Training Ground
Filipe Carvalho – “Opening Titles and Beyond: Visual Language in Motion”
24.06.2025

Filipe Carvalho joined the FEST 2025 program on June 24 with the Training Ground Masterclass “Opening Titles and Beyond: Visual Language in Motion.” The session was dedicated to how Carvalho synthesizes shapes, colors, and concepts to create striking and evocative opening titles, with numerous exemplars from Carvalho’s Emmy-winning portfolio. 

Carvalho’s background and work as a designer are central to his approach to design and his perception of the world. Describing himself as hailing from a working-class background and “brought up by Kurt Cobain and Nirvana and Sound Garden and Pearl Jam,” Carvalho repeatedly emphasized the importance of roots over the course of the session. He reflected, “I was taught to be a person by the music I was listening to and the movies I was watching.” Traces of the alternately simmering and explosive images and soundscapes of the 90s are reflected in Carvalho’s expert pacing, mastery of tension, and eye for arresting juxtapositions. 

The session was sprinkled with useful advice for those looking to break into the industry. Carvalho has collaborated with an ever-growing list of companies and also founded his own creative studio, Foreign Affairs. 

But before becoming a highly sought-after opening titles artist, Carvalho was a web designer. After seven years in this career, he decided he was ready for a “bigger canvas, a better canvas” for the cinematic inclinations of his artistic vision. At 24, Carvalho made the decision to break into the film and television industry in 2009. 

After some initial upskilling, Carvalho prepared a portfolio of frames for “ghost projects” (that is, projects one has not been commissioned to do). Once he felt satisfied with his portfolio, he took the plunge and emailed his frames to a US-based studio whose work he admired. After all, “The worst thing that can happen is that nothing happens.” Two weeks later, the studio wrote back with an invitation to collaborate. 

Carvalho’s career with American studios in Chicago, New York, and Seattle continued to gain momentum from that point on. Still, the door to Hollywood studios remained firmly closed. So, he revived the same trick: he prepared another ghost project. The result was a full title sequence for a made-up film called The Architect. Carvalho sent the ghost project to LA-based Blur Studio. Again, an email eventually came through.   

He emphasized that sharing work—posting it, talking about it, showing it—is the best way for it to be spotted by someone who can become the next client or collaborator. Carvalho’s examples repeatedly showcased the effectiveness of visual metaphors and a well-developed vision for each project. Original ideas are the underpinning of a strong piece of work and what ties shots together into a coherent concept. 

Carvalho’s success is a testament to the importance of being bold. His unique alchemy of design principles blends architecture, graphic design, and photography with his conviction that work must be meaningful for the creator in order to be meaningful for others as well. With this in mind, it is especially exciting that Carvalho finished the masterclass by announcing—for the first time in public—that he and Portuguese documentarian Jorge Pelicano are co-directing a docuseries on war photographers and war correspondents titled Viewfinder. FEST can’t wait to see this next evolution of Carvalho’s career. 

- Alexandra Rongione