OPEN DAY I

Project Brief

The project brief was very simple; I had to create a short promotional video for the college's open days where prospective interns and their parents would be coming to see the Digital Independent Specialist College. It had to show off what we as the college provided.

Tools

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe After Effects

Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe Illustrator

Research

The research consisted of me looking at promotional videos put out by other colleges. Techniques they used, what they showed off, any special features the videos had, how they were promoted and what their reach was.

Storyboard

After doing the research, I began planning out the video; it was going to be between 10 to 15 seconds and able to be looped indefinitely without any cuts or breaks. It was going to be put on social media so it had to be made with the aspect ratio of 9:16 in mind, this would allow it to be shown on smartphones most effectively.

While storyboarding, it was chosen to start and end on the same graphic, it needed to show what the college provided, it needed some 3D motion graphics which I would produce and lastly it needed to be eye-catching.

The image on the right is the very rough first plan which included things such as an address and a QR code, though it was heavily changed since it was decided that the address would be provided on the EventBrite page, a QR code would be impractical as it was not going on large screens, rendering it pointless.

The original paper version of the graphic.

Initial Drafts

After ironing out the storyboard, I began the first steps to making the video; the first step was the animated graphics which I would have to animate.

Two graphics were decided on, one saying "open event" and another saying "digital creative skills" and the actual graphics were relatively simple, being text put into After Effects and made 3D.

Here's first iteration of the "open event" graphic and as you can see, it's very barebones. This was the first time I had ever attempted this form of animation before, I was learning this on the go from a YouTube tutorial I found on rotating 3-dimensional text in After Effects

Then we have the third iteration of the graphic which had a better font added to it and had the animation polished.

Here's the sixth iteration of the graphic where the camera was adjusted to give more depth, the bevel (the black part of the text) was increased, the text was enlarged and at this point it was changed from "open event" to "open day" as "open day" would be more appropriate for the graphic.

It also had its colouring changed to be neater and more on-brand, using more solid colouring.

Approaching Completion

So at this point, we're at the eighth and final version of the "open day" graphic which once again was changed to "days" as there were several open days available which previously weren't.

In this one the camera position was changed once again and as this was the final version the aspect ratio was adjusted. Three versions in 1:1, 4:3 and 9:16 were made for Twitter, Instagram and TikTok respectively as they had been in 16:9, for the sake of convenience while being produced.

Now with the "open days" graphic finished, it was time to work on the "creative digital skills" graphic.

I had the process down and was ready to make it, but instead of making it from scratch like the open days graphic, I found an incredibly simple work around to give me the same results and save many hours it would have taken; I simply duplicated the eighth version project file and just changed the text inside the project file, it was really that simple.

After doing some adjustments such as the colours, camera position and adding the third layer (as this was three words instead of two), I pretty much had exactly what I needed.

The 8th and final version of the first graphic.

The first and final version of the secondary graphic.

Final Production

Now with both graphics done, I was now at the part where I had to actually construct the full video.

Process was simple; I exported a copy of the logo designed in Illustrator as a JPEG and ported it over to Premiere Pro as the opening image. Then I manually made the text and backgrounds in Premiere Pro for the "DIGITAL INDEPENDENT SPECIALIST COLLEGE" section, using the brand colours.

Imported the "digital creative skills" graphic, then imported an older animation I had previously made for DISC, added the "open days" graphic.

Lastly, I imported a timelapse video taken in the DISC office, added the text. Re-added the opening graphic, having it snap back from being zoomed in to its original position. At this point I also added the music, did some basic sound adjustment and tweaked the timing of some of the clips.

The final export, this is the 7th iteration.