through interviews from peoples homes and such. The new Babel is more about Swedish authors and is filmed in studio in front of a live audience. We wanted to keep the floating clusters of words and letters but put them in an infinite space which still could be anywhere but close, right in front of you, if that makes sense. That way we kept some of the iconic imagery from the previous work (by StyleWar) and used it in a new context.



What were the different steps in the production process?
SVT were great and let us really get creative and experimental in the production process. Our ambition was to create the whole thing in an analog way. We knew that we would never be able to create the kind of realism and irregularities of the flying letters using a particle system in a computer (or at lest not within the timeframe). We had an open minded approach were we knew that what we thought or hoped we would end up with most certainly would change during the project. Both Svt and ourselves saw this as something positive as it let us get more creative, and also, we couldn't know how the letters would behave or look in the camera.
We bought lots of props, some we needed and some we thought we needed, amongst it a Craft-Robo (printer for cutting out the letters), compressed air, styrofoam and lots more. We also rented a high-speed camera, studio and loads lights for the shoot.

While prepping for the shooting day we refined the idea and did a more accurate storyboard, after some testing back and forth, while at the same time cutting out over 10.000 paper letters with the Craft-Robo. Gabriella Lundgren helped us out and was a rock in this phase as our project coordinator. Even if the Craft-Robo did a great job, human fingers still needed to separate the letters from the paper, which was hell.

We rented a studio for one day and the shoot lasted for something like 30 consecutive hours. The reason for this was that Tommy Håkansson and I had for one, never worked with a high-speed camera and two, wanted to try as many different ways of shooting as possible with lots of different lightning and ways of throwing, blowing and dropping the letters. We shot the footage in 4000 frames per second and the raw material came out beautiful. Much time was spent on saving and reformat the files the camera produced for even though it captures at super high speeds in HD it was quite the opposite for saving... After the shoot we slept for 20 hours the following day.

The post production part was a bliss. We had tons of footage of letters in complex particle clusters where one second of real time became fifty seconds in 25 fps. After selecting the best sequences we continued with editing the material to different styles of music. We had the ambition to have one or maybe two sequences of this ultra slow images move to an ambient score. While it was tempting to go that way we realized that the feel of the opening sequence didn't really match the feel for the show itself. Babel of 2009 is a live show, with a glamourous theme and we therefore needed to rethink. We where handed a song by the executive producer - "A little less conversation..." JXL remix famous from a Nike commercial a couple of years back. Using this track we started to retime the footage, adding more sequences and thus more speed to the main title. We managed to blend the two into a new whole which in the end was the right way to go. Svt made a full scale pilot show in november last year and we saw everything coming together nicely. We had lots of meetings with the set designer and the editorial staff and found a way to melt it all together to the final production that went live in february.

What type of equipment did you use?
At the shoot we used an Arri high speed camera connected to a laptop. Tungsten lights and all the different props we had gathered. We used After Effects for compositing and grading, working on Apple computers and also some 3D for making additional plates of words animating in and out. Most of it however was captured in camera which was fun. Sometimes it's good to get away from the computer...

What were your sources of inspiration for the project?
We were inspired by lots of things but mainly this film that Tommy found. We wanted the same feel of irregularity and lightning, yet more luxurious. With that feel as a base we developed the idea to the final result.

What's up next at Waytion?
At Waytion it's business as usual (which could mean just about anything! :)

See the title sequence for Babel here!


Thanks Adam!

Erik Engström from Hyper Island's Crew 2 has lived and worked in the US since graduation. We wanted to know more:

- Immediately after graduation, I returned to San Francisco where I had spent 6 months as an intern at MetaDesign. After a brief periond at Icon Medialab SF I was contacted by a few former colleagues who had left MetaDesign to start their own company that was to be called Method. 

This was in the end of 98 and it was a very exiting time in San Francisco, the “internet bubble” was inflating rapidly and business was booming. It was the perfect moment to start a company and I had the opportunity to be apart of it from the beginning. 

My first day at work we were assembling office furniture and unpacking our fancy, shiny, blue and white G3s. We were subletting a corner of an office space and it started out with just the founders and myself. Within a few months there was close to 30 of us. I stayed at Method for six years and I'm very grateful for everything I got to experience and learn during my time there.

In 2005, I decided it was time to move on when I was offered a job at Apple Computers. This was a very interesting time as I had the chance to work in a few different groups with everything from Retail graphics and window displays to user interfaces design.

After many years of rather intense work as an employee I wanted to try working on my own on a freelance basis and have been doing for the last year and a half.

What made you choose New York?
Moving to New York was anything but a career move considering I was moving away from all my contacts and moving to a relatively small city in upstate New York where no one knew me and nothing much seems to be going on work wise. It was a gamble but it worked out and I have been fortunate enough to maintain a lot of contacts in SF and create new ones in NYC.

What did you learn during your time at Apple?
I'm not going to deny that giving up my long employment at Method put me out of my comfort zone to say the least, and one of the most valuable lessons I learned is that you are usually capable of more than you realize and big scary changes can turn out to be a lot more manageable then you had anticipated.
More specific to Apple, I learned some things about the effects of hierarchy structures and company culture.

In what way have you utilized what you learned at Hyper Island in your work life?
When I think back on my time at Hyper Island I don't think about learning specific skills or obtaining specific knowledge but rather learning what the occupation requires and how to function as a member of a team. So in that sense, what I learned has been very fundamental and I utilize it all the time.

Have you felt that being Swedish has helped your reputation as a designer?
In some small ways, yes. I sometimes feel like it gives you this credibility that you have done nothing personally to deserve.

What recommendations on how to keep up to date would you give to someone who wants to work with graphic design?
I'm really the wrong person to ask. I don't make any conscious efforts to keep up. You get influenced by everything you see and experience, design related or not.

What would you tell a potential student who's not sure if she/he want to apply to Hyper Island?
In my opinion, if you spend your time wisely at Hyper Island you will be well prepared to tackle what work life throws at you. So I would say – Do it.


Thank you Erik!