Blog: Learn More About Video - Demo Duck

Puppets & Production: A Look at Our Educational Video Series for Rippling

Jarrett Hothan — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 00:53:49 +0000

How do you make a 12-part video series about information security entertaining? Why just ask Penny and Liam to help out. ACD Jarrett Hothan offers a deep dive into an educational series production that featured human and non-human talent, unique internal collaborations and one fun week on set.

Who doesn't love puppets?

Well, maybe those where were scared of 1982's The Dark Crystal growing up. I was in the same boat, believe me. We can get through this!

Puppets are both endearing and enduring. In fact, puppetry is one of the oldest performance art forms—dating back over 4,000 years! Kermit wasn't even a tadpole yet. Puppetry has been used to communicate ideas, tell stories, satirize the ruling class, spread laughter and educate audiences.

You could imagine our team's excitement when we received a unique request from our friends at Rippling, an HR and IT Software company. The needed educational video content about information security, but in the form of "SNL-funny" sketches. From there, a memorable puppet-powered production was born. Here's a background on how everything was stitched together—literally—and some of the learnings and laughs we had along the way.

The Persuasive Power of Puppets

Following the client's initial ask, we brainstormed all the different ways that we could approach a humorous educational series aimed at employees of all types. Full transparency—I think everyone blurted out "puppets" in unison during our brainstorm session. Sure, we're always game for a puppet show—but were they right for this project? And how would they be used? After some discussion, we recognized that puppets truly created a unique entry point for sharing this specific subject matter.

When it comes to learning about IT security and digital threats in the workplace, different demographics have different knowledge levels and technology literacy. And there are some sensitivities too. It's a bad stand-up routine at this point. Millennials overshare online! Baby Boomers can't open PDFs. We've all heard these jokes ad nauseam. Having human characters depicted as the root of cybersecurity mistakes or misconceptions might reinforce stale stereotypes, hurt feelings and cause viewers to tune out.

But what about non-human characters? Why not have a puppet serve as the "problem child" instead? They could act as a content catalyst for silly or serious questions, that then avoids putting a person as the butt of the joke. This line of thinking led us to the winning idea, "SOC Puppets." Let's have a subject matter expert teach a workplace staff about data privacy matters, including two charming (but disruptive) puppets as employees.

But as popular puppets have proved—personality is key. Who are they? And how should they act?

Liam, Pilar and Penny work through some IT security learnings—with the help of some moodboard crafting, of course.

Meet Penny and Liam

"We knew we wanted two puppet characters so that they could play off one another, but we didn't immediately know how many co-stars they would have," said Colin Hogan, Managing Director. "We decided to use the classic four Commedia dell'arte character types for our main cast, which you see used already in contemporary pop culture staples like Seinfeld and Atlanta. With the number of core characters decided, things moved pretty quickly once we started attaching personalities to this fun foursome."

Let’s think through the lens of making something from “the show about nothing.” Cue that bass line. Our first puppet Liam is the George Costanza archetype, fretful and anxious—a perfect proxy for the fears we have about cybersecurity issues. Our second puppet Penny is the Cosmo Kramer of the bunch, whose eccentricities can often lead to problems or solutions. Penny and Liam then play off our two human characters—the assertive but charming co-worker Pilar (Elaine Benes) and the upbeat, slightly-neurotic session leader Ernie (Jerry Seinfeld).

By defining their character types, we were able to think more about how they would both look and sound. And that meant custom puppets brimming with both personality and production durability. Enter Chicago-based puppetry polymath Andrew Marchetti. Andrew is a performer and puppeteer heavily involved in the local theater community, who also designs and fabricates puppets. He was suggested by Cody Benefiel, the producer for the series and aficionado of all things funny. Cody frequents local shows featuring Andrew and his creative collaborators, and immediately had him top-of-mind to connect with. We provided Andrew with a creative brief featuring design references, script samples, notes about their personalities and more. That was all he needed to bring Penny and Liam to life.

Andrew's early iteration of Liam and Penny's designs.

“Andrew was really experienced with the mechanics and materials needed for this custom ask,” said Marissa Davis, Producer. "He was able to read through the initial script and call out moments where certain mechanics would be needed, like fingers that could open and close, eyes that show expressiveness. This really took it to the next level and gave them an interactive, human-like quality that we needed.”

With just a couple of tweaks, we landed on the final designs. Penny, who was a blue felt human-like character, had a fun bouncy bob hairdo that worked well with her high energy personality. For Liam we leaned into his anxiety-driven and chaotic vibe, and gave him an orange and shaggy look to go with a reserved but professional wardrobe.

They're alive! From sketch to reality.

From there, we started thinking about casting as well. Chicago’s scene of comedy performers was certainly rich for us to help with casting the human characters. But of course, we needed puppeteers who could not only perform the characters but also provide the unique physical performances needed to really make the project sing. Andrew shared his reads for Liam and totally nailed it, and immediately brought the character to life. Man, what can’t this guy do! We found our Penny with Liz Jarmer, a comedic performer with puppet chops who had her own breezy spin on the character.

The Writers' Room

It’s one thing to have the voices of the puppets. But what are they going to say? We needed to thread a few needles with the scripts. They needed to be educational and properly cover the comprehensive subject matter—but also be entertaining, with a little overarching narrative sprinkled in too. If you are required to watch a 12-video training module, we wanted to develop characters that you want to spend time with, and see grow and progress through the series. This is an important Demo Duck ethos for educational productions or video series. We tend to think of those like a TV series—giving them storytelling legs for a long run and maybe even syndication.

During a typical explainer video production, we often work in smaller teams where one of us leads the scriptwriting while others then provide edits and additions. However, since we were pretty much creating a mini TV comedy series, we decided to do a “Writers' Room” type setup, where we would have multiple writers on the project—including our versatile producers Cody and Bailey Williams writing scripts too. After dividing up the scripts, we’d then bring them to a table read where everyone could provide punch-up jokes or feedback in the moment. This also helped us make the different scripts feel cohesive, and help us forecast where some recurring themes or character dynamics would go next.

The ever-patient instructor Ernie created a credible for scripting key IT security information—and a fun foil for Penny and Liam.

“It was a fun puzzle we all played a part in putting together,” said Chris Reynolds, ACD/Writer. "We all started with the same rules, but came back with a huge variety of ideas. Seeing what everyone was bringing lit a creative fire, and it wasn’t just jokes too. We all came up with interesting ways to frame the educational content that others might not have thought about initially. Defining the personalities of the characters early in the process really helped the jokes and humor come naturally.”

SOC Class Is Now in Session

We found the perfect location, a hip and well-lit office downtown Chicago. Also, our central room was also key as it needed to be spacious enough to accommodate our actors but also our seated puppeteers in a manner that wouldn’t look awkwardly spaced. To help capture the fun lived-in feel of The Office and Parks and Recreation—which thrive off the thrill of the reaction shot—we settled on a two camera set up. After a pre-light day where we were able to work out staging, set design and more, we were ready to get to it.

A diagram our team created in advance to plot how our actors and cameras could work within the space.

During the shoot, we had multiple monitoring systems where our Directors Colin and Bailey were able to track two cameras to make sure of the human and puppet performances. Also, puppeteering has its own performance challenges, besides holding your arm up for hours. You need to make sure your puppets are in frame—not your head or arm—and that their sight lines are keyed into conversations with other characters. We had additional monitors available for Liz and Andrew under their desk so that they were able to keep track of Penny and Liam’s performances “above ground.” Similar to the approach for a TV series, Colin and Bailey both directed a few episodes in the series—adding a fresh energy to each section of our shoot.

“The puppets were so fun to work with because they have a completely unique performance language compared to what human actors,” said Bailey. “For example, their mouths can only open and close rather than smile or frown. If we needed a certain reaction from a puppet, like disbelief or wonder, I’d work with the puppeteer to figure out an expression that would read on camera. I felt being in the writers room brought more depth, vibrancy and variety to my directing style, as I felt very close to the characters and their larger perspectives and motivations.”

