Fellow Travelers 

A political thriller and epic love story that unfolds in the era of McCarthyism and resolves in the age of AIDS, Fellow Travelers follows the intertwined lives and romance of two very different men, Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller and Timothy Laughlin, through purges, wars, protests, and plagues, overcoming obstacles in the world and in themselves.

With the series spanning multiple decades, we leaned into the "style" of the representative decades, using halftones, grain, texture, light leaks, and video distortion to create a visual time stamp.

Our approach for this opening sequence was to explore the vastly layered and complex lives of our main characters by mixing elements of archival photography and footage with animation and typography.

Utilizing archival source material was pivotal for this project. We drew references from government image archives, vintage periodicals, old film reels, and video broadcasts.

To capture the sense that, for our heroes, happiness is precarious with the threat of danger seemingly around every corner, we tied our titles together using the visual metaphor of torn edges, folds, creases and corners — making even the happiest of photographs feel vulnerable to destruction.

The flip side of this intensely powerful narrative is that, despite the secrets and looming dangers overshadowing the characters, there existed a life that was raw and thrilling. It was a life saturated with love, intimacy, and bliss.