Framestore Chicago Gets 'Super Pumped' for Showtime with Title Sequence for New Drama Series

Based on Mike Isaac’s book following the meteoric rise and fall of Uber founder, Travis Kalanick, Showtime’s new drama series Super Pumped starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt features a one-minute title sequence created by Framestore’s Chicago studio that sets the show’s tone and energy, while introducing various themes of the show.

Responsible for the end-to-end creation process, from a pitch treatment with multiple options through to development and final execution, the team built seven unique versions of the main theme – one for each episode – to allow for slight variations to the credits. Overseeing the direction and creative of the sequence were Framestore art directors Jake Cuddihy, who led storyboarding, creative direction, filming, direction and editing, and Chris Friesen, who steered the team on creative and technical direction, color grading, direction and design of the procedural city.

Under a tight turnaround deadline, the design team consisting of Matt Beharry, Gabriel Perez and Nathan Zankich employed a combination of Houdini, Cinema 4D and After Effects to create a high-tech, digitized, aesthetic that felt complimentary to the Uber brand; Slick. Clean. Dark. They created hazy, shadowy scenes shot through with bolts of long exposure headlights and bokeh lights, mixing these vignettes with a procedural, illuminating, glassy, data-driven San Francisco. The writers encouraged the concept of the cars and technology “being in the paint, but not the painting,” so the team built a world out of mobile technology materials; glass panels, connecting circuitry, data scraping, tracking, coding, typing fingers, touch-screens, headlights.

“In TK’s words, we were ‘pumped’ to help Showtime’s team explore the Uber story from another angle,” said Cuddihy. “We knew they wanted to capture the excitement and promise of this tech revolution, so our goal was to paint a beautiful and idealistic picture of the Uber empire as it swept through America. The blurring, refracted lights of a city at night feel beautiful, magical -- but also unsettling. This is a place of shadows. Where you can glimpse something darker. This is the end of the night, when you most need a cab ride home.”