The One Show
The One Show is the world's most prestigious award show in advertising and design. For over 50 years, the Gold Pencil has been regarded as one of the top prizes in the creative industry. The One Show has a rich legacy of honoring some of the most groundbreaking ideas, created by some of the most remarkable minds in creativity.
Category
Title Sequences
Annual ID
OS23_MI043B
About the Work
“The White Lotus" Season Two Main Title Sequence is a lavishly-painted, operatic romp straight through the soul of the show. A series of richly detailed frescos hold endless stories of romance, carnal lust, lonely hearts, and potential doom.
Showrunner Mike White discovered Trompe-l'œil frescoes in a Sicilian villa where they filmed scenes for Episode 3. These striking images became the understructure for our title work, and drew a clear connection to our “wallpaper” concept of Season One.
We conceived the main title sequence as a journey of abundance and over-indulgence, Italian style. Working in lockstep with Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s score, the sequence begins with the best of romantic intentions, but as it progresses, a more primal force takes over, and things begin to devolve.
While high resolution stills of the villa’s walls served as a foundation, we significantly augmented with new storylines befitting a “bedroom farce.” Creating original scenes and re-imaging others, we painted, and animated to bring forth humor, romance, tragedy, jealousy, and the profane; mirroring the show themes.
We mined the scripts to develop scenarios for each cast and crew member, that highlighted an aspect of their demeanor, story arc, or revealed the character’s inner world. Countless clues hide within the paintings, revealing more meaning with each episode viewed.
These newly imagined storylines were challenged in their need to comingle with the 16th century landscapes. We also recombined elements from the paintings and put them in new settings. Illustrator Lezio Lopes, continuously discovered ways to digitally paint new people, animals, architecture, and landscaping in a way that blended into the historic.
We opted for minimum animation and visual effects, adding only small lighting touches and motion. The result was a portal to the show that collided centuries-old art with the digital to create something both provocative and beautiful.
2023 Awards
Total Points: 9
Bronze Pencil
Credits
Design Firm
Plains Of Yonder / Seattle
PR / Marketing Agency
cwpr | carrie wick public relations / Los Angeles
Director
Katrina Crawford
Mark Bashore
Editor
Katrina Crawford
Mark Bashore
Illustrator
Lezio Lopes
Photographer
Dan McComb
Katrina Crawford
Producer
Paul Williamson
For HBO: Series Created, Directed, & Written By
Mike White
For HBO: Series Executive Producer
David Bernad
Mark Kamine
Mike White
MUSIC COMPOSER
Cristobal Tapia de Veer
Kim Neundorf
Publicist
Carrie Wick
Visual Effects & Animation
Cian McKenna
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