Nick helping plot out a scene with our stars.

Colin and Marissa in awe of "Mooch."

Yours truly getting to be Penny's right-hand man.

Our Rippling clients also flew in for the shoot. Having them on set was a blast, and their presence also helped with keeping our information requirements intact while still fostering comedic improvisation. All of our actors—human and puppet—were talented in riffing or trying alternative lines, which ultimately led to some winning takes. The clients helped us make sure those on-the-fly moments were still tracking with the content, and even propose their own creative or production solves.

Stitching It All Together

Two cameras, 12 videos—that’s a lot of footage. We weren’t just looking for takes that delivered the correct information and script lines, but we needed to arrange them in a way that made our jokes land too. The reactions, the extras adding atmosphere, the prop reveals, the crash zooms—all were an important part of capturing the energy in the training session and helping the humor land as well. Similar to our writing session, we had multiple Ducks helping with the edit including Editor Nick Roth, Colin and Bailey. Colin created the initial edit of the first video, which then the team used as a “source of truth” when structuring the rest of the series.

“Timing is everything with comedy, so we needed to make sure our editing matched the humor of each scene,” said Nick. “Letting a moment breathe, pushing in slowly when a zany line is delivered. Also keeping the actors' energy consistent from video to video. Sometimes, an actor would try something unique, but it didn’t match the tone of everyone else, so we’d find another take. Luckily we filmed lots of them, so there was a lot to choose from.”

No Strings Attached

Phew! If my fingers are tired from typing this, imagine how Andrew and Liz's arms felt after the shoot.

What a memorable project. Not only did we get to bring Penny and Liam to life, but we all got to take on different roles and responsibilities and really get hands-on. I even helped Liz puppeteer Penny’s hands in a few moments. In the weeks following the shoot, it was hard to go about my day-to-day at work without hearing a question and thinking how Penny and Liam might respond with a quippy zinger.

Let this be yet another reminder that puppets are awesome, and that educational materials don’t have to be a boring slog for audiences. Humor helps make information memorable, characters can bring to life interesting use cases, and an entertaining series has on-demand replay value that people will want to revisit to learn and laugh. Our team at Demo Duck can certainly help you with any needs on that front…and if you want to dream up some new puppet pals, just say the word.

The post Puppets & Production: A Look at Our Educational Video Series for Rippling appeared first on Demo Duck.

Watch Party: An Attention-Getting Ad for the Atlantic 10 Conference

Jarrett Hothan — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 17:50:33 +0000

Watch Party is a Q&A style interview series where we discuss a recent Demo Duck video production with the team that brought it to life.

At Demo Duck, we "know ball." And you could imagine our excitement when the Atlantic 10 conference asked us to create an exciting, basketball-forward broadcast ad to show during the current season. The project team of Brett Pere, Ossian Mendoza and Jarrett Hothan sat down to chat about their approach to this commercial video production.

Also, just a reminder that Brett can hit a half-court shot under pressure if need be. Anyway, let's shoot our shot...

How did you decide to explore the concept of "Attention" within this piece?

Jarrett: I could try to come up with a super artful response, but the conference's name is the A-10 and my mind immediately connected it with "Attention." I think sometimes the best ideas are just sitting there for you, waiting to be picked up and built on. You don't have to overthink it. But as we discussed it more during our brainstorm, we realized how well it tied in with the ask of the project.

Brett: Exactly. There are some larger conferences out there with super high-profile athletics programs that get a lot of publicity. But don't overlook the amazing drive and performance of A-10 student athletes. Pay attention, because if you overlook these teams—they might get you.

Jarrett: Like when the Richmond Spiders knocked off the Iowa Hawkeyes in the first round of the tournament, even when we had both Keegan and Kris Murray. We all learned a valuable lesson that day. (Editor's note: Jarrett is a UIowa alumnus—at least he has Caitlin Clark).

So you didn't want to go for the "#A10tion" pun?

Brett: It honestly was a big point of discussion. We actually have a very brief moment of "A10tion" flashing at the end. But considering that the video was a hard 30 seconds—and how quick everything would move—we didn't want to count on viewers immediately internalizing that "A10tion" was a stand-in for "Attention."

Jarrett: Also, the "word meets number" portmanteau has been used in sports marketing for maybe a decade now. I think the first time I saw it was when Derek Jeter retired in 2014, with the "RE2PECT" campaign.

Brett: Ah yes, "The Captain."

Jarrett: That approach usually works better for a full marketing campaign launch, which includes print and static assets or even apparel. For now, we needed this animation to stand on its own.

**How did you make sure the visuals caught viewers attention too?**

Ossian: We produce plenty of videos with text in them. But considering this would be a 30-second video with no voiceover, we needed to make sure we didn't rely on too much text. The text lines needed to be simple and impactful, so we could keep it moving. Each script line could set up a visual world we could play in—attention on the basketball court, attention in the classroom. We thought of each text moment as its own design piece that could stand on its own and tell its own story.

30 seconds is pretty speedy. How did the time constraint influence how you approached the project?

Brett: We started with, of course, acknowledging the mandatories that the client asked for. We needed to have a moment to represent the schools in the conference with their logos, and we also needed to show a mix of sports. We needed to lead with a few basketball moments—since the ad will be shown during A-10 hoops season—but it was also important to showcase different sports too.

Ossian: For some of our longer projects, we try to utilize artful and creative transitions. But with just 30 seconds, we had to make sure we we kept the flow and momentum up—which meant using transitions strategically or utilizing punchy cuts.

Jarrett: It was a good scripting exercise for me. It forced me to minimize word count for max impact. We needed folks to be able to watch the ad on TV at a loud, crowded bar during March Madness and still get the message.

Ossian: The video was really about capturing a sense of bold, exciting energy too. And that relies on timing. Something we did during the production process was to create an animatic before full design and animation. That way we were able to make sure every moment was getting the right amount of time and that we were still keeping up the pace and energy the project needed.

How did you settle on this "dynamic collage" visual style?

Brett: Well, originally we thought that we might use more 2D animation and illustration of characters and even environments. But as the project went on—and discussions with the client—the real story is the student athletes and the fans. The idea of showing real people and real settings felt like the most authentic approach.

Ossian: A style like this also gives us a lot of flexibility. The client provided us with a variety of photos and video from their archives. But they naturally were shot in different lighting, weather, different cameras, etc. With the dynamic collage style, we were able to make the different assets look cohesive with color treatments, graphic overlays, repeating textures and more. It's a way to bring some of the disparate action from across sports and make it feel uniform to a branded video production.

Jarrett: To Ossian's point, this approach allowed us to use photos or video that told the best story—as opposed to just using the best quality footage. One of my favorite parts of the video is a sequence where the VCU women's basketball team is doing a community outreach program. There's a nice story within the images—the reactions, the smiles. Those photos, taken in the moment perhaps with a smartphone, are just as valuable to our story as some 4K slow-motion phantom cam shot. Our style allowed us to use them—and even add a little creative elevation to them too.

Ok, we're almost at the final buzzer. What was your favorite part of the project?

Brett: Seeing the creative come to life. Watching it go from a short script to storyboards to animation. It's not a typical explainer video where the graphics have to be overly prescriptive. I enjoyed seeing it go from words on a page to something tangible, which then gave us something we could continually iterate on design-wise.

Ossian: I agree, seeing the first animatic was super exciting.

Jarrett: It was very cool to pitch our ideas to the A-10 team in the first place. We often work with marketing teams who may have very specific goals or KPIs in mind. But for this video, it was more about capturing a sense of pride, energy and enthusiasm—more of an emotional goal as opposed to a specific "benefit" being communicated.

Ossian: It's fun to work towards a broader creative goal every once in a while.

