From Newlyweds and teenagers to divorcees and retirees are among five disparate couples profiled in "Love Etc.", director Jill Andresevic's poignant documentary about modern love in the big city.
To connect the film's diverse cast of characters under one universal theme and aesthetic, producer Chiemi Karasawa turned to Nice Shoes design director Brian Bowman and his team of illustrators to create the opening titles and five storybook-style transitional sequences. Bowman had previously worked with Karasawa on Tell Them Anything You Want, director Spike Jonze's documentary about Where The Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak.
"The director came to us with all these references of 30-to-40-year-old ago illustrations, ranging from Saul Bass title design to old New Yorker cartoons," said Bowman. "As a bunch of illustration buffs, we really go gaga for that kind of stuff."
Set in New York City's five boroughs, each of the five vignettes in "Love Etc." begins with an animated chapter marker hand-drawn by illustrator Eve Weinberg. Next, the audience is taken on a brief tour of the couple's neighborhood through a mix of live action and animated footage that gradually segues into an illustrated map of the area. The design team also drew a bookish, custom type based on the traditional serif font Adobe Caslon that gives the whimsical sequences a sense of structure.
The titles, which took six weeks to develop and produce, is the latest in a handful of independent film jobs Nice Shoes has produced this year. Bowman hopes indie feature work will become a mainstay of the creative studio's design division and enjoys the creative challenge each project poses.
"Documentary filmmakers tend not to have graphic sensibilities in their films - their stories come alive in the edit," added Bowman. "Together we were able to go through an exploratory design process so things that were initially scrapped ended up being a big part of the film."