Mill+ teamed up myself and Ben Smith 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. 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.
An entirely unique illustration style was created by depicting western imagery through an eastern medium. The brilliant ambient quality of ink was captured in camera in it’s natural form, and carries the viewer throughout the opening title sequence. Ink itself has such brilliant ambient qualities. and because of that, ink has been used a lot. We really needed to approach the medium in a way that has rarely been done. So we decided to try to capture as much as we could in camera. Some of the shots were composited in post but it was really just because certains aspects of takes were better than others.
Here is a breakdown of the process on the shoot days.
- Digitally project completed illustrations on white 100% cotton watercolor paper.
- 2-3 people paint in the illustration with clear water so the image is completely made of water.
- Turn off digital projector. Now you just have clear water on white paper.
- 2 Red cameras are set up. One locked. One on a slider.
- 2-3 people drop Sumi ink onto various spots within the illustration.
- Edit composite, Build Shots.
- Grade (Color Correction)