Lost Marble Media

‘My Beloved Monster’…

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 09:41:00 -0400

I made this test render of the Lost Marble Monster…soon to be used for a ‘Stinger’.

At-At Afternoon

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:26:38 -0400

I’m posting this simply because it’s awesome…

Making of…

Stinger#2

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:25:58 -0400

This was more of a result of ‘messing around’. It started out that I was going to use the NYC footage to add in a huge LMM logo and composite it in such a way that it looked like it was part of the shot that the car was driving past. Then I realized that timelapse footage was a terrible choice for this approach. I was making a fuzzy little character in C4D and then kind of spent an hour messing with forces and wind and somehow ended up with this odd little ident.

We had a series of voice-overs recorded by Bob Taylor for these clips…we had him say the most absurd lines (we were inspired by the Worldwide Pants clips at the end of Letterman). You can hire Bob for your personal projects by visiting his website. We altered the previous ‘Fuzzy’ stinger to use one of his VO’s too (below).

FYI: Carivores don't eat pork.

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:24:52 -0400

Texting…
My wife: ‘Hows wrk going?’
Me: ‘Not gud. Having to cook the pork chop 4 Jake. He wudnt touch it raw’

As a creator of web videos and a motionographer…I don’t often expect to have to entice a cat to steal a pork chop.

A client asked us to include Jake (our cat) in the ending of a video. I knew at the time that it was a mistake to say ‘sure, we can do that’ but the idea that it might be fun coupled with the unusual nature of the request had tempted me. Plus, in most of our shoots, we have to fight to stop him getting involved…attacking paper cut-outs or pushing the tripod or just walking across the scene.

We started off with a chicken leg. Jake seemed super enthusiastic at first…but once we introduced it to the whiteboard he seemed to go blank – as if the chicken leg had suddenly vanished. After 30 minutes of trying and trying to get him to attack it or at least grab it from the board, we gave in.

Then on to a pork chop. Normally, if we’re cooking or eating a pork chop he would be by my feet waiting for a piece. If I were to put down a plate with a piece of meat on it, he’d grab it first chance he got…not this time. Not the slightest bit of interest. So then I cooked it for him…(yes, today my job included cooking for a cat). Now he seemed up for it! Licking his lips and following me around. However, meat + whiteboard = scared cat. I don’t know why…it just really freaked him out…like big-time freak out! Neck stretched out, fur up on his back and then he fled the office!

Five hours it took me to give in. We decided to use two clips from the original ‘Chicken leg shoot’. The video below shows a client preview render with no voice-over.

Next time a client asks for Jake or any other animal to be used in a shoot…I’ll be politely declining

**** Shortly after I’d hit ‘Publish’ on this post…Jake strutted in and took the pork chop…while the camera was off!!!

Some Recent Stuff...

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:12:27 -0400

I really need to figure out a better title for monthly updates as I’ll be posting them regularly (every 4 weeks would you believe!).

Prosperity for life campaign
We’ve just started working with an L.A. based company to produce a cool ‘inspirational’ web-ad. It’s a work in progress.

Stings
The video below is LMM iDent #1. We’re creating a series to let our clients see what we can do with logos and text….mmm…fuzzy.

Experimental Cinema (4D)
Check out the video below. It shows a couple of 3D ‘experiments’. There’s a cool glass reflection effect…it’s done in Cinema 4D. We saw Nick Campbell’s tut and thought we’d see if we can pull it off. I’ve also got hooked on the displacement features in Cinema…it’s just (nerdy) fun! Oh, and I tried my hand at recreating a Fringe-esque title reconstruct.

Handcraftedness…
Over the last few weeks we’ve produced a lot of Handcrafted videos (a few of which you can see below on the playlist) and also made an almost finished spankingly new website dedicated to all things Handcrafted – check it out! I added another sped up Handcrafted shoot to the playlist…Jake (our cat) makes another appearance. We’re also finally getting around to planning a Handcrafted promo for Handcrafted videos – this should be up next week.

We created a little logo thingy. The upper…erm, ball…is supposed to represent the ‘Lost Marble’, however, no one has grasped that yet. I like it whatever, so it stays.

Durham University Business School

We’ve had the pleasure of filming for Durham University. We covered a 2 day conference at Durham Castle capturing over 37 hours of footage. Standing while operating a camera for that amount of time is exhausting!

It’s been a busy month…on top of the above mentioned projects we’re working on a deal with resellers for Handcrafted and motion graphics videos, we’ve started offering voice-over services and are negotiating to bring in SEO and website development & design services.

