New personal project - “nyc timelapses” on danthompson.tv
In January 2013, I was booked for a number of days work at a company in Manhattan. Their office was in TriBeCa and the views of NYC were incredible. I wanted to make some timelapse videos of the amazing views so I took my GoPro in each day and set it up around the office. You can see the accompanying video at:
New project - “ASDA Conference Video” on danthompson.tv
I worked directly with ASDA, a large supermarket based in England and owned by Walmart, on a video for their store managers conference in September 2012. The conference, called the ‘Golden Quarter’ is held around September / October each year and is for the store managers around the UK to come together and hear about all the products coming out in the lead up in to Christmas. The video I was making was for the entertainment department and was focused on the top CD’s, DVD’s, books and computer games being released.
You can see my full project write up and also the accompanying video at:
In January, I had the privilege of working with a company in Manhattan for a few weeks, editing some pitch videos for them. Most of the pitches were for contracts they already had and were for new projects, however one pitch was for a really big client and was very important. We spent a number of days on this video and by the time they were ready to actually go pitch, they were very happy with it. The reason for this blog, is because while editing the videos for the pitches, I was reminded how I had done very similar videos at my previous job before I was freelancing. They were for different purposes in that they weren’t being used to pitch for work, but the actual process we were going through was very similar to the process I had gone through for those projects at my old job, years ago. What was funny, was that when I was doing those projects years ago, I found them quite tricky and never thought I’d need to do anything like them again as they were pretty specific, but it made me smile as I realized that nothing is ever wasted, and experience in any form can be useful at any time. I know that all the work I did on those projects many years ago helped me with these edits last month..
I also found out last week that they won the big pitch, so there was a very happy ending!
Hope for Justice approached me to work on a video that they wanted to release for Anti-Slavery Day, which was on the 18th October 2012 in the United Kingdom. The purpose of the video was to raise awareness of human trafficking in the UK (and worldwide) by creating a video which could be shared across social media, in the hope that it might become viral and therefore spread the message and awareness even further. Hope for Justice had been working on a storyboard already, and had contacted an illustrator, Hannah Wheeler, to produce all the illustrations for the project. I worked closely with Hannah throughout the project as I worked to animate the illustrations she had created. The project took some time to finish, but I thoroughly enjoyed working on it.
You can see my full project write up and also the accompanying video at:
2013 Showreel:
New project - “Evernote Trunk Conference Motion Graphics” on danthompson.tv
I had the privilege of working with Evernote in August 2012 and creating motion graphics for their 2012 Evernote Trunk Conference. The ETC was a full day of sessions, workshops and discussions in San Francisco, with the aim of helping people take advantage of all that Evernote has to offer.
You can see my full project write up and also the accompanying video at:
http://danthompson.tv/evernote-conference-graphics
New project - “K.D.S. Lyric Video” on danthompson.tv
In the summer of 2012, I was asked by California based musician ‘Jason Hemmens’ (www.jasonhemmens.com) to create a lyrics video for a remix of his song ‘Kissing, Dancing, Singing’. I was given a lot of freedom with the graphics, so I decided I wanted the video to be pretty fast moving and reflect the speed of the song. I had made some lyrics videos fairly recently which had a 2D feel to them so I decided to make these feel more 3D.
The first thing I animated was the chorus. I wanted this to be fairly consistent throughout the song, but change slightly each time. I played around with the rotating cubes and liked them so decided to have them feature fairly strongly. I also used the cubes in the verse but this time had them all random instead of in a circle like they are in the chorus. For the instrumental section before each chorus, I wanted the graphics to be moving very quickly so I kept the focus on one central object and had other objects moving back and forth very quickly around them. These objects vary between cubes and spheres, to add a bit of variation. Jason really liked the cubes but asked if I could make the second verse different, so I went for a pretty different style for verse 2. This style was more like the 2D lyric videos I had made in the past, so it was a big change from the rest of the video, but I think that was good! When I got to the ‘breakdown’ section, I decided the graphics should be quite different because the song changes quite drastically here. As I had used particles in the differently styled verse 2, I decided to use them again in the breakdown. Over the top of all of these graphics, I kept the color changing quite regularly, often with the beat and animated the text in and out throughout it all as well.
I was very happy with how this lyrics video turned out, I think it’s quite different to any previous ones I have done and I also think it reflects the song speed, style and tempo well. Jason was very happy with it too, and since adding it to his YouTube page it has received over 150,000 views.
The version here is an edited version of the song consisting of a chorus, verse 2, a shortened instrumental section, another chorus, the breakdown and the final chorus.
If you want to watch the full video you can see it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rxt6r8Gi3I&feature=plcp
Motion Graphics created in Adobe After Effects CS5.5
Last night I had the privilege of meeting a hero of mine from the motion graphics world. Andrew Kramer, the founder and main man behind ‘VideoCopilot’ has influenced my work and my job so much, I originally learnt most of the After Effects basics from his free tutorials and through the years am still learning. I’ve also invested in buying most of their products, all of which are extremely impressive and help me with my work.
Well yesterday he tweeted that he was in NYC and was arranging a VCP unofficial meet. I went along and there was a group of 17 / 18 people, in the back of a bar in Manhattan’s Hells Kitchen neighborhood. The evening was really informal and very relaxed and we just had the opportunity to ask AK any questions we had, talk about his work (he was in Manhattan shooting a title sequence for a new NBC show!) and meet other people in the creative world. Aharon Rabinowitz, who works for Red Giant and has done a load of stuff also came along too. It was really interesting, fun, exciting and a bit geeky at times too, but was overall a really great night. It was also really nice to just be able to thank Andrew for how his work has helped me personally and also thank him for his contributions towards the motion graphics world.
