The Clapper

2017 • Netflix
Main Title sequence
Directed by Dito Montiel

In The Clapper, Ed Helms plays Eddie—a professional studio audience clapper—who starts his day in Koreatown and makes his way across Los Angeles to a Hollywood soundstage.

For the opening title sequence, we filmed Ed Helms on greenscreen, then composited him into a hand-painted, mixed-media world. The result is a whimsical, slightly surreal journey through a stylized L.A.—reflecting the film’s offbeat tone and Eddie’s outsider perspective.

Additional Animator: Evan Stalker
Matte Painter: Matt Bauer
Additional Roto Artist: Heidi Shon

Special Thanks: Aaron Becker, Seth Kleinberg

Process

For this project we developed a mixed media technique we called “vector-paint.” Using live action 4K video clips, we broke the image into dozens of layers, and individually painted each one. The paintings were then re-assembled and composited with portions of the original video clip. The idea was to blur the line between the real shot and the paintings:

Over several weekends, we drove around Koreatown, Hollywood, and Highland Park looking for locations. Over 20 locations ended up in the sequence.

For a background detail, Jenny made quick gouache sketches of the guys, Gareth, Aaron, and Seth:

… which appear here as posters in this shot: