“We asked a lot of the Thornberg & Forester team and they totally delivered. They created a graphic template and logo for our show along with a complex opening title sequence that blended 3D graphics and animation with dozens of pieces of video. And while the time frame for the assignment was short they came through in the clutch. We couldn’t be happier with both the process and the result.”
– VP, The President Show
T&F was thrilled to be awarded this amazing project from our good friends at Comedy Central. We were engaged to design the identity, show open and package for an awesome, new half-hour show entitled The President Show. Hosted by actor, writer, comedian and infallible Donald Trump impersonator, Anthony Atamanuik, the weekly show comes at a much needed time for our country. Trump’s sidekick, Vice President Mike Pence, is played by writer and actor Peter Grosz (Veep, The Colbert Report, Late Night with Seth Myers).
To kick things off, we met with Anthony, Peter and the TPS writing team to brainstorm and learn what they wanted to hit from a branding and storytelling perspective. A week later, we presented our initial creative deck. Our presentation contained six fleshed out treatments for the show open (two of which were manifestations of ideas from the writers), as well as a generous helping of logotypes and marks.
The decision to move forward with the ‘Construction of Trump’ was made. The goal would be to show the construction of an enormous Trump edifice being erected in Washington DC. The edifice itself would be the collection of several huge monitors being flown in from afar by sky cranes and lowered into position. Each monitor would contain clips of things that make Trump the person that he is. The monitors would then ‘sizzle off’ to reveal the massive edifice. Once revealed, we thought it would be perfect to have a reactionary expression happen..so we filmed Anthony and captured four of his Trump facial expressions. Just after his smile, the White House crashes down and we zoom into the front doors to launch into the show.
Securing content to live in the monitors was no small task. The team at Comedy Central pushed the desired content through legal and received approval on twenty-four clips and images. The clips range from Mussolini, Nixon, hot dog factories, [Trump] steaks, a time-lapsed decaying fox and the barbaric execution of Topsy the elephant in 1903 to stills of Andrew Jackson, George Washington and former President Barack Obama’s actual birth certificate. The show package called for a lower third system, bumps, transitions, logo animations, over-the-shoulders and animated backplates. Our animation team crafted a highly intuitive toolkit by generating custom scripts to expedite production. We also delivered a comprehensive styleguide to ensure design integrity.
