The Artist
A title sequence is the identity for any show. It draws the viewer to what’s coming next. It’s an invisible language that emotionally triggers the audience. Some may even think that they are inconsequential. But Harshit Desai thinks otherwise—the man part of the team behind the Emmy nominated Narcos’ excellent title sequence. His journey began in 2010 when he moved to US to pursue a master’s degree at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Though he majored in Animation Design but he found himself drawn to Motion Media Design. From there he moved to an Atlanta-based design firm and then on to L.A. where he took on Art Direction full time at Digital Kitchen and is now the associate creative director at InSync Plus, focussing on social and digital media campaigns for film and television.
The Work
Narcos has become a worldwide phenomenon but Harshit is more than ready to take on some new challenges. He brokedown his big break, ‘I think the Narcos main title is one of the best projects I’ve had the opportunity to work on. We started with extensive research, moved on to designing the pitch frames, went into production and filming some of the shots and finally the compositing, animation and post work. One of the big challenges on the sequence was to distill the essence of the show...to not just show drugs but focus on Pablo Escobar.’ Harshit hopes to start work on his own short film soon and has been toying with the idea of reinventing his MFA thesis film. Though L.A. has become a home base, he wants to expand his horizons and work with some of the incredible talents he was recently introduced to in India. That doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye to his cinematically stunning titles, there’s definitely space for them on his cards and he goes so far as to say ‘In a utopian future, I would only design main titles!’ This includes art direction for the Lior%u02BCs True Story piece for Netflix%u02BCs Fauda, for Sun Records and the Narcos Season 3 main titles. And more recently the digital campaign for Nat Geo%u02BCs The Long Road Home.
TEXT Hansika Lohani Mehtani
