Our friends at USA came to us to create packaging for Graceland. A new summer show that was going to be somewhat different than their typical fare.
The directive was to capture the essence of broad story narrative in gritty, neo-noir portraits of the characters in their SoCal world.
We started by drawing inspiration from Tony Scott's Man on Fire. Specifically lifting the rich layering and edit style of the film. The show's tagline, "Your Lies Are Your Life", is a reference to the intense nature of being an undercover agent with a new identity. We wanted to visually represent the duality of the characters through overlays and lens distortions - capturing the machinations they must go through to keep their stories, their covers, and their identities intact.
We shot on location for over a week, shooting talent and B-roll with multiple Red cameras and a single hand-cranked 35mm camera to give it that Man On Fire filmic effect.