Video | What is Media Lightbox? Part 2

Posted 2nd September 2010 by Andrew

In my last post (Video | What is Media Lightbox? Part 1) I talked about and embedded our video overview for ‘What is Media Lightbox?’. In this post I will talk about the process (including software packages used) for how I made this video.

Step 1 – Theme
We had to decide what theme the video would take (puppet show theme as talked about in part 1)

Step 2 – Content & Script
We then sat down and discussed what all would be needed in the video i.e. show problem, show solution (Media Lightbox), show how great Media Lightbox is (access, safety etc) and finally end with a call to action. Having a list of these items we then wrote a script based around them.

Step 3 – Storyboard
Having the script done and a list of all items that the video needed to show I quickly (and I mean quickly!) drew up a hand drawn storyboard of each scene. Storyboards are vital for animations in my opinion as before I touch the computer I have a clear plan of what I will be doing and the best thing is they don’t have to be artistic master pieces… as you will see below! You can see my quick hand drawn scenes below and just for fun I have matched them up with the completed scene (some scenes in video are not shown):

Step 4 – Gathering/making vectors
Nearly all of the graphical elements I used in this animation are vector graphics which were either gathered or made and edited in Adobe Illustrator.

Step 5 – Animating
The graphics were then imported into Adobe After Effects and animated

Step 6 – Voice over
Our voice over artist reordered the script and sent the files over to our headquarters via our own Media Lightbox system.

Step 7 – Voice over clean up
I import the audio from our voice over artist into Adobe SoundBooth to clean it up and then export is as a wav.

Step 8 – Music
I searched for and bought music that seemed to fit into the general feeling of the animation.

Step 9 – Final Edit
I then imported the cleaned up audio and music into Adobe After Effects and edited the animation to line up with the audio and then rendered it out.

Step 10 – Squeeze Video
I took the uncompressed video into Sorenson Squeeze and then squeeze it for HD Vimeo quality.

Step 11 – Upload to Vimeo
Taking the freshly squeezed video I uploaded it to our Vimeo page.

In my next post and final part of this mini-series I will talk about and show you a bit of an ‘outtake’ for this animation!

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