Reign of Fire

Conceptual and design development for Reign of Fire theatrical marketing materials. Way back before Christian Bale became a super star.

Synopsis: During Underground construction in London around the year 2008, a huge, hibernating dragon is discovered and springs to life, instantly incinerating all construction workers with its fiery breath. The only survivor is the 12-year-old Quinn Abercromby (Ben Thornton), whose mother (Alice Krige) was chief of the construction crew. The dragon escapes, and soon thousands of them work their way through Europe and eventually the rest of the world, burning everything, feeding on the ashes, and multiplying at an exponential rate. The world powers use their most powerful weapons, but this only hastens the destruction of the planet.

In 2020, the adult Quinn (played by Christian Bale) runs a medieval stone castle in Northumberland, a lonely bastion of mankind, afraid of the sky and the dragons that could attack any time. Their hope is to outlast the dragons, wait until they die out again (as they presumably did several times before) and go into hibernation. Unfortunately, the people are beginning to starve while waiting for their crops to ripen.

One day, a team of American dragon-slayers arrive, led by Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey) and bringing a Chieftain tank and an Agusta A109 helicopter, piloted by Alex (Izabella Scorupco). Mistrusting, but needing each other, the two leaders Quinn and Van Zan work together and eventually manage to kill the dragon that destroyed the crop. The inhabitants of the castle celebrate the victory, only to be chastised by Van Zan, who is disgusted by their behaviour, having lost three of his team in the battle.

Afterwards Van Zan and Alex tells Quinn that all dragons his unit have encountered so far are female. Their theory is that they are like fish, the females would lay their eggs, then the male would come and fertilize them, leaving them with the concept that there is only a single male within the whole dragon population world-wide.

Van Zan and his unit go to London to find the single male dragon, and discover a road block. Van Zan then sends Alex to find a new way around. The male dragon soon arrives and annihilates nearly the entire army. The male dragon follows their route back to the castle and destroys it. The castle inhabitants are however saved by hiding in an underground shelter that is designed to survive the intense heat, but Quinn’s dear friend, Creedy, is killed, as he tries to go save more people in the castle.

Defeated, Van Zan returns to the castle, rescuing Quinn and the surviving children from the castle’s cellar. Quinn tells Van Zan that they and Alex will hunt the male dragon in London. They use the helicopter to follow the coastline to the city, unnoticed, where they learn that the dragons are beginning to starve and are resorting to cannibalism. Denton’s plan is to fire an explosive charge, placed on a crossbow, into the dragon’s mouth during the brief moment it inhales, drawing air to produce fire. During the battle, Van Zan is unable to destroy the dragon using his crossbow and attack the dragon with no more than his axe in a head on leap. He is killed when the dragon swallows him in mid-air. Quinn and Alex are able to lure the dragon to street level and Quinn destroys it with his own crossbow.

At least three months after the male dragon is slain, Quinn and Alex are seen erecting a radio tower and receive a transmission from another group of survivors in France.

Watching Ellie

Blind created the main title for Watching Ellie which aired on NBC from Feb 2002 to May 2003 staring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as cabaret singer Ellie Riggs.

New Jersey Quitcenter

“Graphic” and “intelligent” were among the words McCracken used to describe the quick-moving, streetwise approach taken by this three-part series of 30-second anti-smoking spots for the New Jersey Department of Health’s Quitcenters. The creative team of Santa Monica, Calif.-based Blind photographed successive sheets of oversized Plexiglas layered with scraps of halftone art, degraded text and an assortment of found objects to deliver an anti-smoking message that’s both sophisticated and direct. In-camera optical effects and hand-drawn animation serve to engage a youthful audience without talking down to them.

MAGS, Hasbro’s Music Activated Game System

The five spots, “Bumpin’ Beaver,” “Bali Blast,” “Bashin’ Benicio,” “Boogie Blender” and “Bank Burglar,” use characters inspired by both logos and club flyer artwork to show situations mixing music with gaming (M.A.G.S.’ raison d’etre). The boards from Grey conveyed the idea using simple line art on a bed of single colors, which Blind’s team, led by creative director and lead designer/animator Tom Koh, stylized in order to add context and flavor to the campaign.

