Patrick Clair

Patrick Clair is a Director and Title Sequence Designer. He has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Sequence in 2014 and 2016. He has been nominated in the category 12 times. He is Founder and Creative Director of Antibody Film Lab.
==Education==
Clair studied Screen Direction at Queensland University of Technology, graduating in 2002. Following this he completed a Master of Arts: Film, Television and Digital Media at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.
==Early Career==
He directed a series of documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, many focusing on the intersection of technology and conflict. This included films on Robot Warfare, DDOS cyberattacks, Wikileak’s Collateral Murder Video and digital privacy. His 2011 film Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Virus achieved viral notoriety and was subsequently exhibited by the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as part of their Design and Violence series.
In 2012 Clair collaborated with Brookings Institution on a film for the White House outlining the risks facing President Obama’s foreign policy in his second term. It was entitled Big Bets and Black Swans.
==Title Sequences==
In 2014 Clair worked with frequent collaborator Raoul Marks to create the title sequence for HBO series True Detective. The sequence went on to win the 2014 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Main Title. Clair described the sequence as creating “broken portraits out of broken landscapes." 
This was the first in a long line of title sequences created by the pair. Maria Lewis, a curator at ACMI proffered “the pair are pioneers in the artform and their work has been foundational to the genre of title sequences for prestige television” and “has helped redefine and resurrect title credits as we know them.”
Series their work has appeared on include:
* True Detective, HBO, 2014-
* The Crown, Netflix, 2015-
* Westworld, HBO, 2016-2022
* Halt and Catch Fire, AMC, 2014-2017
* American Gods, Start, 2017-2021
* The Night Manager, BBC, 2016
* Lovecraft Country, HBO, 2021
* Silo, AppleTV+, 2023-
* Interview with the Vampire, AMC, 2022-
==Directing==
In 2015 Clair collaborated with games publisher Activision on a short speculative film charting the evolution of body implants across the 21st century, from sport to potential uses in military augmentation. The teaser film, Embers, was used to promote Call of Duty: Black Ops III. The video deals with "military and biotechnological subject including dystopian transhumanist elements." The film opens with a quote from Albert Einstein “our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Alternate versions of the film open with the text “Mankind’s greatest mistake will be its inability to control the technology it has created.” No citation is included on the alternate version of the film.
Clair has worked with French video game publisher Ubisoft on a series of projects exploring technology and conflict, often blending real world facts with video game folklore. “Who Turned the lights off?” (2012) invoked a 2003 black-out in the United States to explore the vulnerability of physical infrastructure and was used to announce the hacker-themed game Watch Dogs. Clair wrote and directed materials for the 2013 launch of Tom Clancy’s The Division that drew on the real life Dark Winter simulation. In 2018 he worked with Ubisoft again on a trailer revisiting themes of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Weapons for Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Upon its release, Clair said he's "been fascinated by the relationship between war and technology... what’s interesting/terrifying is how easily reality blends into fiction and vice-versa... we’re always looking to tell stories that interrogate ethics, human fallibility, and technology."
His style is notable for combining elements of live-action with animation, design and motion graphics.
His work often contains themes of technology and conflict. Unusually, in addition to these projects with military and technology themes, Clair has also worked with luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton and Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet.
==Antibody Film Lab==
In 2012 Clair founded Antibody Film Lab, a production company focused on the intersection between storytelling, technology and design. Raoul Marks joined the following year.
==Controversy around AI and Creative Industries==
Clair has been a vocal proponent of harnessing the power of AI to enhance creativity, while also cautioning that the technology is poised to disrupt the creative industries. He was quoted on The Verge as saying “they [generative AI models] are going to reshape industries and jobs will be lost” while also expressing that fear must not shape the conversation around AI. “The problem with conversations driven by fear is that they often lack nuance, and when arguments lack nuance, they lack compassion and empathy.”
Clair has expressed surprise at the human qualities of AI generative art “DALL-E surprises you, and comes back with things that are genuinely creative” and that the art can have “touching little moments of character.”
Clair's title sequence work has also dealt with themes of AI and ethics, with one writer observing of his Westworld sequence: "The theme of AI developing its own consciousness and turning on its creators is beautifully encapsulated in a little less than two minutes."
Category:Queensland University of Technology alumni
Category:Australian Film Television and Radio School alumni
Category:Directors
Category:Designers
Category:Founders