Jarrett: Oh, I also tuned in to the Fordham vs. Duquesne men's basketball game and saw the ad on TV, which was super cool.

Brett: And now we know how to spell Duquesne too.

The post Watch Party: An Attention-Getting Ad for the Atlantic 10 Conference appeared first on Demo Duck.

The Mighty Many: Producing Effective Multi-Style Video Campaigns

Colin Hogan — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 14:44:39 +0000

I’d say I was a long-suffering Washington D.C. sports fan, but things have actually been pretty swell over the last decade or so. Maybe the midwestern optimism is rubbing off on me. Hey, my toddler doesn't know a world where my Washington Commanders aren’t a promising team with an exciting young QB.

Watching sports is great, but let’s be honest. Whether it’s football season, March Madness, you name it—there’s always that one commercial that quickly becomes the “get up and grab a salsa refill” spot of the season. It was a significant, single video investment that along with its cut-downs, quickly wore out its welcome. And now it’s going to be beamed countless times into groaning bars and living rooms from now until the season is over.

This can be the downside of a single video engagement, no matter what platform it’s shown on. Maybe the visual style or scripting approach fell out of fashion quickly. Or its strategy didn’t really resonate with an emerging audience for your brand. You can hear the “Skip Ad” button being clicked on the 30-second pre-roll version as we speak.

Something we’ve seen recently is clients circumventing these issues by wanting multiple videos, each produced in different styles (live action vs. animation, for example) and accompanying cut-downs—all within a single project engagement with us. We’ll always love a big-budget single explainer video, but this multiple “medium-cost, medium-quality” video approach can be enticing for brands looking to hedge their bets a little bit when launching their brand or product.

This is especially true for emerging organizations, new service lines or established companies releasing a new product. They might not have the marketing data or experience to know what style is going to be the most engaging and effective for their mission. Not only does this create a trepidation to bet all your budget on one style, it also increases the appetite to experiment. Having multiple videos to help with A/B testing, market research, data analyses and tracking social engagement can help you gain actionable insights on video marketing efforts moving forward.

Let’s just call it the “Mighty Many” approach. Here’s some reasons why it can be so helpful—and of course, some considerations too.

To give you a tangible example of what this approach looks like, here's an example of a two style approach we took with Rippling to create two short commercial productions a few months apart.

Rippling - Live Action Ad

Rippling - Animated Ad

The Benefits of a Multi-Style Production Approach

Broader Appeal - Multiple videos in different styles allow you to cater to various audience segments. For instance, a humorous video might appeal to a younger audience, while a more serious tone might resonate with professionals. Or, you can craft a short live action production featuring your friendly staff to help with recruiting, and also an animated video that helps promote the cool products that your growing team is making. This diversity of content can help you reach a wider audience, while increasing meaningful engagement with your specific target demographics. Trying to reach multiple audiences—all within a single video—can often water down your message and create a slightly unfocused piece of content.

Boost that Content Calendar - Creating several videos in different styles also helps you maintain a steady flow of new content. Now you have multiple unique core videos, and ideally some cutdown variations on them too. This can help your content marketing team out, giving them a steady flow of content to share across channels to keep you top-of-mind amongst your audiences. Also, if your target audiences see you continuously experimenting with different types of video content, they’re likely to imagine that your product teams are also cooking up cool stuff for customers too.

Budget Flexibility - Producing multiple medium-quality videos often requires a lower budget per video compared to a high-quality production. So let’s be clear—when I say “medium-quality,” it’s more in comparison to the high-end needs for a high-quality, high-budget production. High-end equipment, professional talent, post-production, etc. The “Mighty Many” approach will still get you the utmost of quality when it comes to the care and creativity of the Demo Duck team. With that said, the “Mighty Many” often use some nice cost-saving production solves based on what usually are specific tasks. Having staff on camera! Creating helpful software platform walkthroughs via screencast! This can be particularly advantageous for brands with limited marketing resources, allowing them to create diverse content that is still within their budget.

Creative Experimentation - With different video styles, you can experiment with various creative approaches to see what resonates best with your audience. This flexibility can lead to valuable insights to leverage for more effective future campaigns. If someone on social media sees two video thumbnails from your company that look different from one another, they might be more likely to watch them both. Also, some newer brands might not have full brand guidelines or an established visual or storytelling identity yet. A video engagement is a perfect way to help find your brand voice, and experimenting with what works is a great way to do that.

Potential Drawbacks of a Multi-Style Production Approach

Brand Cohesion Challenges - The flipside of the joy of experimentation is the risk of lacking cohesion. Using multiple styles and formats can lead to a fragmented message and a diluted brand identity. You don’t want one internal team feeling like the video for their product didn’t turn out as well as another team’s product video. Or perhaps worse, having a mixed “first impression” with your customers. This is something our team works to keep in mind at the start of a project—figuring out ways to extend consistent visual branding across different videos of different styles—to help them still feel uniform even when playing with different production styles.

Increased Production Effort - While each individual video might be less costly, producing multiple pieces of content still requires a substantial amount of time and resources—especially for the clients. Say you’re super busy and preparing for a huge product launch. Focusing on a single video might keep things streamlined internally and allow you to wrangle feedback easier, as opposed to reviewing multiple videos on multiple timelines.

Measurement Complexity - Analyzing the performance of multiple videos can be more challenging than evaluating a single high-quality piece. With different styles and formats, it might be harder to determine which approach is most effective, complicating ROI assessments. However for larger clients, who are working off a specific corporate video production roadmap and have a larger team infrastructure, it may be easier to track all of these analytics at once.

The Mighty Many vs. The Super Single

The decision between a high-quality, single-video campaign and a multi-style, medium-quality strategy depends largely on your brand's objectives, budget and target audience. Here's a few thoughts to help guide your choice:

Financial Investment: If you have the budget for a high-quality production, it can be a worthwhile investment for creating a lasting impression. However, if resources are limited, a series of medium-quality videos might provide more value for your money.
Time Investment: If you are looking to focus on other marketing efforts outside of video—and need the time to do so—maybe the higher fidelity, one-off approach is a better fit. If you're willing to invest the time to create a suite of videos in different styles, maybe give the "Mighty Many" a shot.
Message Confidence: If you've thought about a video for a while now, and have always generally known what type you want—feel free to leap off the deep end into the "Super Single" pool. If you're waffling a bit, maybe go the "Mighty Many" route and use the data you get back to inform a high-budget production further down the road.
Brand Identity: Consider how important a polished, professional image is to your band. If maintaining a high-level of quality is crucial, a high-quality video might be the better choice. On the other hand, if your brand is say, more casual and relatable, perhaps a varied approach could be more effective.
Audience Preferences: Think about your audience's tastes and behaviors. If they engage well with a variety of content, the "Mighty Many" might be a hit. Conversely, if they've reacted positively to videos with high-production values and a cohesive message, perhaps investing in a high-quality single style video could be beneficial.

Mighty Marketing

Honestly, both approaches have their merits and can be highly effective depending on your specific needs and goals. By carefully considering your investments, messaging confidence, brand identity and audience preferences, you can choose the video marketing campaign approach that best aligns with your objectives and maximizes your impact.

But you don't have to make that decision all by yourself. Get in touch with us! We're always happy to share our expertise over a quick call and provide our recommendations about a production style approach. Together, we can figure out a winner.

The post The Mighty Many: Producing Effective Multi-Style Video Campaigns appeared first on Demo Duck.

Watch Party: An Educational Adventure for McGraw Hill

Jarrett Hothan — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 14:57:10 +0000

Watch Party is a Q&A style interview series where we discuss a recent Demo Duck video production with the team that brought it to life.

The project team of Marissa Davis, Chris Reynolds and Aimé DeLattre sat down to chat about their approach to creating a delightful teaser video for McGraw Hill's curriculum-based math learning game ALEKS Adventure. Let's learn how it all added up...