Judging by the amount of interest and new projects booked in this week alone, next month is set to be even busier!

Stingers: 1&2

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:11:05 -0400

Handcrafted?

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:17:02 -0400

Although we primarily create motion graphics based commercials, they’re fast becoming second on our most popular list. The back-to-basics idea of taking a new or baffling concept and explaining it simply using paper cut-out characters and a casual, friendly voice-over just seems to connect to a very broad audience.

As a marketing tool, they’re amazingly effective. One of the biggest issues with using video to sell your product (especially on the web) is fighting to keep the viewers interest. In today’s world, peoples attention spans are getting ever shorter. We’re used to 15 – 30 second commercials on TV – we want everything condensed into a few seconds. A lot of customers ask for 5-10 minute videos and to be honest, people will not stick around to watch it. It’s an advertisement, not a show and thus, peoples minds wander or they start browsing elsewhere. The average attention span of someone watching even the most entertaining web video is 3-5 minutes. 30-90 seconds is ideal but sometimes, to get your product across, you need at least 3 minutes. What the handcrafted approach does is give the viewer something fun and humorous that they’re not used to seeing. Everything on TV is high-end motion graphics, explosions, giant 3D text and 60 seconds of dialogue delivered in 20. The handcrafted approach is a breath of fresh air. I don’t know of many things that will keep an internet viewer watching till the end of the video as effectively as they do.

We script, illustrate, film, narrate and edit the whole video from start to finish. You can come to us with nothing but a product or service and we’ll do all the hard work and provide you with a video to give your business a marketing boost.

Click here to hire us.

2010 Reel

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:16:27 -0400

MEA Handcrafted - Timelapse

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:15:44 -0400

MEAccounting shoot timelapse: 30 minutes sped up at 1000%

Our creative process...

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:11:27 -0400

I thought that this post might give our future clients a better idea of the amount of work that goes in to our creative process. We picked on a new Handcrafted video and followed it through the stages from chatting to the client to delivering the video. The promo is for http://rippedcutbuff.com. Edward Khoo, the client, was awesome. It’s so rare to get a client that allows us creative freedom. It’s such a great mix when a client says “we want a video for this product” and just allows us to come up with ideas and then execute them without restraint.

Day 1
Developing a concept…we’re a tad old-school when it comes to the early part of a project. We tend to lean towards a pen and paper. The initial part of the process is simply to read over the clients notes, view their website and/or press release or as is the case with this particular job, we read and then re-read Edward Khoo’s script – letting it sink in. Then came a brief brainstorming session – just a pen and paper. Edward had asked for a basic ‘Handcrafted’ web promo. Our Handcrafted videos tend to lean on humour and explanation as their strong-suits but the script was far from humorous and is written in the first person by Edward detailing his journey from picked on schoolboy to a lean, mean, ripped and muscular young man. It’s more of an inspirational and meaningful read than a funny one. So I stepped away from the project for a day and let the ideas form in my mind.

Day 2

I printed the script, read it over again, this time imagining how I think it should play out. In my mind it had pastel colours, a vignette effect and a more arty feel to it. The paper should appear crumpled and more earthy, at least throughout the early part of the story. It should have a little humour but only within the images.

I scribbled down a paragraph by paragraph account of what I had envisioned and then started to storyboard some of the ideas on a whiteboard in the office (again, we prefer to write and draw rather than using scripting and storyboarding software).

Day 3 & 4

Onto the artwork. This can take a while….there’s always way more scenes and characters to illustrate than you’d think so endurance and pacing is the key here. It took about 9 solid hours to work through the scenes.

We sent Edward the mock-up of the crumpled paper style and decided we’d produce the plain white version and then use post-production effects for the crumpled brown paper so we’d have the choice to use either style.

Day 5

Filming is often the most difficult, warm (due to lighting and equipment) and yet fun part of the job. It took 1 hour and 21 minutes to shoot (time-lapse is below).

Day 6
All that was left to do was edit. It took around 6 hours to fully edit in After Effects and Premiere and to render out the files. We uploaded the finished video to youtube for Edward to review and he loved it and so do we! We both much preferred the plain white version as the images are crisper and the whole thing is easier on the eyes.

Final results
This is the version we decided to go with:

…and here’s the version with added post-production:

If you’re interested in having a Handcrafted or motion Graphics video produced for your website or presentation - click here - and fill out the email form.

If you’d like to know more about Edward’s Ripped, Cut and Buff product, visit his website www.rippedcutbuff.com.

How we roll...

