Friday Night Thriller

Date — October 2020
Role – Mograph Designer
Software — After Effects, Premiere, Media Encoder

Friday Night Thriller is a co-hosted horror themed marathon concept. Drawing from campy predecessors like Elvira, Mystery Science Theatre and late night talk shows, this concept creates a new underground phenomenon for Millennial and Gen-Z streaming audiences using the talents of RuPaul's Drag Race luminaries, Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamodlochikova.

Brief

Create a fun, campy title card that calls back to classic horror television programs and advertise to fans of Trixie and Katya’s current youtube show UNHhhh.

The target audience for this concept web show are existing fans of Trixie and Katya’s content, ancillary fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and midnight YouTube surfers.

On average, the target viewers are Millennials with a smaller portion of the audience being extremely online Gen-Zs. They appreciate snappy, retro-ironic content delivered with irreverent humor by larger than life self-aware personalities

Solutions

The comedic stylings of Trixie and Katya are a interesting mix of high production value with low-budget aesthetics. They seamlessly blend camp and internet shitposting sensibilities in a package that always makes sure to never point fingers at their audience. Their charm and relatability help sell their stream of consciousness style webshow to their fans. This title sequence would need to match a similar energy.

Examples of the visual style and comedic humor of Trixie and Katya.
Their editors use Arial for all text.

As a reference to the iconic textual overlays and irreverent editing of Trixie and Katya’s youtube show UNHhhh, I used Arial and added a spooky gooey melting effect. This effect is a callback to classic chiller and thriller late night programming from the late 80s to the mid 90s.

The final melting effect. Created in After Effects.

The reference pool was wide and full of cheap blood effects.

Initial sketches for my melting idea and rough effect animation.

Pairing this effect with a camp background video and halloween store style sound effects elevates it to a similar humor level as the two hosts’ styles of drag and comedy.