Mr. Robot Title Sequence
Motion Design/Time-Based Communication
Motion Design/Time-Based Communication
Motion Design/Time-Based Communication
Motion Design/Time-Based Communication
Motion Design/Time-Based Communication
Motion Design/Time-Based Communication
Motion Design/Time-Based Communication
Motion Design/Time-Based Communication
Motion Design/Time-Based Communication
Typography
Designer(s)
Henry Wilkinson
Duration
3 Weeks
Recognitions
Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot is among my favourite television dramas, not only because of the excellent story and standout cinematography, but also because of the accurate portrayal of hacking and computer operation. As a person who has grown up with a keen interest in computing I’ve always felt let down by its portrayal on television, hacking is usually treated as a means to an end plot device with little care given to its execution, technical accuracy, or feasibility. There is none of this nonsense in Mr. Robot! The show is designed around real tools, real vulnerabilities, and has actual security consultants give input on the various hacks built around the plot. I highly recommend watching the show once you’re done looking at my portfolio, it gets a full 10/10 from me!
Because of Mr. Robot's focus on accuracy I wanted to create a title sequence that mirrored the show's ethos. The command line interface is an obvious choice for a show about hacking and Kali Linux's terminal makes many appearances in the show alongside Linux Mint. Each shot showcases a different program running in a terminal with the actor's name integrated somewhere that makes sense. Where possible I tried to use command line programs that related to each actor's character and their actions in the show: Martin Wallström (Tyrell Wellick) hacks an employee's phone early on and his title has him writing a bootable .iso to an SD card, Gloria Reuben (Krista Gordon) is having her name be made into a wordlist used to check passwords against to crack them with Crunch, Christian Slater (Mr. Robot) is wiping data with Shred.
Title Card
Mr. Robot doesn’t actually have a dedicated title sequence (which is partly the reason I chose it for this project) but it does have a rather distinct title card which I wanted to carry over into my titles. The show usually keeps things pretty consistent with the title card, often using its timing for dramatic effect, but occasionally plays around with the format and type treatments to fit the episode. The pixel sorting effect on the title card was the single shot made with Nuke using the excellent h_pixelsort gizmo by Mads Hagbarth Damsbo.
Process, Pipeline, and Technical Nonsense
This project has the most complex pipeline I have created so far and is my first experience working with OCIO and ACES. Does this project benefit from wide gamut support and the camera-matching features afforded by ACES? Probably not, though it was still an interesting learning experience to say the least. To begin I divided my audio track (which I also created drawing heavily from Mac Quayle’s original soundtrack) into 14 sections by bar to ensure each cut is on the beat. For each shot I ran commands either on my MacBook or in a 2015 Kali Linux VM. After saving the output to a text file and editing in the actor’s names, each sequence was re-animated After Effects, and exported to to Blender for camera movement, and the custom LCD shader. Shots were then run through Natron for film grain, chromatic aberration, and lens distortion, and finally assembled in Olive.
