Medium. Motion
Client. Ozman Pictures
Title. Puppy Love
Collider was approached by director Michael Maxxis to create the main titles for his debut indy feature, Puppy Love. A gritty, raw, black comedy, Puppy Love tells an unlikely love story between a simpleton virgin and a drug addict sex worker as they find common ground in the suburban backdrop of Edmonton, Canada.
Collider used a combination of concepts to break the titles into two sequences. The first reveals the camera floating upwards through an ocean of cola, passed sporadically by sinking objects from the film’s story until we pop out through the fizz bubbles into the introduction sequence of the film’s main lead, Morgan Fairchild (played by Hopper Penn).
Several hundred litres of cola and lemonade were mixed together to fill a small tank for large enough to shoot a variety of falling objects. Shooting at 600fps, it took a lot of trial and error to get the objects falling in exactly the right way so that they could all be integrated into the long rising movement.
For the second sequence, we’re taken on a meandering journey through a community swimming centre as we follow Morgan through a series of cheeky and mundane toilet and changing room moments until we’re eventually led into a hot tub — where his story begins.
The in-situ sequence, which was shot with the main unit a year earlier, provided a plethora of interesting and humorous scenes to embed cast names. As well as carefully recreating some of the shoot locations we created physical props with cast names incorporated into the scene to keep the typography as unaesthetic and naturally integrated as possible.
Puppy Love premiered at the Dallas Film Festival in 2021.
Credits:
Creative Directors: Andrew van der Westhuyzen & Kare Martens
Producer. Zaina Ahmed
DOP. Jordan Maddocks
Art Director. Chloe Jouin
Standby Props. Tony Moss
Lead Compositor. Danielle Angelica Grefiel
Colourist. Billy Wychgel