It's a unique challenge to make a teaser video that emulates gameplay, but still feels elevated to intrigue a wider audience.

Chris: As a huge video gaming nerd, there's an art to the game teaser video. Actual gameplay has to be designed, animated and programmed in a very specific way to ensure it functions properly, while a teaser trailer is meant to emulate the experience and feeling you want players to actually have. The latter was something we really wanted to capture, and that meant it would require some recreation of the ALEKS Adventure world within our production process.

Aimé: At the start of the project, Chris made a great comparison of Bob's Burgers the TV show versus The Bob's Burgers Movie when it comes to design and motion differences.

Chris: Or Hey Arnold! The Movie.

Marissa: Or Rugrats in Paris. We could go all day here.

Aimé: I know. But the idea of this comparison is that there's a certain use of shadows, depth, movement and perspective that allow the movies to feel a little more elevated—while still not detracting from how much you like the show. This was our mindset when thinking about how to draw from actual gameplay and figure out the right way to depict it visually.

"Digit" the dog blasting off to a new learning adventure.

How did you approach bringing the in-game elements into the video?

Marissa: Well, it started at the very beginning when we were still brainstorming. The client allowed us an opportunity to pitch different concepts, and we needed to make sure that each of them would still give us an opportunity to be true to the game. For example, we need concepts that would allow us to seamlessly show the different "worlds" from the game. Some of our concept ideas in the brainstorm included a fake movie trailer, even a fun car racing video with art direction inspired by flat colorful vintage F1 posters. The winning idea stemmed from exploring a new way to learn—transcending the feeling of being cooped up in a classroom and instead blasting off to learn in a new way. Each concept idea included ways we would visually interpret gameplay, so once they selected the winning concept we were set up well to go into production.

Aimé: McGraw Hill provided us with a working file folder for game designs for each grade level's curriculum. Different backgrounds, different characters. We knew that they wanted a teaser video that mainly showed math, so we needed to find visuals that were math-focused and then create a story that weaved those together. We were then able to use those assets as a reference, and then add flourishes to designs. Adding additional shadows and highlights helped level up the depth and design of our characters and environments. For example, there was a specific scene where we have our character standing there while "the user" goes through clothing options. This scene in the game is more static, so we added an idle animation to our character and and secondary motion to their ears and tail. To further breathe life into this character, we also added some reaction expressions as their outfit selection changes.

Our team added some extra life and elevation to certain gambeplay scenes with secondary motion.

Marissa: It's all about finding those moments that give it that "Similar, but different" elevation we were looking for.

Chris: Oh, and I had to do some secondary research on my own to learn about how math is now taught. Which isn't usually on my to-do list at work. I learned what base10 blocks are, and how they are used to ensure that viewers recognized the lesson at the core of these fun visuals.

Marissa: Exactly. Students often see how teachers follow a flow of a problem being solved and then internalize that. We wanted the math sequences to feel consistent and not an abrupt departure.

Chris: We knew teachers would appreciate that effort and detail, so we wanted to put in that extra work.

Our team made sure key sequences represented the visual formatting and flow of certain lessons.

What about using the sounds from the game?

Marissa: This was probably the part that required the most creative solves. Typically, the audio tracks that we use for projects have "stems," which give us the freedom to interact with the different elements of the track. Some of the music tracks provided for the project weren't designed with this customization in mind. The sound designer on the project Facundo (Capece) was able to lean into some of the fun action of the video to help overcome some of our sound limitations. For example, having sound effects carry a transition into a new scene—or sound design to make the music track sound like it's underwater once the gummy bears ride their roller coaster into the ocean.

Sound design, shadows, secondary motion and more helped bring to life the video's playful environments.

That brings me to perhaps my most important question. Are the gummy bears OK after they crash down into the water on their rainbow roller coaster?

Aimé: That's the cliffhanger.

Marissa: I mean, that's why they call it a teaser trailer, right?

Chris: Well, if it helps with reassuring you and our readers—remember this isn't earth. In the video, we're traveling accross the galaxy to various learning planets. And in this world, one can reasonably assume that it's a magic ocean. When the gummy bears break the surface of the water, I'm guessing that bubbles essentially envelop their heads—creating helmets that help them breathe comfortably under water.

Aimé: Gummy bears love the ocean.

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Better Connected: Why Creative Concepting Matters

Chris Reynolds — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 16:31:26 +0000

Hiya, Associate Creative Director Chris here. You know, the guy from the video. At a different time in my life (and LinkedIn profile), I was a student at Chicago Portfolio School—where postgrads learn how to make ads. In the year I spent there, I learned two very important things: 1) the fine line between a school and a scam and 2) how and why some ads are awesome, and the rest get skipped. Or, even worse…forgotten. Today, I want to talk about the awesome ones and the creative concepting it takes to make them.

You see, the key to a really good ad (or any marketing message, really) is a really good concept. In school, I was taught how to develop concepts by following a proven formula. These days, I use that same formula, or at least, the principles behind it, in all my creative pursuits—advertising or otherwise. Unfortunately, since my “alma mater” has gone the way of the dodo, it is my duty to pass my concepting knowledge on to you, dear reader. And unlike me, you won’t have to pay tuition! Just pay attention and see what sticks.

The (Not So) Secret Formula

Sorry, but before we talk about that formula, I gotta explain what a concept is. There are many definitions and opinions in the ad world. No surprise there. I’ve heard concepts called “an idea with an insight behind it.” A more bookish definition might be “a high-level message or theme that creates an emotional connection with the audience.” Some folks simply think of it as “the guide for all creative decisions.” And I’ll be sure to tell you my personal definition a little later in the post.

For now, here’s that formula, exactly as it was taught to me:

A Human Truth: Every good creative concept begins with identifying some sort of fundamental, inarguable human truth. That could be a super surprising fact, a common behavior or an emotion we all relate to. By starting with a truth, every concept you come up with carries deeper meaning. Plus, every conversation with your audience starts from a shared perspective and understanding. All good stuff.

An Insight: The insight is the connection between your product or service and the truth you’ve identified. Think of it as a clever twist on the truth that gives viewers an “aha” moment. An insight should offer a new or novel perspective to consider. When the audience is asking “yeah, so what?,” the insight is your answer.

A Concept: The concept is the all-encompassing creative solution built from your best insight. It should be a quick, clear and clever way to communicate your truth and insight across every element of your ad. Great concepts effortlessly demonstrate how well you understand the audience’s problems and your ability to solve them. If you put in the work during the first two steps, your concepts are guaranteed to resonate on an emotional level with all the right people. AND, maybe most importantly, that idea can be used across multiple mediums to send the same message.

For a practical example, there’s the a pretty famous campaign from the 90s. The agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, was tasked with getting people to buy more milk. During their initial research, they discovered that most folks don’t actually think about needing milk until they’re already out—an odd behavior and interesting truth. Then, they dug deeper. The team removed milk from their break room and observed the reactions. Milk’s sudden absence became a frustrating hitch in everyone's office routine. Turns out, we tend to take milk for granted. That unexpected twist became the insight. With truth and insight set, the concept began to crystalize—let’s remind people just how miserable it is to run out of milk. Thus, Got Milk? and the first deprivation marketing campaign were born. The concept and campaign continued far beyond those original ads to become a cultural icon. All because it began with an honest, clever concept folks could relate to.

There's A Reason You Need A Concept

Now, there’s a reason this formula works for advertising. People are motivated to action by emotional appeals much more than rational ones. Creative concepting puts relatable human truths and emotions at the core of your messaging. Viewers are able to understand more than what a product or service does. They see what it can do for them. It ensures every element of the message, no matter the medium, has a purpose—a reason to be what it is. And that’s the most important thing I’ve held onto since “graduating”.

If you ask me, concepts are the BETTER REASON WHY your video exists.

