Aetuts+ Weekend Workshop #1 – “Chasing The Monster”
tuts workshop

Aetuts+ Weekend Workshop #1 – “Chasing The Monster”

on Feb 9th 2012 with 16 comments

We’re going to start a new weekly community project where we’ll be posting a video created by one of our wonderful readers, then ask you all to offer constructive feedback on the work. It’s a great way to learn more about video, express your viewpoint, and have your own content critiqued!

Quick Ground Rules

  1. Play nice! We’ve deliberately chosen videos that aren’t perfect, so please be constructive with any criticism.
  2. Feel free to offer any type of advice – movement, lighting, color, pacing, etc.
  3. You can also link to videos that you feel offer a great example of this type of content done exceptionally well.

Without further ado, here is this week’s candidate for critique!

“Chasing The Monster”

Story Behind the Project

Last summer I began working with brand manager Kevin Kaiser in developing various media concepts for one of his clients, NYT bestseller Ted Dekker. As it turned out, Ted was hosting an exclusive writer’s conference in August called “The Ragged Edge”, where he and four other authors would discuss the down and dirty details about writing full time.

It was a week before the conference, and their plans for some media content had fallen through. They needed something fast. Here’s the brief I received:

This video is for a morning session of The Ragged Edge titled “Chasing the Monster: Finding the Story Within”…… Overall aesthetic: I would like the images to look like a grungy, scratched film reel that’s playing on the screen. Key texts appear rhythmically on the hard beats of the soundtrack.

Kevin then listed out the words you see at the beginning “Pain, peace, hope, love, hate…”; he wanted a mix of emotive images as well as other words such as “bleeding, seeking, diving, deeper”. He told me to use this as a basic outline, but to feel free and experiment as needed.

I got all this on a Friday… and it would be shown the Friday following. I would be leaving for a short trip that Wednesday morning, so I knew I had to get rough cut in on Monday night so that I’d have time for revisions on Tuesday. It would be close.

I had done the whole tutorial thing, and knew *how* to make a graphics video, but had never actually done it.

To make it even more interesting, I had never made a motion graphics piece before – I’m a film production student. I had done the whole tutorial thing, and knew *how* to make a graphics video, but had never actually done it. Trial by fire had been the motto of my artistic life so far, so I just put my head down and did the work over one crazy weekend.

Thankfully Kevin had sent along a perfect piece of music to accompany the visuals; I brought it into Premiere and placed markers at all the key beats. I saved it as a premiere project, then imported that into After Effects. This gave me a composition, audio track, and beat markers all in one – a very time saving maneuver, as I hate working with audio in AE.

Then I went through the whole project, figuring out which words would appear at which beats, and began matching images to said words (which was fun but difficult)…. figuring out the how the whole thing would flow.

I sent my first version in on Monday night, and Kevin forwarded it to Dekker who responded with an enthusiastic “PERFECT!”

Please let us know what you think in the comments – how would you have approached this project or done things differently?

The most constructive and helpful comments will be featured on the site. Interested in submitting your own video? You can do so here!

Adam Everett Miller is everettoptions on Videohive
 
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I am the editor of Aetuts+. I also run Hello Studios as my 9-5 job. I'd love any feedback about Aetuts+ so don't hesitate to drop me a line. ae@tutsplus.com  

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  • Mike Park

    Overall, I really liked this piece and if your client loved it, well, that is really what matters. If I had any criticism of it, I would have to say that the transition of the color palate from the monotone images flipping around for the first 2/3 of the clip to the highway seemed a bit off to me. You went from fast paced rhythmic transitions from word to word to a very measured linear movement through the words. For me, it seemed a bit backwards. I would prefer a slower start, culminating in an increased speed to build up the end of the clip. I felt that I was being pushed faster and faster through the music and imagery for the first part of the clip and then, visually, it slowed down. I understand the imagery of diving off the end, but perhaps you could have stayed in the monochromatic style with the mountains and highway and then pulsed your camera move to the music so it was not so linear visually. Finally, the very end with the face also seemed to be a bit off as well. I am not sure what the face was supposed to be. Was it the speaker or just some creepy looking guy supposed to have a monster within. Personally, instead of the Trapcode shine/rotation ending, I think a flickering/shuddering/blur effect similar to the “Agony” frame at 20 seconds, but more violent and then suddenly going to black with a deep drum hit might have been more effective and stayed truer to the rest of the visuals.

    Now, obviously, everyone has different tastes. I only pointed out the things that popped out at me after watching it a couple of times. The rest of the visuals I really liked. It had that cool typography look that is really popular, only done with images. I also really liked the color choice and the monotone look for the majority of the piece. It gave it that old, grungy feel. Perhaps that is why the road section popped out at me. The rest of the piece felt edgy and driven, while the road section felt a bit more like the Ford F-150 commercials on tv.

    I hope this critique helps sharpen your craft. And, if you think I am wrong, that is fine. Reading this may help you examine why you made your choices and back them up, which is good as well. I think you are very talented and would love to see more.

