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You've probably seen them around the net before. We aren't really sure if there is a named genre for these explanatory videos but we watched one which provides a visual element to Dan Pinks's talk on motivation and really liked the synergy between the narration and animation. So decided to make our own to promote our marketplace service.
We thought it might be worth blogging about the process incase our readers wish to create something similar for a client, so here are a few things we learned along the way.
We simply wanted to get across that its easy with ReelClever to find film makers then work with them to get a video project completed. So firstly we wrote the narration and refined it down to about 40 seconds, ensuring that each line was relevant and captivating. Next we brainstormed some accompanying images in a literal way. If your talking about a person, then just draw them, don't over analyze, keep it simple. Its the obvious connection between the narration and imagery that give these videos their punctuality. The extra elements will come naturally as the concept progresses. The brainstorming sessions were done in short bursts over a few days and provided a nice creative break during the working day.
Once we had the narration locked and the general imagery sorted our wonderful graphic designer Kyreena worked out the layout on a whiteboard and refined the imagery to suit her style of drawing.
Technically we decided it would be easier to draw with a horizontal whiteboard, the camera was mounted with a simple tripod/ladder combo. We lit the board with some halogen work lights, though they tend to throw a nasty yellow light, as the imagery was largely white, white balance was easy to correct. We decided to take an image stream rather than use the video mode on our Canon 7D. After a quick test it was decided that the 4fps mode was more suited than the ridiculous 8fps mode.
We just held down the shutter button while Kyreena was drawing and ensured we took a few good still frames with her out of shot for the points where we were planing to pause the action. 12 gigabytes of images later we were done.
Post production work consisted of using quicktime to create an image stream video of gigantic proportions, then importing it into a 720p sequence in Final Cut Pro. While we assume 720p is of high definition its nothing compared to still image capture of DSLR's. Our pictures were the lowest quality the 7D could take and were still 2592x1728 pixels, over twice the size of a 720p frame. This allowed us a generous amount of digital zoom and pan while retaining full quality. Narration was loaded into the sequence, and the speed of the video was adjusted to fit. Things were pretty much complete. Just a quick transfer into Motion for a contrast boost, and vignette to keep the eye focused.
We are very happy with the final vid and look forward to making a few more with what we learnt making this one, here are a few pointers we picked up along the way...
- Do it the old fashion stop motion way by taking stills, ensuring higher quality and great freeze frames
- Ensure you have full control over lighting, we had the sun battling it out with a rouge cloud which meant more correcting in post
- Plan simply and fully
- Play around with slower shutter speeds to get a blurry fast motion drawing effect
- Lock the camera and zoom/plan in post, ultimate flexibility, the quality is there.