On prem, off prem, who cares?
big Data accessibility in a small browser.
Pre
I wrote this script!
This project was one of many we did with a partner agency who did a lot of design work for Google Cloud products. The request was simple enough; make an animated video about Data Fusion. I began the same way I always do on technical projects that are supposed to inform a semi-familiar audience; I found everything I could online about the subject, made notes, compared them to what Google had announced or was working on in their whitepapers, and came up with a list of questions. Then, I scheduled a meeting with the PM who ordered the video and an engineer on the team. I asked questions to fill in the gaps I had from my research, then asked them about their audience, what they thought the most important features were, and for any additional material I might need to write the script. From there, I spent two days writing and rewriting, eventually coming up with a 90 second read. I presented this to the client, and spent one week revising and reworking until we had script lock. From there, I held a voiceover casting, ran my top picks past the client, had them choose, and scheduled meetings with my creative team.
peri/POST
The first meeting was a brainstorm. I took the script and broke it out into 4-5 word chunks at a time. From there, my art director, designer, animator, and project manager sit in a Google doc and on a call and brainstorm out things we could visually fill each of these lines with, ensuring motion is always occuring onscreen. These storyboards are usually quickly sketched out by the designer and animator and placed next to each text box. We had one extra box for how each frame would be transitioning to the next. Then, I had my designer turn these into static frames, and when delivered placed them into an animatic so the client could see how the video would play out with the VO and music. We made small changes around the visualizations, music, and VO timing, then locked the storyboard, moving into animation. The animator required a week to complete this video, sending daily updates to the project manager and myself until it was completely filled out. The animator then smoothed out and polished the animation, moving us into sound effects that were added in and mixed with the music and VO. When done in this order, your “rough cut” is your animatic, your “fine cut” is your completed animation, and your “final cut” is when sound and effects are wrapped. We delivered this project in seven weeks. One thing I’m particularly proud of, is that we challenged ourselves to go even more abstract than we had in the past, and use animated people in certain sections. Google has a lot of brand standards around using people, and it was a win to have that come out successfully. We also adopted upcoming brand standards, which caused our designer to require an extra day to update their textures and design elements before beginning the artwork; this allowed the video to be a bit more future proof.
BTS
