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You are now watching: Jamie Caliri wins Emmy: United States of Tara

Jamie Caliri - Director

motion09 speaker Jamie Caliri won yet another award: the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Design. The project? Showtime’s The United States of Tara. Jamie played multiple roles in this production, including Director, Director of Photography, Editor, and Main Digital Compositor.

the show

The United States of Tara follows the life of Tara Gregson, a wife and mother with dissociative identity disorder (DID). After deciding to take a break from her medication to discover the real cause of her disorder, her alternate personalties re-emerge. Tara is supported by her calm and level-headed husband Max, her somewhat troubled teenage daughter Kate and quirky, good-hearted gay son Marshall. Her sister, Charmaine, is not so supportive, often expressing her doubt about the validity of Tara’s disorder. The show is set in Overland Park, Kansas.

the concept

Caliri’s opening titles for The United States of Tara is based on the concept of a pop-up book – a subtle way of illustrating the relationship to Tara’s ‘personalities’ – personalities that could ‘pop-up’ at any given time. The illustrative style and the darker color palette used by Caliri evokes a feeling indicative of a ‘mysterious’ disorder – fitting for this project. Caliri worked with the show’s writers, creative producer David Finkel and also received a few helpful suggestions from executive producer Steven Spielberg on how to represent the character. “This project was a melting pot of ideas,” says Caliri. “I wasn’t given the show and then sat down and storyboarded it. Things are more collaborative in television apparently, which is fine!”

the process

Jamie Caliri - Director

Created in the cut paper stop-motion animation style that Jamie has become known for, this innovative piece is an amazing work of art. Unlike most modern-day pieces, Jamie’s projects are normally created the old-fashioned way – by hand.

When asked why he doesn’t go digital, Caliri replies: “If you’re just going to fold up some paper why do it on the computer? Some things are easier done with less technology. The nice thing was I wasn’t sweating, ‘Does this look like paper? I don’t know, we’d better get some paper plug-ins!’”

But for the stop motion aspect, he does rely on the software technology co-developed by Caliri and his brother Dyami: Dragon Stop Motion.

Jamie was hands-on with this project from the start – from constructing some of the actual pop-ups to shooting the sequence – and his unfaltering attention to detail shows through. Each pop-up illustrates one of Tara’s three personas. Tara’s ‘June Cleaver-like housewife personality’, Alice appears first in the title sequence, as she ties her apron in the kitchen. This humorous sequence shows snippets of a ‘day in the life’ as she arranges flowers, gingerly places a tissue over a cockroach before stepping on it with her ever-so-feminine pumps, and then brings out the vacuum to clean up the aftermath – all while she is baking a fabulous cake. And just what, ‘pops-out’ of this cake? Tara’s male, loud, beer-drinking Vietnam vet personality – Buck. The scene transitions to Buck in the garage, beer in hand working on his Harley. As he zips out of the garage on his bike, the trail of dust he leaves, transitions to the bedroom of Tara’s wild and flirty teenager personality ‘T’.

The scene with Alice was creating using a fully working pop-up – without any extras. The stop motion process consisted of Caliri’s team carefully opening the pop-up books until they got a good take. In the scene depicting Tara’s wild child teen persona T opening her closet, the team – art department lead Morgan Hay, illustrator Alex Juhasz and animator Anthony Scott – created a few add-ons to augment the pop-up book.

“When you see T’s room open, there are a few things in the background that slide into the closet. Those had metal in the bottom and underneath the set were little rare-earth magnets,” explains Caliri. “We could slide things along the line of the magnets while the page held itself up. The great thing was that we didn’t have to have those extra pieces in there when the whole set was crushed.”

So just how long does it take to create one of these amazing pop-ups? On the average, anywhere from one day to two weeks, depending on complexity. To create a complex pop-up page, it takes about a month. Yep – you heard right – a month for one page. Having said that, Caliri’s talented team was able to take the project from conception to completion, with the team shooting the action on two stages – in just two months.