Emmy Awards 2020: Outstanding Main Title Design winner

The Godfather of Harlem main title is an homage to the contemporaneous collages created during 1960s Harlem by African-American artist, Romare Bearden (1911-1988). He is best known for his photomontage compositions made from torn images of popular magazines and assembled into visually powerful statements on African-American life. We felt his art was relevant to the show because it shared themes and portrayals of social inequality and the African-American experience that the show similarly explores. The tactile and tangible textures of collage as well as its ability to present and juxtapose different subjects from multiple sources within a single composition was highly influential to the main title design. “The cutting, fragmenting, and reconstruction involved in creating a collage provides apt metaphors for the trauma and violence of war and political oppression, the evisceration of the states quo, and the piecing together of new societal forms” (Rachael DeLue).

The main title INTENTIONALLY reflects many of the techniques, aesthetics, and themes of Romare Bearden, and is a purposeful design for the opening credits of the series not meant to stand separately from its cinematic purpose. It is my hope that interest in the show and the main title will lead to a larger awareness of the artworks of Romare Bearden and other African-American artists.

It was a pleasure and honor to work with this subject, and give tribute to the fighters and activists of the past who fought for their American Dream—by any means necessary. As a minority as well as a child of immigrants, many of the societal issues and themes explored within Godfather of Harlem resonates with me. History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Whether it is equal rights, income inequality, police brutality, racism, or drugs—to name a few—the show reveals how similar and relevant these issues remain to this day. It reminds us that the fight for the American Dream is an ongoing struggle, and each new generation has an obligation to bring forth positive change.

Final Design Screenshots

Pitch Style Frames

Behind the Scenes

Inspiration

The collage art of Romare Bearden

Purely by coincidence, the Soul of a Nation Exhibition: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983 was touring in Los Angeles around that time, and I was able to personally view Bearden’s art up close. I also read “Harlem Godfather”, the biography of Bumpy Johnson co-written by his wife Mayme Johnson and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley” to learn more about the real-life figures that inspired the show.

The paper collage look was created nearly entirely within After Effects and Photoshop. While some paper assets were shot practically in a live-action shoot, going the visual effects route allowed us to work more faster and flexibly than the handmade stop-motion approach. We sourced useable stock imagery, masked sections to create a collage design, and applied a vintage paper texture and effect to achieve our look. The item in this video is an isolated piece from a much larger scene within the main title, and the intention of this video is to demonstrate the digital technique used in the title sequence and is not to be considered as a standalone artwork.

Alt Concept

In this unused alternate concept, I drew inspiration from chess—a passion of Bumpy Johnson’s—to symbolize the power struggle for control on the streets of Harlem and the bigger social struggles of the era. Using a hand-drawn textural approach, we utilize black and white monochromatism to create a stark yet dynamic representation of the show’s themes.