Creative concepting connects your message to an emotion, a feeling or a larger idea. Every one of those examples is a much better, more meaningful reason for a video to exist than the need to increase clicks. Finding that reason means honing on exactly what you’re actually trying to do. And, more importantly, why are you doing it?! The concept is how you go about communicating that.

Whatever concepts you come up with are bound to be a better reason to watch and listen. With every concept we develop, we want to weave together what the client needs to say with what we know the audience wants to see and hear. If we do our job well, those two things become one in the same. And with the variety of projects and clients we take on, that process never looks the same way twice.

The Way We Do Creative Concepting at DD

Let’s take Newsela, for example. Newsela came to us with half of an idea—turn their message into memes. It was our job to figure out the WHY behind that. We flipped the classic concept formula and started to reverse-engineer some ideas. We realized that memes are all about emotions. When someone sends you a meme, you feel seen. Once we had that line in our minds, we were off to the races. The reason we were making these videos was to make teachers feel seen with memes.

We stayed on that track, drawing inspiration from popular meme formats. The edit structure was like reading a tweet. Copy was industry-specific and drew from hashtags like #tfw. We emphasized emotions with real life doodles of situations using classroom clutter. Even though the execution was decided for us, success meant ensuring every creative decision had a solid reason why it was made.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Bionic. The target audience for the video was entry level media planners. During the brainstorm, we talked about the pressure we all felt in our first job. “It’s like you’re under a constant spotlight”. That particular idea really resonated. Spotlights create stress and pressure, but they also shine on the star of the show. And work is literally a performance that gets reviewed every few months.

Things quickly fell into place and the reason for the video became showing folks they can thrive under the spotlight with Bionic. And what better way to capture that than writing a short musical where a character full of theater kid energy—some of the most confident people around—shows their co-worker how to own that spotlight with the power of Bionic. We even carried the concept through to a series of screencasts that open with a curtain and use the spotlight to highlight important actions.

OK, So What?

Both these concepts managed to bring that essential extra layer of creativity, connection and meaning to the message—without following the exact concept formula. Not every video needs to reveal some profound truth or insight about human existence to succeed—especially when you’re telling instead of selling. Your concept doesn’t need to be an amazingly clever, transcendent idea that takes weeks to come up with. It just needs to be honest, and it needs to work.

As proven by these examples, and so many of the videos we make, concepts are all about getting you, and the viewer, to think and feel more. Every choice made should have a solid creative reasoning behind it. Arbitrary choices kill creativity faster than anything. So make choices that are novel, unique and unexpected! Developing a concept, asking the right questions and really considering your creative executions is how audiences come to connect with your content and better understand your brand. It also shows you care about how they think and feel for the few minutes, or seconds, they spend with you.

Creative concepting can take the tedium of explaining security software and turn it into a super team defending the cyberpunk metropolis of Net Work City. They can help to bring out the essence of a brand, expanding into fully-realized, full-motion ideas. And, they help ensure creative that truly suits the client, even when we start entirely from scratch. Concepts can also be a huge part of telling stories in unscripted videos, too. Like the classic tale of small parts coming together for a greater whole—whether it’s teams of people OR robots.

If you're reading this, you’ve officially completed Chris’ Crash Course in Creative Concepting ^(TMTBD). I hope you’re ready to take on the challenge of crafting some great concepts on your own. For those of you who'd rather see what Demo Duck’s ultra-flexible concepting process looks like in action, don’t hesitate to reach out. I know you have plenty of interesting truths and insights rattling around in your head already, so let’s see what concepts and content we can squeeze out of them!

The post Better Connected: Why Creative Concepting Matters appeared first on Demo Duck.

Another Dimension: Bringing Your Brand to Life in 3D

Jake Allen — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 14:16:50 +0000

There’s lots of ways to describe 3D design and animation. Beautiful. Eye-catching. Squishy. But for marketers and brands who have never entered the stylistic space before, it can also be described with another word—intimidating.

Like most of my issues in life, I blame Shrek.

Many of the defining and popular works of 3D artistry are long-form 3D animated feature films. You know…cowboy meets spaceman…blue people meet box office history. With these works as a common reference point, it’s easy for someone to think that a 3D project might require a blockbuster budget, a massive team and a lengthy timeline.

As someone who has studied the craft of 3D production for over a decade, I don’t want it to seem intimidating, or even worse, inaccessible. 3D design and animation creates a unique opportunity for visual expression, and the advent of faster and more efficient computing power has enabled 3D animation to be viable for projects of all different sizes. Heck, even the hardware in our phones can render 3D filters these days—remember the popular Snapchat filter with the dancing hot dog?

If you’re curious about bringing your visual branding into 3D, or integrating it into your video production needs, perhaps I can help you feel more comfortable in taking that leap. Let’s go!

Why 3D?

All forms of animation are beautiful and expressive. So you might be asking yourself, “why 3D anyway?” After all, flat stuff is great—flatbreads, flathead screwdrivers, flat-rate shipping. You get the picture. But here’s a few reasons why I think 3D provides a unique advantage to showcasing your product, platform or brand message through video.

3D allows you to show things with accurate scale and depth that are hard—or downright impossible—to film with live action. Imagine exploring a photorealistic 3D model of the doomed Titanic room-by-room. Or, a groundbreaking dental or medical procedure within the body. Realism is important when communicating concepts, and a fully-formed object within a space gives viewers a true reference point.

Using 3D animation allowed us to show angles of a dental procedure that would be too challenging (or messy) to capture through live action.

Or, imagine that your company is creating a new device that is still in production. It’s important for potential customers to see how it looks—but producing a marketing video won’t line up with the release date. 3D design and animation is a perfect way to bring an item that doesn’t exist yet, a way that feels tangible, professional and credible. By rendering your device in 3D, you’ll be able to highlight all the features for future customers. Our project with Distributed Spectrum was a great example of this common situation. They have a robust software system for working with radio frequencies, and a companion physical production that was still being made. By modeling their device in 3D, we were able to craft a video that demonstrated its benefits in visually interesting ways, without needing a physical one present.

Without a physical version in hand, we used a 3D model of the client's product to give it depth and elegance.

3D offers a way to show software with depth and clarity too. Sure, you could aim a camera at a computer screen or smartphone—but you’ll probably get some screen glare, not to mention lose details of your intricately crafted UI design. By translating your interface into 3D, you can zoom in, zoom out, and highlight elements so that your potential customers immediately capture your value-add.

No screen glares here. Or awkward reflections of a cameraman. 3D animation is the perfect way to make a digital platform pop with crisp clarity.

3D-Ready, Already!

It may feel like a big jump to bring your visual branding or product into the 3D space. But chances are you’re more prepared for a 3D production than you think.

More often than not, our clients’ products already exist as CAD (computer-aided design) files, which are created as part of the manufacturing process. Creating a 3D model from scratch can be time-intensive, but most 3D animation software can import these CAD files with ease. Now something that would take a few days of work can be ready to render in seconds. CAD files also give our team some creative flexibility, and can truly make a project sing. As we kicked off a project with Logitech for their M650 mouse, we learned early on that we had CAD files at our disposal. We were able to craft a clean, minimal line art style that really elevated the product and let us show its versatility.

One simple CAD file opened the door for an imaginative explainer video journey.

No CAD files? No problem. Your existing brand guidelines are a perfect starting point for a project. Things like vector logo files, color palettes and fonts can all be rendered easily in an extra dimension.

Terrific Technology

Maybe your budget is closer to an Instagram Reel than a movie reel. That’s totally fine!

Over the decades, the software needed to design and animate 3D objects has become more and more powerful, and also more available to artists. This doesn’t mean it’s any easier, or requires less of a creative vision. There’s lots of knowledge and practice that 3D designers and animators need to have, and I can attest that it’s a lifelong journey. But the benefit of technology is that it gives us lots of creative ways to approach a project, and helpful tools and time-saving efficiencies to get a job done.

For example, photorealistic particle effects allow 3D artists to simulate natural phenomena such as water, snow, smoke and fire—all within the software. You could imagine how helpful that would have been in the 1930s as the Disney animators were hand-crafting the dramatic splashes of Monstro the Whale in Pinocchio. Speaking of, 3D software also allows users to rig and puppeteer characters—or even model eye-catching set pieces and add visual textures. These are just a few examples of the tools 3D artists are working with, but a main takeaway is that technology has made 3D productions faster and more flexible than decades past.

Another benefit of 3D is that after a lot of the hard work is done, it’s possible to re-use captivating 3D assets to then make production of future videos easier. Here’s an example about relieving production pain…for a pain reliever. For a recent project with KOURZEQ, they sent me a bottle of their canker sore paste which I modeled using Cinema 4D. We then used the model for hero videos, social media content and promotional stills.

3D doesn't have to be a sore subject. Especially when you have a cool product model that you can use now accross marketing assets.

And of course, 3D does not have to exist in a silo all by itself. You can combine different animation techniques for the best of both worlds. 3D animation can be the conceptual sprinkle to help make a project pop and unite some of Demo Duck’s other core styles. Beumer Group asked for our help demonstrating a pouch system for distribution centers, knowing that it would be pretty hard to remove a warehouse roof to film the system in action. We’re animators, not demolition experts. By recreating it in 3D, we were able to quickly convey a complex system, and then married it with 3D interiors and characters for a little warmth and humor.

3D + 2D = Explainer video magic.

Ready for the Next Dimension?

3D animation has been a lifelong passion of mine. It’s taken me from modeling self-portraits of friends in high school (often disturbing) to a professional career working on movie titles and Super Bowl commercials. And even as a medium that is now over 50 years old, I feel it’s just getting started. I just returned from SCAD’s CoMotion event this spring, where I met a variety of students learning about 3D, motion design and animation. It’s inspiring to see them learning the discipline, but also adding their own unique artistic perspective to push it forward.

It’s a very exciting time, and an opportunity for brands and organizations to present themselves in new and multi-dimensional ways. Many have already entered the 3D space already—and remember, it’s never fun to get left behind! If you’re ever interested in bringing your brand to life in a unique way, we can help make the process seamless, educational and fun.

The post Another Dimension: Bringing Your Brand to Life in 3D appeared first on Demo Duck.

The Evolution of Education & Video Production

Colin Hogan — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 20:30:04 +0000

You've probably heard about Bill Nye, the Science Guy. But what about his 13-year-old equivalent Phil Nye?

Well, you're talking to him.

Growing up in Maryland, I absolutely loved making parody commercials and comedy sketches with my siblings—all shot and edited on a Sony VHS camcorder. Some highlights include our take on an old Pace salsa commercial, flying killer rabbits via our basement ceiling a la Monty Python, and countless music videos . But my true passion for video production was fully ignited in my teens when I created a 12-minute episode of Phil Nye (an extremely obvious parody, I know) to fulfill an alternative assignment given to me by my teacher Mrs. Brown.

It was also the first time education and video production intertwined for me—a combination that would define my career decades later.

Me jumping on a moving car in an ill-advised move to entertain

Looking back now, that moment was not only a turning point for me, but for the education industry as a whole. It was 1999, the same year iMovie was released (though that wouldn’t make it into the Hogan household until a few years later) and a few years before the advent of YouTube, the iPhone, etc.. All these pending events meant that video was about to become a lot more accessible to produce and distribute, and the education industry would need to change with it.

This has allowed me to both personally and professionally, evolve alongside it.

Over the past two-plus decades, albeit a bit slower than some other verticals, people have made the push to evolve what learning looks like inside, and outside of the classroom. This change has only accelerated recently as folks who grew up with video as a part of their everyday lives move into more decision making roles within the sector.

So, whether you’re in a classroom, the administrative office, at-home, or in a cubicle, here are four key observations for the exciting and knowledge-filled world that is education video production.

1. Pressing Play on Professional Development (PD)

When I was in school, videos were mainly thought of as an easy way to fill up a day’s lesson, where a teacher could push a video into the VHS and likely get started on other much needed work (grading papers, sorting evals, etc.).

But now teachers are joining in on the video learning fun.

While video for classroom instruction has long been a tenet of the learning environment, it became apparent that more PD content providers needed to consider video productions to help communicate and educate teachers.

If you’re someone considering creating PD content, it’s important to be mindful of two things: the lack of time teachers have and their desire for realistic expectations of what a classroom looks like.

With a teacher's tight schedule in mind, it’s important to keep the content as considerate, and short, as possible. And to make sure the content is as device-agnostic as possible. It’ll need to work on computers, tablets, phones, etc. So be direct. Be clear. And wrap up.

In terms of a teacher's perspective while watching, aim for authenticity. Showing classrooms that are overly tidy, kids that are perfectly behaved, or encouraging actions that are overly taxing, isn’t going to sit well with our valued teachers. Meeting them where they’re at, and same is true with the scripting, will make them more receptive to what you’re saying.

2. Variety Still Rules the School

Bill Nye the Science Guy followed a long line of educational video productions I loved: Sesame Street, Magic School Bus, that old ECON video, the list goes on. But there was something about the way that Bill Nye (and Sesame Street before it) used such a variety of styles across their “lessons” that I loved, and wanted to take a stab at.

That one, and only, episode of Phil Nye featured a Phil explaining topics directly to camera, flatland biking to explain rotational axises, a music video about a meteor, a “Did You Know That?” short bit, and a stop motion sequence. Like the real deal, the mix of variety was an important part of audience engagement.

For course content, whether students, teachers, or the general public, this use of a mixture of styles to engage the audience still exists today.

3. The Informed Friend vs. The Wise Professor

Bill Nye may have been a scientist but his set was a lab—not a classroom. There’s logic behind that.

Imagine sitting down to watch a video to learn something new. Would you prefer it if the person talking sounded like a strict teacher, or like a friendly, knowledgeable buddy? Most people would likely choose the latter, and there's a good reason for that.

Having the tone of an informed friend in educational video content creates a warmer and more approachable learning experience. When the person in the video speaks like an informed friend, it feels like you're having a casual conversation over coffee (or whatever your beverage of choice may be). It's a relaxed atmosphere that encourages open communication and engagement.

Now, compare that to being in a classroom with a teacher. While they might be incredibly knowledgeable, their formal tone and authoritative demeanor can sometimes create a barrier between them and the students. There’s power dynamics, explicitly or implicitly, at play—so best to avoid that.

Plus, having a friendly tone can help keep viewers interested and invested in the content. Just like how you're more likely to pay attention to a story told by a captivating storyteller, educational videos with an engaging and personable tone are more likely to hold your attention and make learning feel like less of a chore.

4. Show and Tell

No one knew better than Bill, that it's not just what's being said but also what you're seeing. That's where "see-say" comes in and his use of on screen text, graphics, practical props, and more helped learners of all types.

When you're creating educational video content, you want to make sure that what you're saying is complimented by what viewers are seeing on the screen. It's like a tag team between your words and the visuals.

That’s why we take a careful look at how we can use graphics to better enhance the learning experience for our viewers—whether we're crafting education content or explainer videos. Take our work that breaks down a global product journey below. It leverages a cutout style to creatively leverage real world images that are more easily identifiable, to showcase the content.

5. Repetition is Good. Repetition is Good.

Say what you’re going to say. Say it. And then say what you just said.

Just like how listening to your favorite song on repeat makes the lyrics stick in your head, hearing and seeing key information multiple times in a video can help embed it in your memory.

In educational videos, repetition works in a similar way. By repeating important points, ideas or examples throughout the video, you reinforce them in the viewer’s mind. It’s like saying “Hey, pay attention to this! It’s important!"

