Convocations 2009 DVD Opener

For the Convocations 2009 season preview DVD we were asked to do something with kinetic text. Although I've seen a lot of uses of kinetic text in various commercials or on YouTube, I've never had an opportunity to make something using this technique. When Convocations came to us wanting to do this I was pretty excited to try it out.

Based on what Convocations wanted we decided to keep the movement simple and just focus on the message rather than a lot of flashy movements. Because of this I restricted most movement to the X and Y axis and kept the color pallet in line with their seasonal brochure, which happened to be rather muted with hints of color.

Convocations provided me with audio and music bed that I used to base all the text and movement off of. They also provided an outline of specific elements they wanted to see (the falling/raising stock line for example). I took the audio file and placed it in Adobe Premiere and used a new feature in CS4 that transcribes all the audio into meta data and places it at the appropriate time code. I then made whatever tweaks it needed and saved it out to bring into After Effects. Using another new feature in AE CS4 I imported the audio file and AE placed layer markers for every word of dialogue onto the audio layer based off of the meta data from Premiere. This allowed me to have precise timing for the words appearing and also allowed me to see visually what word was being spoken at what time on the waveform. I then proceeded to animate the camera/text to the timing of the voiceover. Check out the opener below.



I was also asked to make three short segments highlighting the pick 5 option for that season. Convocations had a few ideas for them and below are the ones that I created.










Overall this was a lot of fun to do and was a fun learning experience. Enjoy.

Convos 2008 Season Opener

Each year Purdue Convocations asks us to make their season preview DVD. It's one of the more fun projects we get to do each year. We undertake most aspects of the DVD's production, from creating all the motion graphics to editing every segment together to creating the entire DVD menu functionality and animation.

We started the process by meeting with the client. They asked for a clean line opener and that's about all the direction they gave us. With that to go on we came up with a concept. We wanted the whole thing to look like vector graphics, but have motion through 3D space. To do this we asked Brad Sommer to create the motion lines in Maya. Brad and I decided to have the lines create the Convocations logo and have a camera flying around through the lines.

When Brad was done animating the lines along paths in Maya, he handed the rendered file off to me to work on in After Effects. I took his animation and added camera shake and a camera bounce to the audio. I then took a depth render pass that Brad created and applied it for some depth of field. Brad's animation ended with the spinning blue line so I also added the full Convos logo and camera pull to reveal it.

We shot the Convocations director on a green screen and both Brad and I keyed him out in After Effects. Brad then took my pass of the opener and combined that with the keyed video footage. I then took that After Effect project and added an animated lower 3rd ID and transition to the opening segment.

Convos Season Opener 2007

[click to view - 5 images total]

For the last few years I've had the opportunity to work on creating the season opener video for Purdue Convocations. It's been a good working relationship and everyone has been happy with the past products. The convos dept creates a season opener brochure and provides the Adobe InDesign project for us to pull elements from. The idea is to make the whole feel of the edit fit with the brochure so the look of the piece draws directly from the provided elements they give us.

I'm posting the opening graphics that I created for the whole video. I started this graphic by creating one image that contained every category in one long comp. I originally was going to set the layers to 3D and pan across them with a camera. Once we started to make it, we decided to make it more dynamic by having the camera push through the individual categories to the music. What we came up with is below. I created all the comps and the other graphics designer, JC Trombley, put in the camera motion. I then polished and fleshed out each individual comp and added motion to the elements. I then smoothed out the camera movement and added the convos title on the end. You can see the full comp above.

The Completed Opener:


The whole opener took us about 3 days to complete. I pulled elements from InDesign, edited them in Illustrator and Photoshop and compiled the finished comps in Photoshop. I then pulled them into After Effects and added 3D motion to them all. Above you can see the finished motion version.

1984

The play 1984 came through our campus and we were commissioned to make a 30 second commercial for it. I split the work with JC Trombley, my coworker, and we came up with this. JC worked on all the scrolling text on the first half, I created everything from the flashing images on. I then combined the two halves and put a final red video look on the commercial. Play the video below to view it.

I created the DVD box art using elements from the commercial and the logos that were provided to us.

[click to view - 2 images total]

After showing it to the people who were producing the show they liked it so much they asked for a copy to send to Tim Robbins, the artistic director of the play. We were all very gracious towards the reception it received.