Making the Intro & Outro
I made quite a few different variations in intros for the video. As we had a variety of different ideas and concepts. The initial concept which can be seen at the start of the draft test video we made (can be found in the blog post named Draft Video). It was blue with a white/black outline including illustrated hands and very basic copy. It was not a finished concept but rather a starting point. We discussed with Derek and Brian the design, and came to the conclusion, we needed to refine the illustration and to make it a vector illustration. It gave the branding a softer more relatable approach and work coherently with the confetti and squiggles.
The design then moved with the concept of focusing. Derek really liked this concept as well as Brain, although, the branding appeared to have two different concepts that were not working well together and seemed to be too much.
I took all this feed back on board and created this. Originally there was no music but I found a track that worked really well. I cut the sound down to use only a specific part to work well visually with the animation. I wanted to create an impactful intro to introduce the brand that was engaging from the start.
From here we had a discussion again with Derek about how well this works with the brand. There was mentioning of the hands again. We wanted to move away from this concept. Thus the decision to drop them. I produced a new title sequence from new techniques I learnt within after effects.
I had the idea to make paint like animations to emphasis the abstract element to the design.
This squiggle was not easy to make but I really liked how it looked and the result it created. I wanted to try and use it in the project some how. I experimented with a new intro which resulted in:
I then created a narrative to follow by creating a journey through the video , illustrating a starting point for the video and to highlight where a design career can take you.
But we found this was starting to move away from the original brand guidelines and insight. I needed to reign myself in, and we decided to revert back to the intro I originally created for the pitch. But we needed to include a sub title to it, because it was for a project that was not just called Untitled, it was about creating a creative landscape for new emerging talents within the next generation. We need to highlight that within the intro and did not want to leave it out.
On reflection I could have had the title come in and then have 'The Creative Industry for the next generation', on a separate shot. This would have helped to break it up a bit and to not have too much copy on one page. It would have read better.
After creating the intro I had the idea to close the video with the hands that opened it, to create a cycle structure as there will be a continuous cycle of new creatives entering the industry.
The identity could be applied to the entries of each of the shorts. Once I had created the structure work of the intro I was able to change the copy to include the speakers names and their job roles. Which added a continuity to the brand and its ability to work across multiple media platforms.
These intros worked really well because the concept stayed the same and you could see the videos belonged to the untitled brand.
I applied the design to the outro but produced the animation in reverse. This was a hard aspect to overcome because I needed to think in reverse and it was baffling in terms of how to go about it. But I managed it in the end and the outcome was great. The outro was different to begin with as it included the colours from the second intro design with the self writing text of CREATIVE. I preferred the earlier version to the final version, however, we needed to go with the majority of the groups choice, and to keep a consistency towards to branding: white background and coloured elements, thus the last video was the outro choice.
The reasoning for the video to appear backwards was intentional. The arms are also smaller as when I went to enlarge them they distorted. I worked around this by exporting the intro and outro as separate files. I was then able to reverse the speed in premier pro, to create the illusion the text and confetti was being reabsorbed by the hands when closing. To create this creative atmosphere that exists within the hands by using the framing insight we originally started with.
