Last fall I had the extreme pleasure to work with writer/director Reggie Rock Bythewood (who wrote the excellent Notorious, which I got to see in its European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival) on the motion graphics for the ESPN Films 30 for 30 Documentary One Night in Vegas, about the tragic night following a Mike Tyson comeback match that ended with the shooting of Tupac Shakur.

The documentary will premiere this Tuesday, September 7, 2010, 14 years exactly from that fateful night (technically Tupac died a few days later), and I couldn’t be more excited. While Gree-Morr was my first major cable TV debut (showcased on G4TV’s Attack of the Show), and a few weeks ago was my cable TV premiere with some short map graphics in The Great Food Truck Race (there are four more episodes where you can see my work!), One Night in Vegas is special not only because it’s by far the most work I’ve yet done on a TV appearance, it should (as far as I know) be my first on-screen credit!

I did about 10 minutes’ worth of motion graphics for the documentary, focusing mainly on animating existing graphic novel footage (so unfortunately I did not actually draw the graphic novel images), as well as some graphic overlays of rap lyrics, as well as some subtle but standard documentary motion graphics effects.

I also designed the titles for the documentary, as well as, if they show it, the graphic spots for Nomad Entertainment and Undisputed Films, who produced the documentary.

It was a pleasure working with Reggie who was both strong in his direction but also allowed me a lot of freedom to make these sequences come alive as I saw fit.

You can check show times and channels here, and hope you check it out!