Jorge L. Peschiera
Yussef Cole
Joyce N. Ho
Justine Webster
Richard Lampasone
Brandon Sugiyama
Apollo Baldoz
Tynesha Foreman
Ananya Ghatrazu
Jeejung Kim
Ryan Mauskopf
Dorca Musseb
Tanner Scarr
Jaimie Van Dyke
Mikaela Baird
Riann Weyers
John Hughes
Alex Gee
Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj
TV Show
2019Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj is one of my favourite shows on Netflix. For their Volume 3, I served as the show’s design director, which included being episode lead for “Elections In The Philippines“, “The NRA’s Global Impact“, “Malaysia, 1MDB, and Goldman Sachs” and “Why Your Internet Sucks“.
It was an incredible opportunity because I was able to contribute to a show that I already loved, learnt about a fast-paced TV pipeline, and was able to work with some of the most talented people in the business. And to top it all off, I was able to use design in a meaningful way, and contribute to telling these very important stories. Patriot Act will be a career highlight for many years to come.
The show was awarded one of the highest honours in the industry, an Emmy for 'Outstanding Motion Design' in 2019.
As episode lead, I was responsible for conceptualizing ideas for the script, determining the chapter structure through background placement, art directing, designing and leading leading the graphics team to create over 20 minutes of visuals per episode.
Designing the backgrounds were equally fun and challenging. There were a lot of considerations about the placement and composition of images, due to the unique stage design. We also had to consider where Hasan would stand during his performance, as well as the camera angle and framing of the shot.
Choosing a suitable the colour palette was imperative to setting the tone for each story and it also helped differentiate the chapters of the narrative.
A background change signified a new chapter in the episode's story. Each animation was bespoke to the design.
Design by Joyce N. Ho, animation by Tynesha Foreman and Brandon Sugiyama.
Data plays a big part in the episodes, and how we represented the statistics was up to us as the graphics team. Sometimes we used big type; other times, we devoted more time to hero statistics, often inspired by the key visual motifs of the story itself.
As a global news show, oftentimes we would tell stories set on the international stage. We had a custom made AE toolkit that would allow us to highlight every country on a map.
Each episode would start with a series of animated backgrounds that Hasan would walk on stage to. This is where we would hint at the new topic of the week.
Intro to "Why Your Internet Sucks". Design by Joyce N. Ho & Apollo Baldoz, animation by Apollo Baldoz.
On rehearsal and show days, I was in the control room, ensuring everything we created was the best it could be on stage. I worked closely with every team on the show, including the head writer, writing and news teams, archival, pre-vis, the show director, and Hasan himself.
As episode lead, part of my role was also to supervise and QC our visuals from the control room on rehearsal and show days. This would involve being liaison between the show director, Richard A. Preuss, and graphics producer, Justine Webster.
From left to right: testing a background for "NRA" and then "1MDB", show director Richard doing his magic in the control room, and the fancy stage floor septrons