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:10:12 -0400

Cheesy title aside, this should be a pretty useful short-guide to working with us. Although some clients have their own particular way of working with a provider, a lot of our customers don’t know where to start…

How long is a piece of string?
Usually it begins with ‘We really want a cool promo-video for our website – how much would that cost?’ or something similar. The answer to that would be ‘how long is a piece of string?’. It’s relative to how long it takes us to create…what style are you looking for? Obviously, some styles take a lot more time to produce – for example: explaining a service using our Handcrafted style takes a lot less time to produce than creating a photo-realistic 3D commercial would. Do you have a duration in mind? Some clients come to us with an exact duration, like 30 seconds and others ask for an approximate running time, more often than not, 2-3 minutes.

Extras
What else do you need? All too often we’ll be tasked to create a video of around 2-3 minutes and then after everything has been agreed upon and the video has been delivered, we’re asked ‘where’s the website that it goes on?’ or ‘right, now we need it reworking to include completely different colours and logos’ or ‘why is it not in HD’? We will ask you a set of questions at the start of a project. You will need to answer what you can and add any additional requests. We don’t mind doing extra work such as creating alternate versions, or changing the text and voice-over to another language but unless this was agreed upon and was part of the quote we gave you, it’ll cost you extra. Another issue that comes up is flash video players and controls. Unless you’ve asked for it, we’re simply creating the video content. We can create custom flash video players on request. Or alternatively, if you’re planning to host the video on a sharing site such as youtube, vimeo or blip, after uploading the video file you can copy and paste the embed code into your web page and a player & controls will be included. Most video sharing sites will allow you to customize the player and controls to match your colours and branding.

‘Erm, I just want a video…y’know, like other intarweb sites have’
If you’re not sure what style to go with or what size the video should be, where you’re hosting it or how long the duration should be…just ask us to sort it out for you. We’re more than happy to look at what you need, check out your business or service and figure out what would best suit you. We don’t expect you to know all about video production.

The creative process
We start by scripting (unless you’ve provided a script). We’ll generally run this by you a few times before really nailing it. I said above, ‘We don’t expect you to know all about video production’…well, the reverse is also true. We won’t understand your business as well as you do…so we prefer to work closely with you on the script. This doesn’t mean that you do most of the work. We create a whole script and send it to you, we just want you to check the terminology and to make sure that it gets over your message the way you want it to.

We then brainstorm for visuals, gimmicks and animation ideas, then throw these ideas your way for you to check out as well to make sure we’re getting it just right.

With the script and visuals finished, we send the script off to be recorded by one of our vocal talents. With access to around 100 voice-over artists, you can tell us roughly what kind of narration style you have in mind, and we’ll sort that out for you.

We supply royalty-free music. We’ll suggest a few tracks but if you have a different style in mind, let us know and we’ll begin a search and send you some samples.

Then we start animating/filming. At this stage we create a client page for you on our website and upload clips, stills and audio for you to review to make sure you’re happy with how things are going. We figure that it’s much better for you to be able to give feedback as we work rather than after we’ve finished. It saves us both a lot of time.

Payments & Delivery
Before we start work on your video, we require a 50% up front payment. This is non-refundable once work has begun, however, if the 50% has been paid and we have not yet started work, we will refund the payment should you cancel the booking (minus any handling fees than were incurred eg. PayPal fees). Once the project is finished, we will upload a watermarked version of the video for your review. Should you approve the video and not need any further work, we will deliver the files to you once the remaining 50% and any additional costs (see extras above) are paid in full.

Business Relationships…
We have some strong core values when it comes to business. We think that businesses should help each other out…that they should be loyal to their customers and suppliers and that it isn’t always about dollars, pounds or euros. Sure, we’re in business to make money, who isn’t? But it’s certainly isn’t everything.

We’re in this business because we love what we do. We love being creative and have an unhealthy obsession with video…we chose to do this. But we also got a lot of help along the way. We had a helping hand from a lot of people at Durham University. We’ve had several customers that have really helped us out and have thrown as much work as possible at us, even coming up with new concepts to create more income for us. It’s a two-way street. We don’t over-charge…we help them reach ridiculous deadlines and where possible, promote our clients by word of mouth, on message boards and social media – Twitter, Facebook etc.

We’re happy with one-time customers or one-off projects but we’re all about forming relationships with our clients. Some of our clients have become long-time friends over the years. We feel this is the best possible way to work.

The Bottom Line:
Whatever you do, don’t worry about having your video made, you’ll be paying us to do the worrying for you…and if there’s something you’re not sure about, a technical term that you don’t understand or something you’re not sure we can do, just ask us – we’re always happy to guide you through the process.