So, when creating educational videos, don't be afraid to sprinkle in some repetition. It's not about being redundant—it's about reinforcing those crucial nuggets of knowledge and making sure they really sink in.

Class Dismissed

Mrs. Brown must've seen something in me as someone who might be able to pair my creativity with education.

“Colin, I think you’re going to do something in entertainment one day,” she recalled to me once after a, hopefully not too annoying disruption. I'm not quite sure Demo Duck is what she had in mind, but I do consider myself lucky to continue to create videos that inform and entertain—whether it's a nonprofit, consumer facing, or corporate video production. I actually recently spoke about that passion it in an interview with Website Planet if you want to hear more about our journey into more educational content.

Maybe one day a new episode of Phil Nye will drop. Until then, we're here if you want to make something.

The post The Evolution of Education & Video Production appeared first on Demo Duck.

6 Tips for Creating Short Digital Ads Alongside an Explainer Video

Colin Hogan — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 16:11:23 +0000

In the complex world of digital video marketing, they say shorter is better. But is that always the case?

People like to speak in absolute terms. Hey, it’s punchier. But there’s no perfect answer when it comes to ideal length for a marketing video. Different topics, goals, formats audiences, you name it. That’s why at Demo Duck, while we used to focus on one explainer video production at at time for our clients, nowadays we strongly advocate that our clients create several videos of various lengths, as part of one video project.

Our usual suggestion is to create short digital ads when you already plan to produce a 90-second or 2-minute animated explainer video. This will allow you to have content for the top of the funnel (short ads) and for the middle of the funnel (explainer video), but in a more budget-friendly way than if you produced them all separately.

So, how does one craft effective digital ads from a longer explainer video? And how do you make sure you’re not sacrificing effectiveness of the longer explainer video, just to eventually create cutdowns?

It’s not as simple as selecting the blade tool and slicing and dicing. However, the process of editing 30-second and 15-second digital ads from a longer video doesn’t need to be overly complicated either. Here are six tips to help you succeed in doing so.

1. Craft Concepts With Duration Flexibility

When we jump into a brainstorm, we are thinking of the best way to tell the client’s specific story through video. When we know in the upfront that we’re not only creating the explainer video, but also some shorter versions are planned, and how those will be used, it makes for a more effective process. These are questions we typically ask our clients during our kickoff process. Sometimes they don’t even know cutdowns are a possibility, and we’re able to imagine how these could be potentially used and their value.

We often do a “stress test” exercise in the brainstorming process, where we take a look at our top concepts through a more skeptical lens and make sure it ladders back up to the brief, and is an effective way to tell the story. When we know about cut-downs, we can also discuss how each concept will work if the video is only 30-seconds or 15-seconds long, and if it still accomplishes the client's request.

For example, our concept for our AWeber production (one-page overview is below) worked for both their 60-second video but their 30-second cut-down as well.

2. Develop Scripts and Storyboards With Cut-Downs Identified

It can be easy to place the cut-downs on the back burner in favor of the “hero” explainer video, but the sooner you can start tagging content for those cut-downs the better.

For the script, we usually deliver cut-down scripts with the V2 explainer video script. The V1 script for the explainer gets us aligned on the story we’re telling, so we can get aligned as we then jump into cut-downs.

During storyboarding, we highlight the specific frames in the storyboard, often literally with border color or other visually identifiable methods, that we think would be best suited for the various cut-downs. This is a helpful way to get aligned on those cut-down visuals at the same time as the main explainer video.

Below is an example of how we created script cut-downs for a set of videos we crafted with Shipwell.

3. Prioritize Visuals Over Verbiage

But let’s stick with visuals for a moment. In shorter ads, visuals are your primary means of communication. Especially given these shorter videos are often used on social media or in ways that find a less captive audience than a homepage video, so the visuals need to be, and forgive the overused phrase, thumb stopping.

So, as you consider the visuals in the storyboard that would be a good fit for the cut-downs, be mindful to pare down lengthy explanations and focus on striking visuals that can convey your message quickly and effectively. Use high-impact imagery, animations, or graphics to grab your audience's attention. Save the lengthy sections showcasing your UI for the explainer video and get people excited by what your product or service can do versus how it does it (or looks when doing so). And don’t forget to consider that some cut-down friendly social channels often auto-mute videos, another reason why visuals (including captions) are so important.

4. Hone in on Specific Audiences

The other great thing about producing cut-downs, is that you can get more specific in the audience you’re speaking to. For example, let’s say you’re a tech company whose product appeals to both finance and HR, while your explainer video may speak to both audiences, at various points in the video, your cut-downs don’t have to.

So, maybe there’s two versions of a 30-second video that make sense for you, one for Audience A and one for Audience B. No sacrificing specific messaging points for the sake of being too niche—for cut-downs the more niche the better.

Venture Consumer Video Version

Venture Retailer Video Version

5. Test and Iterate

Creating shorter ads from longer content is an art that requires experimentation. Don't hesitate to create multiple versions of your 30-second and 15-second ads and test them with your target audience, or audiences.

You should analyze the performance metrics, such as engagement and click-through rates, to determine which version resonates the most. Use this feedback to iterate, reallocate budget, or even further refine your ads further.

We like to view our clients in terms of long-term partnerships, extending past the final project deliverables being sent out. We can help make sense of some of these performance metrics, helping update visuals—re-record voiceover with new script talking points—or get creative with solutions to better position the videos to hit those KPIs.

6. Craft a Strong Call-to-Action

Finally, don't forget to include a compelling call-to-action (CTA) in your shorter ads. If you’re posting something on social media, what you’re really looking for is a click. A click to your profile, to your website, somewhere.

By getting that click they’re expressing some interest in your product, and you can continue to move them down the funnel, either right then or in further digital experiences, to further increase their likelihood of becoming a customer. Place it strategically at the end of your ad, ensuring that viewers know what action to take next.

The Rundown on Cutdowns

In summary, turning a 90-second explainer video into 30-second and 15-second digital ads requires careful planning and editing. Start by identifying your core message and selecting the most critical segments of your video. Prioritize visuals over verbiage, trim the fat, and optimize for mobile viewing. Test and iterate to find the most effective version of your ads, and always craft a strong call-to-action.

By following these six tips, you'll be well on your way to creating attention-grabbing, shorter ads that captivate your audience in the blink of an eye.

The post 6 Tips for Creating Short Digital Ads Alongside an Explainer Video appeared first on Demo Duck.

Bringing Video Creatives Together: A Keyframes & Kegs Debrief

Jarrett Hothan — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 14:20:21 +0000

Keyframes and Kegs is so back! Our networking series for Chicago-based video creatives returned in August at the Revolution Brewing Brewery + Taproom. It’s been a minute since we’ve had the last one—gestures at a giant sign that says ‘2020’—but it was well worth the wait. Great speakers, cold beers, hot pizza and excellent conversations amongst members of our industry. Two members of our K&K Party Planning Committee, Marissa Davis, Producer, and Jarrett Hothan, ACD, had a chat about their biggest takeaways from the event’s return.

The Chicago Video Community is Bigger and More Vibrant Than Ever.

Jarrett: The last time we hosted a Keyframes & Kegs was in 2019, so naturally there's some hopeful optimism that comes with relaunching an event series. Will people still want to come? Will they remember us? I was really excited about the turnout. It was probably the most people we've ever had at one of our events—and a ton of new faces too. Including you Marissa, who joined our team since then. What did you think about your first Keyframes & Kegs?

Marissa: One of my favorite things about Chicago is that it's a hotbed of creativity. Not only is there a ton of creative talent, but there's also an incredible amount of emerging artists, students and recent grads that are eager to get out there and network. Before I came to Demo Duck, I worked at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a big part of my role was planning special events for their development office. I got to know a lot of students as they prepared for their careers after art school, and was always inspired by their drive to really put themselves out there.

