Nicholas Stoller
Netflix
Directed by Erin Sarofsky
Live Action
Main Title Sequence
Editorial
Concept Creation

Friends From College

If life is a banquet table, for Friends from College, it’s also a game board, picnic bench, wedding buffet, and party platform. Making main titles for Nicholas Stoller and Francesca Delblanco’s Netflix original series was a storyteller’s dream. The full-length main title sequence we created for each season’s first episode was designed to stand tall in introducing viewers to the show.

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Life Happens At The Table

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.

 

Our challenge was to creatively communicate the evolving relationships of six longtime college friends in less than a minute.

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.

The Shorties

The full-length main title sequence we created for each season’s first episode is designed to stand tall in introducing viewers to the show. In subsequent episodes, viewers see customized versions we pared down with scenes that fit the narrative for each.

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A Peek Behind The Scenes
Project Credits 
  • Live Action Director
    Erin Sarofsky
  • Executive Producer
    Steven Anderson
  • Director of Photography
    Mike Bove
  • Line Producer
    Becky Werve
  • Executive Creative Director
    Erin Sarofsky
  • Editor
    Tom Pastorelle
  • Editorial Producer
    Anne Siwek
  • Designers
    Tnaya Witmer
  • Madeline Miller
  • Josh Smiertka
  • Colorist
    Fred Keller
  • Finish
    Cory Davis
  • Final Color
    Fred
Client Credits 
  • Show Creators and Writers
    Nicholas Stoller
  • Francesca Delbanco
  • Producer
    O’shea Reed

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