CD Raffi Simonian and the Filmograph crew serve up an intricate mix of live-action, animation, and VFX to set a tone of gritty apprehension in this title sequence for the Amazon MGM action thriller A Working Man.

Raffi Simonian: “Working closely with director David Ayer, we took on the task of creating a prologue establishing Levon Cade’s (Jason Statham) personal history as a bitter war hero who has left his fighting days behind in favor of an under-the-radar life as a construction foreman.

“The opening shot of the film immediately following the main title sequence sees Levon abruptly awakening from his slumber in the front seat of his truck. We used that as the impetus to create a sequence that felt like a repetitive dream that haunts him, while providing the exposition necessary about his past.
 

“Our efforts to maintain an abstract dream structure, while still delivering a solid backstory to audiences was our main challenge in editorial.”

 
“To harvest a vast array of imagery that could represent Levon’s story, we collaborated with Ayer on a live-action shoot. Soldiers, weapons, ammunition, documents, and many other elements were all filmed on a stage over the course of a day. The result was hundreds of takes we could then edit, track, effect, and color to help bring our story to life.

“Our efforts to maintain an abstract dream structure, while still delivering a solid backstory to audiences was our main challenge in editorial. In earlier iterations, we used our raw footage, stock imagery, and unfinished animations to arrange and rearrange shots to find our structure and timings.

“Once we received the final score and had our shots developed, we moved to refine things, lock the edit and advance to an online delivery.”
 
 

 
Client: Amazon MGM, Cedar Park Entertainment
Director: David Ayer

Production: Filmograph
CD: Raffi Simonian
EP; Seth Kleinberg
Producer: Troy Miller
Live Action: John De Menil, Aaron Becker, Mick Froehlich
Designer/animator: Mike Lo, Hsien Lun Su, Joseph Ahn, Li-Yu Chen
CG Artists: Lee Nelson, Eric Keller

Special Thanks: Michael Tinger, Anthony Scott, Fred Raskin, Sylvester Stallone, Chris Long