Grand Army follows a cast of teenagers at a high school in Brooklyn as they navigate the complicated social dynamics and pressures of modern high school, including relationships, sexuality, racism and economic politics.
The phones of the teenage characters played an integral part throughout the series, showcasing a variety of plot points and conversations over a large array of apps and devices.
Over the first three episodes, I was one of two lead motion graphics designers, working at Junction Box Design. Together, we built and established a large range of on-set interactive apps. The show required a high level of realism for multiple real world websites, iOS, iMessage and social media apps like Instagram and Grindr. All of which required an extreme attention to detail, as seen in the vast array of phone close-ups.
Showrunner: Katie Cappiello
Client: Netflix
iOS
In an effort of realism, most of the teenagers use iPhones in the show. I built bespoke apps that accurately mimic the function of iOS based on the requirements of the scene. We worked closely with the showrunner and writers to ensure that the phone apps had the required in-universe time of day for each app.
iMessage
There was a huge amount of texting between characters, including group chats, one-on-one chats and seeing incoming and outgoing texts. We mimicked the function of iMessage as accurately as possible to ensure the highest level of realism, including the "Delivered" pop-up on sent messages and the typing dots for when someone else was typing.
Instagram
Multiple narrative beats rely on storytelling through Instagram, showing how ingrained the social media platform is in modern teen culture, for better or worse.
The students are shown using lots of facets of the app, including posting photos, scrolling the feed, comments and stories, all of which were built as on-set bespoke apps depending on the requirements of the scene.
News Platforms
Multiple news platforms were cleared to use to bring another level of realism to the dramatic events that unfold throughout the show.
Again, attention to detail was paramount to ensure that we matched the UI and brand imagining of the real-world websites and news platforms we were replicating.
