Different Together
This video is what people in the church world call a “bumper”. It typically goes between the music and the message, acting as a bridge between the two. So, we try to keep these short.
In order to make these bumpers as short as Richard Simmons’ shorts, we had to communicate a lot, and fast. But how? Well, first we looked at what this series (church speak for a themed message series) was all about. In this case, it was the idea that we could be different, but still be together.
We needed to get a better feel for this concept, so we asked for a list of the sermons and they gave us the following.
- Generations
- Politics
- Personalities
- Race
- Economics
Then, we asked for the series art, which ends the video. And although it’s great and worked well in print, it didn’t work for our task – but it does end the video. For each topic, we asked what is global enough to translate visually.
For “Generations” it was music hardware (i.e. records, tapes, CDs, mp3 players, phones).
For Politics we kept it simple using a picture of the capitol building, but mirroring it and adding blue and red to both “sides” to illustrate the revolving nature of the topic.
Because the idea of Personalities is so vague (how do you show that?!) we of course used a picture of eggs! Because eggs, you know…well they can be unique. I still think it works 🙂
For the idea of people having different ethnicities, yet still being together, we gathered portraits of people where they were looking directly into camera, and then scaled, and fit them so each person’s face ‘matched’ their neighbors.
For Economics (and more specifically people of different socio-economic backgrounds) we chose to use a map of the world and various price charts over several 3d grids.
Animated videos like these are really more about design than anything else, and generally it’s not just the complexity of the animation, but it’s that coupled with the fact that every frame needs to be designed and balanced.
In the end, this video was much loved and talked about, which is what we wanted to do – help make something that would STICK and keep it memorable. Remembering a single sermon is quite tricky, so we hope that by making art that sticks, it helps people internalize.
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