three dossier pages
For this item I was given a very specific visual reference - the dossier from the film Apocalypse Now. The desire was to evoke this reference as much as possible, while still having it live within the realm of vampires. I also knew that there would be sustained shots of the dossier, so attention to detail was important. I watched this particular scene from Apocalypse Now and reviewed it frame by frame to gather as much visual information as possible.
stills of the dossier in Apocalypse Now
The components that I knew would be included were a stat page, dispatches, a timeline of Nandor's life, a newspaper clipping (the copy for all four coming from the writers), a map of the fictional town of Carson, New Hampshire, photos of Nandor - both official portraits and surveillance photo - and a wax seal.
Nandor stat page
timeline of Nandor's life
dispatches from the ether
human detection dispatches
Each page above includes the Vampiric Council seal, either watermarked or as a stamp. This is a previously established graphic, though I added the exterior circle and the text for its use in this context.
The copy provided for the newspaper clipping was a story of Nandor revealing himself as a vampire by essentially flying over the court at a basketball game in order to do a slam dunk. So I needed to edit an existing photo of Nandor in order to make it look as though he was midair.
I found a photo from a past season photoshoot (below left), and replaced his hand with one holding a basketball and pointed his toes. I then generated some text to surround this newpaper article, printed it and tore it to give it some rough edges, as you can see to the left.
original photo, pre-edit
final photo as it appeared in the graphic
full graphic before being printed
For the surveillance photos of Nandor, I went through hundreds of stills from past seasons, searching for images where he looked suspicious, and where the angle made it seem like it was taken by someone spying on him. I generally avoided any shots of him in the mansion, unless the scene had a number of other people present. I pulled roughly fifty different stills and presented them for approval.
Of those fifty, six were ultimately selected and included, along with several portraits of Nandor.
painting from a past season
For the map of Carson, New Hampshire, I combined elements from different stock vector graphics - like the topographical map, the roads and rivers - but built most of it from scratch. The overall colour scheme and the latitude and longitude chart over top were in reference to the map from Apocalypse Now.
map of Carson, New Hampshire - final art
