Agents of Chaos, a two-part documentary from director Alex Gibney (HBO’s The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley and Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief), examines Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. With never-before-seen footage inside the Russian troll farms and videos unearthed from the Russian deep web, the film digs deep into Russia’s plans to undermine democracy.

The project’s main title was designed by Diego Coutinho, a Brazilian director, designer and animator based in Los Angeles. Over his 10 years working in this area, he has contributed to projects for Facebook, Google, Netflix, HBO and others.

Let’s find out more about his work on the Agents of Chaos open, which features red, white and muted blue colors and video clips of Clinton, Trump, Bernie Sanders and reporters talking about the election.

What was your favorite aspect of your main title design for Agents of Chaos?
My favorite aspect is how effectively it transmits two concepts. First, “hacked democracy,” which can be seen through the mix of the red and blue colors representing the right and left wings and the glitches that distort the images showing the codes going on in the background.

The second concept is that the presidency of the United States is the ultimate show. This concept becomes apparent through the edit, which shows a selection of moments from Trump and Clinton in peculiar moments of the presidential campaign.

Can you describe this title and the significance it has to the rest of the Agents of Chaos?
Main titles can have different formats. Some are isolated pieces that, after seeing them once, viewers tend to skip in the next episode — which makes most title designers cry. In the case of Agents of Chaos, the main titles are also an introduction to the documentary. It is a 3-minute piece that sets the tone, explaining what we will talk about next.

What I like is how Alex Gibney directed the edit and the titles team in harmony to create an introduction that is energetic and super-interesting. That’s because the documentary is about taking a deeper look and understanding what happened in the election — a topic that, without a good direction, could easily slip into a tedious piece.

Which tools did you use to create this title?
To produce this piece, we didn’t focus on using any specific plugins outside of what already comes with After Effects. But what is worth mentioning is the strategy we created to save time during the production. If you take a closer look, you will see that many of the elements are repeating in different shots. For example, the box of tiny stars, the browser images and the blocks of glitches. First, we animated a couple of shots. Once those were approved, we created a library of animated elements. With this, we just dragged and dropped many of the elements, which helped speed up the whole process.

What technical challenges did you encounter while working on this title?
As art director, the main challenge was getting everyone to work together in sync. But for this project, we had artists in different time zones. Even though we could talk for a good part of the day, sometimes, I couldn’t give any notes or feedback directly to the team before they started to work. Additionally, the project is a little long: 3 minutes. Usually openings are only 1 minute long, so I also had the challenge of tracking everything that was asked for by the client and director and everything that was produced.

I ended up coming up with a spreadsheet organized by shot, where you could see the status of the shot (wait, WIP, done, approved) and the notes from the director. Because we already had the first couple of shots animated, the artists already knew the style of the animation. This way, I didn’t need to talk to each artist; they could start their day, see their tasks and start producing. This strategy saved a lot of time, especially toward the end of the project when we had to speed up the production.

This methodology was a little more time-consuming for the producer and the art director, but it has so far been the best workflow I have ever worked in, as it allows one to easily track what everyone is doing.

What was the dialogue like between you and Agents of Chaos‘ team regarding this title?
This project had a dream team to work with. Hazel Baird was the creative director, and I’ve been working with her for a couple of years now. I like the creative freedom and space that I have in projects with her. At the same time, she is always there to give directions on specifics and essential points.

Alex is the kind of director that knows what he wants, so working with him was pretty easy. The only challenge was creating the first animated test. Once we got that approved, we replicated it for the whole main title and documentary’s ID.

In the production of this project, I was intensely talking to animators Michael Ross, Rafael Morinaga, Bruno Ferrari, Guilherme Ferreirinha. If I could extend the reasons why the dialogue of this project was easy, I would say that it is because I had the chance to work with people that weren’t just co-workers but also great friends of mine.