'Anne with an E'
Written in 1908 by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, the story of the feisty Anne has been told and retold in film and on television. When the latest version, "Anne with an E," a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. adaptation, debuts Friday on Netflix, pay special attention to the opening title sequence.
The stunningly evocative images of Anne, played by Amybeth McNulty, have been captured and portrayed by artist Brad Kunkle, a Lehighton native.Kunkle, whose paintings often celebrate the female form, enhances his work with silver and gold leaf, creating an ethereal setting that reflects light and movement.As such, the title sequence is stunning.The sequence is the work of Alan Williams, creative director, and studio Imaginary Forces, along with Kunkle, who was brought in as art director."Imaginary Forces (who has done titles for 'Mad Men,' 'Stranger Things,' 'Vinyl') contacted me with an email, asking if I'd be interested in talking with Alan Williams, the creative director who was a fan of my work," says Kunkle. "I was a huge fan of 'Stranger Things,' specifically the opening title sequence, so I was immediately excited to talk with them. Alan and his team got on a conference call with me, and within 60 seconds I knew this was going to be a great collaboration."Williams told Kunkle he wanted to use his work as the basis for their pitch to try and win the job of creating the title sequence for "Anne.""He wanted to use my existing work, have me do a few new paintings, and bring me on as an art director."The show runners, Moira Walley-Beckett and Miranda de Pencier, were impressed. Imaginary Forces got the job."Alan used my existing paintings to outline the sequence," says Kunkle. "So the idea was that we would replace the women in the paintings with images of the actress, Amybeth McNulty, who plays Anne. We selected the four cards in the sequence that we thought were the most important to have actual paintings of Amybeth, and I would paint those. Then the rest of the cards would be 'digital paintings' of her - basically Photoshopped versions of photos to look like my paintings. I ended up doing those as well so we could keep the figures consistent."Imaginary Forces had the sequence locked in, so my creative input came from making those images look the best they possibly could, and truly make them look like my work. Alan was so adamant that he wanted the work to look like mine, so I had the freedom to say, "Let's move these leaves to here, let's change this branch, there's too much color here, etc."As he prepared to bring Anne to life, Kunkle read the first few chapters of the book, and then listened to it on Audiobook as he painted."I didn't finish it, but got enough of a sense of Anne that I felt I needed to work on the project. She's an imaginative, wide-eyed, bright soul who sees the beauty in the things that most of us just pass by. I felt an instant kinship with her on that last characteristic."Kunkle was approached by Williams in December, and got the green light in early January. He had three weeks to complete the paintings, which he says he worked on at the same time, in stages.He did three nearly life-size paintings of McNulty, portraits mostly, and four hummingbirds that are used to surround her face in one of the images. The paintings were then cut out and superimposed onto his existing paintings.McNulty was filming in Canada while Kunkle painted, so he worked from photographs."We had the photographer pose Amybeth in the same exact way as the girl in each painting, then they sent us those images," says Kunkle. "It was pretty amazing how well the photographer and Amybeth re-created the poses for us. I would have loved to meet her and photograph her myself, but there wasn't any time. She's seen them on Instagram and loves them. That made my day."The entire title sequence is made up of 16 frames, 14 of which are Kunkle's paintings that he says are very close to the originals. The frame of the owl is not mine, but the owl was placed on a background of one of my paintings, and the frame of the golden leaf was dreamed up by Alan. I collected leaves from upstate New York, where I now live, and gilded them. Then the team at Imaginary Forces filmed it."The title sequence unfolds through the magic of 3D geometry, as well as digitally cutting out elements, like the movement of the owl's wings and the gripping of its talons."The 3D geometry and projection mapping works like this: They built 3D computer-generated versions of my work, like a grid-map of each painting, then project the painting back on top of it, so that when the camera (all in the software) moves across the frame, it looks like it's dimensional," says Kunkle."There was an incredible team of digital artists working on this. Maybe eight artists, each assigned specific frames to be their own. They were all incredibly talented, and I was fortunate to be able to be in the offices in Manhattan after I finished the paintings, to art direct. I was there for the last week of production and it was so much fun to see it all come together."As the title sequence opens the images are surrounded by silver, evoking the feeling of winter. As it progresses, the colors warm, continuing to gold, and leading the viewer into the feeling of fall."That was Alan's idea from the beginning - to give this change of the seasons in the 40 seconds. The change of the seasons was always part of his original concept, and we then worked together on how to use my palette and the gold and silver to convey that change."Another concept added to the art of the title sequence is the carving of words on tree branches. It is something Kunkle has used in his own work, and he did some of it for the opening himself by digitally manipulating the image, copying and pasting letters that he painted to create words, while other parts, he says, were digitally painted. What he didn't do, the other members of the team completed.Kunkle owns most of the paintings he created for "Anne with an E.""I rarely keep work for myself, but this was just such a highlight of my career that I wanted to keep something," says Kunkle. "I gave one of the paintings of Anne to Alan. I surprised him one day in the offices after we had wrapped up. Without Alan being such a fan of my work, this never would have happened. And Alan is the BIGGEST Anne of Green Gables fan. He grew up in North Carolina in what seemed a very similar upbringing as myself - a small town like Lehighton - and he was only allowed to watch one show that he can remember as a kid, and it was the PBS 'Anne of Green Gables' series."He's been a super fan since childhood. It felt right to gift him a painting. He was pretty happy to say the least."While Kunkle didn't grow up reading or watching "Anne of Green Gables," he did feel a connection to her."I think that growing up in Lehighton and being raised with all those woods and Glen Onoko, my parents taking me camping every summer, it gave me a kinship to Anne that is apparent in my work, which is one of the things Alan saw too," says Kunkle."I share her wonder and awe of nature.""Anne with an E" begins streaming on Netflix Friday worldwide.If you don't have Netflix, you can still view the title sequence at