BEN AFFLECK | WARNER BROTHERS
DESIGN PRESENTATION | END TITLE | LOGOS | MAIN TITLE | 2D MOTION GRAPHICS | EDITORIAL | ILLUSTRATION | STORYBOARD | TYPOGRAPHY

Winner of 3 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Ben Affleck’s Argo tells the story of how six Americans escaped from the U.S embassy in Iran moments before it was overthrown in 1979, and how they were eventually rescued. Along with recreating the studio logos, we crafted both the prologue and main on end titles for the Oscar winning film. Set against the backdrop of a turbulent, late 1970’s Iran, Prologue reinstated the design of the Warner Brothers studio logo from the same era, adding texture to the logo. We treated the GK Films logo, founded in 2007 by Graham King, to look as if it existed during this time period. For the two presenter cards and the Argo main title reveal, the font is from the 1970s, ensuring it was period accurate.The prologue outlines the political events in Iran leading up to the storming of the US Embassy, marking the beginning of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. First, Prologue conducted an extensive search to find rare images from Iranian history, however, there were many story points and images that needed to be communicated through this prologue, and much of them did not exist as stock footage. Additionally, we were not able to shoot or stage any of these supplementary scenes. Because the story is about the creation of a fake film crew, going to Iran with a fake film script, in order to convince the Iranian government that they were making a real movie, the Americans had to generate fake production designs, and run fake adds in the trade magazines to persuade the Iranian government. It occurred to us that it would be ironic to use the language of storyboards and production designs to communicate the story points that detail the historical events under the Shah rule. Prologue animated the sequence, blending together storyboard and production design frames with the real images. For the main on end sequence, as the movie is based on a true story, we wanted to show the events depicted in the movie were based on actual events. Prologue wanted to simply compare the real people and real events with images of the actors and events from the film, side-by-side.