MOTION DESIGN CASE STUDY
Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary is an HBO Documentaries feature film, executive produced by Bill Simmons, that takes a deep dive into the story behind your favorite soft rock hits from 1975 through 1985.
We were tasked by director Garret Price to create a motion design language that implied ‘70s vintage’ while remaining connected to the modern era. The result is a simple yet effective combination of organic textures, color palette, vectors, and a peppering of grit that evokes the warm playfulness and surprising sophistication of this beloved era of music. Continue down to the case study below.
Offical Trailer
Opening Title Sequence
When designing with conflicting goals—like a ‘70s vintage’ look that feels modern—we think keeping it simple works best. Simple doesn’t mean basic. We chose a classic 70s color palette with brighter saturation. The animation uses simple line vectors moving across the screen. These vectors appear throughout the film, helping show the story’s movement and matching the main title font. Animation becomes more polished when vectors and the camera move through 2.5D space, creating a parallax effect. Some gentle light play, combined with a subtle touch of gritty texture, and the effect comes to life.
Album Covers
With a movie featuring so many iconic album covers, it becomes essential to give each one some special, well-deserved attention. There’s never quite enough time to shower them all with equal love, but we do everything we can to highlight their significance.
For the truly ‘hero’ albums, we went further—filling the frame completely, extending the artwork beyond its original borders, and layering it thoughtfully. This transforms these album covers into a dynamic, full-screen environment that lands with impact, fully immersing you much like the unforgettable moment when the chorus from “Africa” begins to play.
Overall, we maintained the visual style established in the main title sequence, but to enhance the sense of interconnectedness and make it feel more like a web of artists, we curved the vectors. The final result is a one of a kind image, successfully making these relationships clear to a wide audience of Yacht Rock fans, leading to the image being shared extensively across various social media platforms.
Yacht Rock Family Tree
Director Garret Price aimed to find a way to illustrate that, beginning with Steely Dan, the studio musicians of the 1970s Los Angeles music scene were incredibly prolific. Though they contributed to nearly every album released during that era, it was actually a relatively small and tightly knit group of artists who frequently collaborated, often playing on each other’s albums.
The goal was to create a family tree of sorts, clearly illustrating the direct connections between these artists and the albums they contributed to.
Posters & Newspapers
We always strive to preserve the original appearance and essence of posters, newspapers, photos, and other ephemera while ensuring their presentation is engaging for the audience to easily absorb. For Yacht Rock, we placed many of these archival images into the environment or ‘design bed’ that was established in the main title sequence.
We combined thoughtful camera work with effects where appropriate (such as the page tear visible to the right) to enhance the visual experience.
Whenever an image—whether it was a poster, album cover, or something else—lent itself well to a full screen treatment, we intentionally leaned in that direction to maximize its impact.
TV & Monitor Inserts
The movie featured two TV inserts and several computer monitor simulations.
For the TV inserts, we embraced the distinctive 70s style, creating a warm and inviting visual aesthetic. We carefully crafted the NTSC effects to be both realistic and visually appealing by incorporating subtle glows, layered overlays, and detailed light reflections on the monitor bezel, enhancing the overall authenticity and nostalgic atmosphere.
There were also several computer monitor effects, the most prominent being an animation showcasing a user navigating a complete rebuild of Questlove’s MySpace page.
Go F@!k Yourself
So Donald Fagen, the man behind the legendary Steely Dan, has never made a secret of his strong disdain for being associated with the Yacht Rock genre. His reaction when Director Garret Price called him and asked him to be part of this movie kind of says it all, summed up neatly… in just three words.
Garret then asked us to come up with a creative and engaging way to display a transcript of the call, so the audience could easily follow along.
As if the call itself wasn’t funny enough, we decided to present it in a style reminiscent of how the news displays transcripts of 911 calls, but with a twist—over a picture of Donald Fagen looking unusually super happy and carefree. The final result makes this moment, quite simply, silly, entertaining, and fun to watch.