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Being nominated for an Emmy is a rare privilege. Being nominated for two rarer still. And two in the same year for two very different projects is something only very few in the television industry ever get to experience.

Yet that was the case this year for Los Angeles- and Seattle-based creative agency Digital Kitchen, which scored Emmy nominations for its main titles for Apple TV’s Smoke and Prime Video’s Spider-Noir. 

Smoke

Spider-Noir

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“It's been a lot of blood, sweat and tears – and fun – for years. It's so nice to get an honor and acknowledgement like this,” said Rachel Brickel, art director and cinematographer, Digital Kitchen. “But it's never been about getting awards, it's always been about how we can be the most experimental and make the coolest thing. That’s what we're all striving for and what we're all hungry for.”

Mason Nicoll, Digital Kitchen’s executive creative director, oversaw creative and production across both main titles. Nicoll is a seven-time Emmy nominee and one-time winner for Epix’s Godfather of Harlem in 2020, which he creative directed along with Digital Kitchen Art Director Peter Pak.

“Getting nominated has been a very surreal process,” Pak said. “Mason and I won in 2020 but that was during Covid. I didn’t really feel the weight of it at the time.”

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One thing that did change was that Digital Kitchen and Pak received more requests to reproduce the mixed-media collage style they used for Godfather of Harlem. But Digital Kitchen likes to keep changing things up so they made a point of moving on and moving forward.

“It definitely pushed the way I think about how to do certain projects,” Pak said. “Before I did that project, the animated collage style was something I had never done. I had to do a lot of experimentation and research in directions I might not have been comfortable with. In the short-term, I did get a lot of requests and demands for that collage style. But I didn’t want to get typecast into doing just that little thing. I always want to explore other methods.”

Pak and Team Digital Kitchen got to do just that with the two very different main titles for Smoke and Spider-Noir.

‍Smoke tells the story of an arson investigator (Taron Eggerton) who teams up with a detective (Jussie Smollett) to find a serial arsonist. The story is based on a podcast, Firebug, which creator Dennis Lehane adapted into a TV series for Apple.

The obvious thing to do when starting to create a main-title sequence for the series was to set things on fire.

“The funny thing is that I’m afraid of fire, but I conquered my fear on this one,” Brickell said.

Brickell burned many objects, including scrunchies and a lamp, and multiple materials, including cotton and nylon, before arriving on the actual objects that are set on fire in the sequence, including a newspaper with a telling headline, water jug, VHS tape, rubber gloves, sunglasses, police badge, drawing of a suspect and the first chapter of a novel, among other things. What Digital Kitchen did that was not obvious was show all of these objects burning in reverse. 

“The objects we selected were either direct extensions of a character’s personality or traits or of plot points. We had a whole list and we also got a list from Dennis Lehane,” Nicoll said. ”Rachel did these test burns because some stuff didn’t look cool. We would find out in real time if something looked really great when it burned [in front of us] but not in the edit. We shot everything at a higher frame rate and we found that some stuff looked more interesting in reverse.” 

“The item that was the most created in post was the logo reveal,” said Pak. “We digitally added some little cracking elements to the letters to replicate some of those details.” 

It’s all set to the creepy-but-perfect song “Dialing In,” by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke that had been acquired specifically for the series. As the team worked on the sequence, they always had the music to set the work against, which is a key factor in setting mood and tone that production teams don't always have the luxury of having.

“With motion graphics in general, things always have to be moving, they have to be dynamic, the camera needs to be flipping,” Pak said. “For this one, even though it runs one minute and 20 seconds, we needed to slow it down and refine some of the movements. I feel like the music definitely helped with the edit.”

“Things Peter did like moving the camera, that really helped really make it feel like a main title, like something that can keep your interest. When you mix good visuals with good music, they really work hand in hand,” Brickell added.

The Digital Kitchen team self-submitted Smoke for the Emmys – typically, the studio submits for nominations – and that initiative paid off. How well will be seen when the winners are announced at the Creative Arts Emmys on Sunday, Sept. 6. 

Meanwhile, Digital Kitchen also scored a nomination for the main-title sequence for Prime Video’s Spider-Noir, starring Nicolas Cage as a noir version of the famous superhero, Spider-Man.

Digital Kitchen went for some obvious motifs: noir, black and white, spiders, webs. But it’s the way the team combined these elements that allowed the finished product to be something completely original.

Once again, it all started with Brickell doing something dangerous. This time, it was cutting glass. 

“I actually did physically cut glass, and they also cut glass out of an already broken mirror,” Brickell said.

The team used those glass pieces to do a few different things at the same time: the cut glass looks like a web overlay, while also giving the piece a kaleidoscope feel, offering many different perspectives on the same image. They also stuck with a very noir, very 1940s and 50s feel – including several visual homages to Man Ray, a famous artist of the time – to let the audience steep themselves in an era. That vibe was boosted by an original song from Kirby titled “Saving Grace.”

“It feels like classic noir. I’ve always wanted to work on something like a James Bond main title,” Pak said. “The music and vibes and the imagery is surreal, it felt like an old-school title sequence. It was really enjoyable to bring all of these different elements together. With title sequences, we tend to focus on only certain elements – some are really about the typography or the photography – but for this one we got to bring all of these elements together.”

Digital Kitchen prides itself on continuing to use practical effects shot in camera to produce best-in-craft work – even if it requires dangerous work around such elements as fire and glass.

“What I think is really cool about both of these titles is that they show the studio’s variety of skills and our ability to experiment,” said Andrew Julien, creative director, editor and art director at Digital Kitchen. “We’re always trying to push ourselves to do experimental stuff and get our hands dirty. There's always this feeling of everything being practical and there’s this tangible quality to our work. It's nice that while they're different titles, at the root they both have that same feeling. It feels like it comes from Digital Kitchen, and that's exciting to me.”