As Hawaii Five-0 wraps its final season, we got a chance to talk to the artists who created the graphics.
The final hour of the long-running reboot aired April 3, 2020 with its 240th episode.
The challenges of working on a show that is shot over 2500 miles away often provides unknown opportunities that can transform time-tested ways of working.
Such is the case with Hawaii Five-0, a benchmark of the CBS Network lineup for the past 10 years.
Simon Knights, senior graphic artist, and Damion Tinsley, a former graphic designer for Fox Sports West have been responsible for the graphics for the last seven and four years respectively.
As with many procedurals, the graphics serve the dual purpose of breaking up the narrative and moving the story forward. Creating compelling yet appropriate screens is the challenge they faced weekly. The volume of screens and the time allotted kept both of them busy throughout the multi-episode seasons.
When asked specifically about the design of the interface, Knights lays it out well. “It was important to differentiate between the regular Hawaii PD and the Hawaii 5-0 task force. Both looks had to be believable and interesting, but we were able to push the boundaries of the 5-0 interface a little, make it a lot more technologically advanced.”
- Hawaii Five-0 task force – Footprint Scanner
The Five-0 team more often than not starts their missions at the interactive surface table, providing a literal leaping off point for their more physical adventures. Knights and Tinsley use 3D maps, layered photos and intelligence reports that jump from the surface table to the large monitors suspended in the main briefing room of the operation.
Frequently, due to the non-linear nature of television production, some of the assets; photos and specific data weren’t available at the time of filming due to casting, time, or simply Hawaii’s remote location.
In these instances, Tinsley prepared working interfaces that would be ready and in place on set; placeholder elements in these graphics could easily be swapped out at the last minute. Because of the three-hour time difference, often, a long awaited photo showed up and Tinsley could quickly place it in the appropriate interface and have it ready to go for when the cameras rolled.
Flexibility and the ability to pivot are the hallmarks of the Knights/Tinsley partnership.
As a team they work together on multiple shows including MacGyver, Damion, whose sense of humor follows him into the most stressful situations, laughs about working on two shows; one based in Atlanta (MacGyver) three hours ahead of him and Five 0 which is three hours behind. “On set days that can make for some early morning or very late evening phone calls,” Tinsley recalls. His most often used phrase? “How much time do we have?”
Damion brought with him from Fox SportsWest a working knowledge of After Effects, Cinema 4D and of course Photoshop. He’s always loved graphics, even tracking down the graphic artists on various films and keeping a file of inspirational work.
He often uses the decidedly analog pencil and paper to sketch out how something will work long before starting to create it. He fondly recalls the experience of designing the interface of a remote controlled car used by a drug dealer in episode 7 of season 10. “It was an exercise in creativity, and even more important, it was fun!” When asked about what other episodes he particularly liked, he mentions a 3-d footprint analysis that proved challenging and ultimately rewarding in Season 9 episode 19.
- Hawaii Five-0 – Automobile Interface
Simon Knights, the Khaos employee with the longest tenure, has had a sort of evolutionary process happen during his time at Hawaii Five-0. Traditionally, the artist creates a series of screens that covers all the actions laid out in the script to give the actors something to play against, create options for the director, and hopefully move the story forward. Hitting all the written story beats, providing a realistic looking interface, and conveying information to the viewer without boring them, all takes time and multiple levels of approval. Often, those of us at home only see a fleeting few seconds of a graphic, which was conceived of as a much longer animation. As one can imagine, this is a time consuming process for the artist creatively and from a technical standpoint. Hours and days of work could end up on the cutting room floor.
Knights’ saw this as an impediment to being efficient and cost-effective. His solution; get as much done for set as possible, within the constraints inherent in the process, and embed the artist in with the post-production team to make the most of everyone’s time. This system has worked well on Five-0. As a result, instead of spending days on one piece of the script that may never get seen, the artist concentrated solely on the graphic that is needed for the final cut. There is time to acquire the needed assets and properly concentrate the work only where it is needed, creating an overall superior final product.
This is an evolution made more possible by technology – screen replacement in post has become easier and more cost effective. “In the first few years of the show, the producers thought replacing green screens was tantamount to shooting the entire scene a second time,” says Dan Helias, an onset playback operator and artist that spent three years in Hawaii working on the show. “It was an issue if there was a green screen on the set.”
In the final season, the ratio of graphics created for set or solely for post fluctuated between 40-60% and 50-50%.
Knights explains that “it’s incredibly satisfying to be part of the post team, you are not just working in a vacuum any longer. This way of working has even bled into the way we produce graphics for other shows like FBI, FBI: Most Wanted and MacGyver.”
Working from within the post department Tinsley describes as essentially working on the front lines, dealing with last minute demands and shifting priorities.
“It helps the process, “ Tinsley explains, “when you can just pop by to ask the editor what he needs. It makes prioritizing and getting things done very streamlined.”
Knights, drawing on his extensive production history, sums up Khaos’ experience with the show thusly:
“We learned a lot from Hawaii Five-0, on how to facilitate the graphics flow both for onset and post work. “I know it will impact the way we approach future creative collaborations.”