    Best,

    Mike Park

    • Luke

      Hey Mike,

      I just realized that I hadn’t personally responded to your post. Thank you so much for the feedback! The road sequence at the end was a situation of “I’ve got one mediocre idea, and not enough time to think of another one. So be it.” It would have been cool to do a roller coaster of some sort with the words on the track, and have it pull a Roller Coaster Tycoon maneuver at the end, plowing off the tracks and into the water.

      And yes, the face at the end was the speaker; my original version had a different post-crash sequence, with the giant maw of a shark engulfing the camera & bringing on the text (which was an ice blue color). I had used shine with the blue because it gave it a good underwater feeling. When the client requested the insertion of the image & eye zoom, I noticed he looked horrible in blue, so I switched to some warmer tones. At that point I had to decide whether or not to keep the shine, and figured “What the heck.” Now I wish I had thought of that camera shake… dang that would have been cool.

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/theMindkraft Olatunji

    For a less than one week project and no experience with motion graphics this isn’t bad at all. I suppose your on the road sequence was more about wanting to do something different as it would have been too monotonous for the whole piece to remain all grunge boxes so its not that bad.

    My only correction is that using trapcode shine that way at the end is usually a rookie move which in your case shouldn’t make you feel bad at all. You’ll learn fast that a slight blur or “VC twitch”-like shift is much better for an image than shine.

  • Craig C. Smith

    I thought it was pretty good. I was entertained.

  • Nasibah Al husain

    hey there,
    although I have no much experience in motion graphics but I felt that the tone of bgs color was bit distracting, since its your client’s desire to have grungy textures and old film looking, I would use a lighter bg color and darker text color to seek attentions.
    loved the overall transition,it was very smooth and convincing, the only criticism of it is its speed, If you made it speed up gradually untill you reach the end, that definitley would make it more exciting to the viewer.
    good job for someone who just started with motions, keep it up!

    yours,

    Nas

  • Tushar

    I felt kicked… even without the audio!
    Can you share any special tips/workflows that had been used to complete this video in a tight deadline ?

    Also the images had a bit of the “illustration style”, which does go down very well. What about using halftone style graphics? I mean, have you ever used them or do they even ever end up looking good?

    I’m just guessing here (inspired to try by myself!)

  • Gregg Jorgensen

    Very nice and impressive for your first graphic of this type. I also do tutorials and firmly believe you should never stop learning.

    I’m an editor who does quite a bit of work in AE and audio has always been frustrating to me also. I usually put the track into my Avid (I also use FCP) and make a sheet of beats and frames they occur on, but your description of using Premiere has gotten me interested in finally delving into “that other program” in CS5 to use it more often and effectively. Thanks for sharing.

    • Luke Letellier

      To be honest, I don’t really use premiere at all either, but I’d like to know more; if FCP 7 had a smoother interface for importing image sequences I’d be in heaven.

  • Luke

    Thank you everyone for the feedback; I will definitely consider what you’ve mentioned when I do my next piece.

    @Tushar: The biggest tip I can give – treat yourself like a human being when you work, even with these crazy deadlines. I took a 15-20 minute break every two hours: l left the computer, got something to eat/drink, relieve myself, take a short walk – whatever. Also, make sure you get enough sleep – I’m proud to say that that I’ve gone through 3 1/2 years of university without pulling a single all-nighter, and 98% of the time getting to bed before midnight. It’s crazy how much more efficient you can be in the daytime when you get solid sleep.

  • http://ijm.blogspot.com Iain J McCallum

    Given the time scale for a first motion graphic project this is awesome!

    From 22 seconds on through the faster paced movement: taking in both the word and image is a little frantic, almost uncomfortably so. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t always a bad thing, it does tie in with the general theme. My suggestion would be to try and present the word and picture in a way that they could be perceived, almost, as one rather than two. An example would be placing the word ‘fixation’ over the eyes of the face, or aligning the perspective / orientation of the word to a part of the image (assuming it’s not a crazy angle). Also I feel the timing could be tweaked to run closer to the beats.

    Those are the main things that popped at me! Good advice from Mike Park btw. Hope it all helps for future projects!

    – Iain, ijm.blogspot.com

    • Luke

      Thank you for the thoughts!

      I also wondered if they were passing by too fast. I tried giving each image two beats, but it felt too restrained. In the end I decided that the viewers didn’t need to both read the words and see the images; one or the other would suffice, and leave them wanting to watch it again.

  • pedro

    Luke what did you use for the ground flying by in the last part of the vid?

    • Luke

      I made a solid, rotated it 90 degrees on X, masked the sides to make it into a ‘cliff’ shape, slapped a texture on it, then used YY_ramp to add the gradient.

      YY_Ramp on AeScripts (a new version was just released yesterday):
      http://aescripts.com/yy_rampplus/

      • Pedro

        Cheers man.

  • Pedro

    Really liked the piece.

  • maria

    oh that was great! I loved the idea, I loved the way it was presented, imagery and music. I’d only try to blend the shapes and text in the beginning a little more maybe through some slight outer glow, and yes maybe stick to the initial color palette a bit more, but that’s about it.