MARK OF A KILLER - title sequence & Social Campaign

PROCESS

Usually I had a week to understand the show and output concepts for the show’s title sequence. I would only have a brief and I would be lucky if half an episode would be produced by that point. Once the concept was chosen, we spent a week in pre-production, a day for the shoot and then a week to animate the open.

I produced 7 potential ideas for the show open. Each of the six serial killers had a particular type of “trophy“ that would be featured in the sequence. Sometimes, existing crime photography was available, so I mixed actual crime scene photos with our shot photos.

Overview

Each of the 6 episodes of Mark of a Killer featured an infamous serial killer from the 1970-1980s. The commonality between all the killers were their meticulous obsession with macabre details and their bizarre “trophies”. Oxygen needed creative for the title sequence and the social media campaign.

TOOLS & SKILLS

  • Adobe Creative Suite, including After Effects, Indesign, Photoshop & Illustrator

  • Strong communication skills, generating ideas and pitching projects

  • Producing strong concepts that fit both the product and the brand

  • Changing creative quickly based on feedback and course correction

  • Directing photo shoots, directing props dept

 

Creating Concept boards

I created a variety of different concepts and the SVP chose a combination of concept 1 and concept 6 (pictured below).

Rejected concepts

 

THE photo shoot→

Under my direction, we photographed hundreds of objects and obsessively placed them to mimic the minds of these serial killers.

←We captured real objects

Someone donated their wedding locket to be photographed.

 

Social media campaign→

Each of the six episodes had featured images associated images with it.

We pulled a quote from each episode and created a type animation style that mimicked the obsessive mind of the killers.

We paired the creative with the real voices of the detectives interviewed in the show.

←real voices in social posts

This one featured the voice of the main FBI agent. The text animations were synced to the voice and then a layer of music and a layer of sound design were added.

In this case, actual crime scene footage was used →

←met multiple deadlines, and kept the project moving forward

Outcome

The SVP of development decided the show’s title sequence should go in a different direction: an based on new B-Roll. The images from the shoot were used for the social media campaign on Instagram instead.

 

← demonstrated an effective pivot of strategy at the last minute

The final show open was output based on new B-Roll created by the production company.

Client: Oxygen/NBC. 2018.
Design, Animation, On-set Director: Natalie To
Editor: Justin Peach
Creative Director: Kaori Sohma
SVP Creative and Brand Strategy: Nancy Mazzei

Every episode of Mark of a Killer features a real-life serial killer that can be identified with a different "mark" or trophy from the scene. Serial killers referenced in the open are the eyeball killer and the dating game killer. The open uses b-roll footage from the show with fingerprints tying back to the show’s logo.