Los Angeles visual effects and design company A52 earned an Emmy for Outstanding Main Title Design on HBO's CARNIVÀLE series. The award was presented during the 2003-2004 Creative Arts Primetime Emmys segment of the 56th Annual Emmy Awards presentation at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Sept. 12.
A52s work on this project also earned the PROMAX Gold Award in the category of Non-Promotional Animation earlier this year.
A52's artistic tarot exploration united 2D/3D design, visual effects and High-Definition finishing. High-resolution scans of famous artworks were separated into foreground and background elements, then assembled into "2.5D" sequences inside SideEffects Software's Houdini. Motion sequences were carefully edited to highlight historical events, and the entire :90 was assembled in Discreet inferno.
A52s project credits include creative director Angus Wall, exec producers Rick Hassen and Darcy Leslie Parsons, senior producer Scott Boyajan, visual effects supervisors and inferno artists Patrick Murphy and Simon Brewster, designers Vonetta Taylor, Ryan Gibson and Jesse Monsour and 3D animators Denis Gauthier, Westley Sarokin and Jeff Willette.
The live-action footage of the CARNIVALE title artwork in the sand was supervised by Patrick Murphy and Vonetta Taylor and filmed by director of photography James Glennon on location in the Santa Clarita Valley.
CARNIVÀLE is exec produced by Ronald D. Moore, Daniel Knauf and Howard Klein. In addition to Todd London, post-production credits also include post-production supervisors Shane Keller and April Rossi, and post-production coordinator Beth Tashjian.
Absolutely Archives in Maryland did much of the research, and Susan Nickerson of Nickerson Research provided additional stock footage research support. Stock imagery was provided by Amistad Research Center, Art Resource, Corbis, Freer Gallery of Art, The Mary Evans Picture Library. Original imagery was also commissioned by illustrator Jimmy Yamasaki of LAs 88phases. Motion stock footage was provided by CMG Worldwide, FAST Images, Film Archive, Grinberg Images, John E. Allen (JEA) Inc., Streamline and the UCLA Film & Television Archives.
Project colorists included Tim Masick at Company 3 in New York, Dennis Cardamone at Ascent Media in Burbank and Tim Bono at Bono Film & Video in Arlington, Virginia.
Established in 1997 as a home for the very latest high-end photoreal visual effects technologies and some of the industrys most innovative and talented graphic design artists, West Hollywood visual effects and design company A52 (www.A52.com) creates award-winning imagery for visually ambitious commercial and television projects.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