“We started thinking about artwork that might seem fitting to the market we were trying to reach. After brainstorming, we realized a lot of club or rave flyer graphics were sophisticated in style but child-like in appearance,” says Koh. “They had given us roughs of ideas on their boards, so we redesigned all of the characters. We had started on the beaver spot, the original character. We wanted it to feel like an icon or logo and based it on geometric shapes.”

The beaver character set the tone for the campaign; from this point, the process of character design and animation proceeded in tandem. Working on a limited timeline of roughly 6 weeks, Koh and his team passed ideas back and forth, with the needs of the animation department influencing design as often as the design guided the animation.

“For much of the characters, I designed using Adobe Illustrator and we animated in After Effects. Generically speaking on each spot we’d take all the artwork created and design a whole shot list. After the shot list, we’d organize an entire sequence, and after laying our sequence, we’d go forth into animation,” says Koh.

Koh had previously experimented with such modular characters on a short film project, which helped streamline designing and animating characters quickly. 3D Plugins available for After Effects allowed animated camera moves within each spot and color correction was done with flame. Koh worked with one animator more versed in 3D and another more fluent in Flash animation, resulting in different perspectives as well as the creation of “Boogie Blender,” a more 2D take on the campaign’s idea. This spot comes across like a graphic representation of a recipe or instructional guide and less a humorous scenario.

Music and sound was handled by JSM, New York with tunes appropriate for each scenario; for example the blender spot reflects the visuals, referencing Mixmaster Mike or Qbert-esqe scratching, while “Bumpin’ Beaver” begins with more clubby beats that morph into Bill Withers-like vocals.

Dogtown & Z-Boys

Directed and co-written by skateboard legend-turned-filmmaker Stacy Peralta, the Sundance Award-winning documentary, Dogtown & Z-Boys, chronicles the exploits of the a legendary cadre of young Venice / Santa Monica area skaters known as the”Z-Boys” and explores how their gravity defying stunts and aggressive attitudes led to the creation of modern skateboarding as it is known today.

In the first of many collaborations with Peralta, Blind created the main titles and interstitial graphics by fusing together a variety of complementary elements, including stock photographs, film textures and assorted clips of footage, to support and enhance the mixed media effects already employed throughout the film.

see also: Riding Giants, Crips & Bloods and Whopper Virgins.

Meth 911

Capturing the raw emotion of an emergency 911 call, the spot uses edgy, graphically-charged typography to create a mood of acute agitation and distress. Fragments of gritty, abraded text are juxtaposed & jammed together to make visceral the voiceover’s frantic call for help and convey an all-pervasive sense of desperation & helplessness. The dramatic contrasts of darkness & light which characterize the piece were created by overlaying materials of varying grades of translucency (e.g., acetate, vellum, tracing paper, etc.) on top of a small, portable light box. The elements generated by the shoot were cut together on an Avid Express then finished in Adobe After Effects where extra lighting effects and film grain were added.

Mitsubishi Motors

MCI/Worldcom

MCI WorldCom Inc. launched a new initiative aimed at strengthening the company’s position in the advanced data and Internet services industry. Under the new plan, the company hopes to deliver everything from network and access services to hosting and web site creation to burgeoning e-businesses, as well as traditional companies that are adding a ‘click-and-mortar’ component to corporate strategies.

“This is a fundamental shift in our company, where we make investments, how we train our people and where we deploy our resources,” says Bernie Ebbers, MCI WorldCom’s CEO. We’re going to become the preeminent provider of a whole range of services that help our customers succeed in the e-business space.

The initiative, which consists of five core service sets, will build upon the Internet transport and access capabilities of UUNET, an MCI WorldCom business unit. Among the five service sets provided will be network and access, hosting, and turn-key and customized web solutions. The company says it will commit an additional $1.2 billion to expand its collocation by 40 percent. When completed, MCI WorldCom will have 2.6 million square feet of collocation facilities in 112 cities worldwide.

Microsoft Windows 2000