Making main titles for Nicholas Stoller and Francesca Delblanco’s Netflix original series, Friends from College, was a storyteller’s dream.

Our challenge was to communicate the evolving relationships of six longtime friends in less than a minute. Our solution: Seat the show’s stars around a table in a progression of vignettes—from freshman cafeteria breakfasts to birthday parties, to weddings and baby showers. We show the passage of time and enduring friendships with mess, fun and even poignancy. Work and play, snacks and substance, good and bad, closeness and separation—it’s all there.

So much is communicated with visual cues, from the way characters sit, to how they share, grab things from each other, and leave empty seats at the table. The awkwardness of teen strangers plunking separate cafeteria trays down, quickly shifts to familiarity with banana grabs, notebook shares, and—in a recurring theme: spilled drinks.

Healthy and unhealthy foods come and go. There is pizza and beer, wine and charcuterie, playing cards and spin the bottle.  For an episode themed by loss, scenes in the title show post-party tables with increasingly abandoned chairs. In episodes bringing friends together hands clink coffee cups over breakfast and later, wine glasses over cheese trays.

From dorm-room parties to black tie events, we created a total of 18 different table set-ups with the actors. Every setting required different meals, place settings, props, wardrobe, and unique lighting. In short, this transformed our studio into what looked more like a flea market, and it was so much fun.