Gentleman Scholar Gets Wild with “Spring Breakers” Title Design

When Director Harmony Korine needed the perfect opening for his latest feature-length masterpiece, Spring Breakers, he turned to his friends and collaborators at LA-based creative studio Gentleman Scholar. The famously exacting American auteur entrusted the Gentleman Scholar team with the entire concept and design process. The result is a gorgeous testament to hallucinatory visual excess – a title sequence that stands toe-to-toe with the film’s glittering feminine allure.

Easily ranking as one of the most buzzed-about Hollywood films of the year, Spring Breakers was already well on its way onto the pop-culture landscape when Gentleman Scholar began working with Korine to establish the eerie aesthetics of the titles and credits. Numerous attempts with other designers had left the director especially receptive to new approaches, and he invited the Gentleman Scholar team to invent its own creative brief. “We eventually came up with some weird stuff,” noted GS creative Will Johnson, “but it vibed with him from the get-go. Harmony is a really open dude. He had some ideas as far as framework was concerned, but it was a very open dialogue. Ultimately, we came to him with several ideas and he was very receptive, so things progressed from there.”

The Gentleman Scholar designers were relentless in their search for ideas, eventually finding a muse in the day-glow aesthetics of their own Los Angeles surroundings. “We drew a lot of inspiration from our own “local cheesy vacation spots,”” says GS creative William Campbell. “We went to a Santa Monica beach and explored around there, drawing on the kitschy local beach community ‘look’ and had illustrators and artists on the boardwalk create little things that we eventually drew from to give the titles their final look.”

Gentleman Scholar creatives worked tirelessly with Korine to match the tone of the title sequences to the film’s story, allowing their work to fit seamlessly into Korine’s universe. “The vibe of his storytelling is the kind of work we love to do,” notes Johnson enthusiastically, “but the most exciting thing about this project was the breadth of creative freedom we were given. We really excel at matching an initial concept to flawless execution, and it’s something we would love to do more often.”

Downloads:

Credits:

Product: Spring Breakers Movie
Title: ‘Spring Breakers’
Airdate: 3/22/13
Length & Version: Opening Title Sequence, Main on End Titles

Director: Harmony Korine
Post Supervisor: Anthony Gore

Production / VFX Company: Gentleman Scholar
Executive Producer: Rachel Kaminek
Producer: Tyler Locke
Designers: John-Patrick Rooney, Heather Aquino, Jordan Lyle, William Campbell, Will Johnson
Animators: Rachel Yonda, John-Patrick Rooney
Creative Directors: Will Johnson, William Campbell

About Gentleman Scholar:

Gentleman Scholar is a group of solution-driven artists situated at the intersection of story, style and technology. Wielding extensive experience in strategy, live-action production, animation, digital and print, we help the world’s leading agencies and brands tell their stories.