It was exciting to see so many people at Keyframes & Kegs that were looking to jump start their careers with the same level of enthusiasm. Folks in the video production industry love an opportunity to connect. I love that Keyframes & Kegs can continue to foster that sense of community for the foreseeable future.

Attendees watch presenters at our August Keyframes & Kegs event.

Mixed Media Projects are Everywhere.

Jarrett: I thought it was really interesting how many of our presenters shared projects that were a mixed media production style. Jake Mathew's end credits sequence for Ms. Marvel he shared was a great example—live action footage of Jersey City combined with bright and colorful animated mural moments.

Marissa: Agree. I think lots of creatives are very comfortable exploring outside their comfort zone of what may be there day-to-day discipline. Embracing this discomfort—and bringing their work to new styles or formats with new collaborators—ultimately leads to some great work and education too. When it comes to mixed media, it seems there's lots of animation meets live action projects out there these days. It's a fun way to inject some magic into everyday life, and to see the world slightly differently. We've certainly done a few projects like that recently, including one you presented at the event. How was speaking in front of everyone?

Jarrett: Well, I've had plenty of brewery visits where I don't stop talking. So this time, they just gave me a microphone. I really admire coming to these types of events as an attendee, and seeing how visual creatives both explore and deconstruct the idea of a professional presentation. Some jokes, behind-the-scenes shots, memes...things of that nature. It was cool to be a part of the night and share our recent LED Wall series for Hopewell Brewing Company.

Jake Mathew shares his experience collaborating with a large team for the Ms. Marvel credits sequence.

AI...friend, foe or collaborator? Mick Champayne explores using AI as a way to develop creative prompts.

Collaborators Come in AI-l Forms

Jarrett: What did you think of our friend Mick Champayne's presentation? There's lots of doom and gloom about the existential threat of AI regarding creative work, but I liked her spin on it by using it as a thought-starting collaborator when you're in a rut. I mean, it happens to everybody.

Marissa: Mick's approach to AI as a collaboration tool was certainly one of the more optimistic takes on it that I've heard from people in our industry. For that reason, I really appreciated her message...and her transcendent butt drawings. At the core of her presentation was that very relatable idea that we all do experience creative ruts. No 'butts' about it. Sometimes those ruts come at inopportune times, especially ones that can affect project deadlines and a flow of reliable income. AI could be the 'frenemy' we all need, if we think of it as a helpful tool that could spark some fresh ideas and pull us out of a pesky rut.

Jarrett: So, as the unofficial creative director and producer of Keyframes & Kegs—what would you use AI for when planning our next event?

Marissa: Hmmm. Well, humans have already proved our excellence over machines with the existence of beer and pizza. Maybe AI could just help us make a killer playlist for the event soundtrack? We'll handle the rest when it comes to planning. Speaking of, stay tuned for the next Keyframes & Kegs event hopefully coming early in 2024!

Round of applause for everyone who came out to the event! We'll see you in 2024.

The post Bringing Video Creatives Together: A Keyframes & Kegs Debrief appeared first on Demo Duck.

Inside Our LED Wall Shoot for Hopewell Brewing Co.

Jarrett Hothan — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 02:43:47 +0000

Demo Duck recently wrapped a delicious LED wall experiment, producing a video series for a local Chicago brewery. From embracing new technology to partnering with old friends, the project had plenty of layers to it. Our ACD Jarrett Hothan tells the story from his unique perspective.

In 2011, my friend Jonathan Fritz picked me up for band practice. Chicago had finally thawed out after a long winter, and the fresh optimism of spring was in the air. During that ride, Jon told me something interesting. He was finally setting in motion a dream long fermenting with his University of Illinois friends Samantha Lee and Stephen Bossu—they were going to open a brewery in Chicago.

Although our band unceremoniously disbanded after one show, it’s safe to say Jon's new side project was destined to be a hit. After years of planning, The Hopewell Brewing Company officially opened its doors in 2016, bringing crisp, crushable beers to the masses—especially via their bright and welcoming taproom in Logan Square. From day one, their visual branding was on-point—minimalist and tasteful packaging design with vivid colors, sharp angles, visible brush strokes. Hmm, maybe this stuff would look good in motion…

Our team capturing some footage of the Hopewell Tap room to display on the LED wall.

Tapping a New Technology

Certainly a few things have happened since 2016. Perhaps the most noteworthy? That’s right. Baby Yoda. Grogu, the cute, coo-ing, merchandising machine, became the breakout star of The Mandalorian. But another major star of the series was “The Volume,” a 20-foot-tall, 75-foot-wide, 270-degree immersive LED space designed custom by Industrial Light and Magic. The LED wall created high-resolution backgrounds that are illuminated as an actual light source—making the space western scenery all the more immersive and realistic as opposed to a green screen.

Naturally, the Demo Duck team wanted to get our hands on that thing. No, not Grogu. I’m talking about the LED wall. We’re always trying to learn new video production styles or try out new technology to elevate the work we do. Since we didn’t have a specific project that called for the LED wall, we decided to do a spec project where we’d bring to life a concept that would be a good use of its unique production benefits. An exciting decision, but it raised a few questions. Where would we find an LED wall? And what would we even shoot?

RJ Pole is a producer for MK Films in Chicago, a company that specializes in “tabletop production,” which finds dynamic, delicious ways to showcase food and beverages on film. And guess what they just added to their arsenal? An LED wall. Perfect! We reached out to RJ and his team to see if they’d be interested in partnering with us on the project and letting us use their studio space and the LED wall. Not only were they in, RJ also offered some creative advice for our concept development. He mentioned that the LED wall really sings when it’s the background for liquid, providing a delicious brightness and beautiful reflecting off glass.

The Ducks flocking together at MK Studios with the LED wall in the back. RJ Pole, pictured right.

The Fermentation Process

Our team hosted a brainstorming session featuring different ways we could utilize the LED wall. From explainer video parodies to fun multiversal bits, the room was buzzing with creative energy. However, RJ’s advice regarding the LED wall and its beverage benefits really offered us a “north star” to help us hone an idea. Let’s create a series of product-focused videos for Hopewell that uses the LED wall to bring their vibrant branding to life for the first time in motion.

Naturally, the Hopewell team was excited and on board for us to use their product and branding for our spec project. Who doesn’t like three cool videos produced on-the-house in the name of creative experimentation? Their only request was for us to use beers that are typically brewed year-round, so we settled on Ride or Die, Clover Club and Lightbeam due to their gorgeous packaging designs.

Call me Ishmael, I must confess that I am more of a narrator of this journey than captain of the ship. Our core project team involved a variety of Ducks, including Creative Director Kelsie Ozamiz, Producers Katie Williamson, Marissa Davis and Cody Benefiel, Designer/Animators Jake Allen, Aimé DeLattre and Ossian Mendoza, and our Director/Editor Nick Roth. Design and animation was a main part of our pre-production process. For two of our videos, we planned to have the LED wall display real footage of a warm evening on the lakefront and the Hopewell tap room—only for it to transition into animated versions of the Hopewell packaging designs. Creating this animated graphics was led by Aimé, our motion graphics guru who I actually met for the first time at Hopewell’s tap room.

“It was important to remember that the animations needed to serve as a background for the scene,” said Aimé. “Since the camera is shooting from different angles, or occasionally might blur the background when shooting something in the foreground, I needed to make sure both the design and the motion of the elements was very obvious.”

The Perfect Pour

Once we had all of our assets to display on the LED wall ready, it was time for the shoot! Our intrepid producer Marissa helped pull together props for the shoot to also bring some personality and color to the real objects in the foreground. These included a finished wood surface to create the illusion of the Hopewell taproom bar, as well as a delicious picnic scene. This is the magic of the LED wall. What we’re displaying is the location—all we need to do is switch out the elements and actors in the foreground. This certainly made things a little easier for the full team, and freed up producers like Cody to lend creative suggestions and more.

“In this case, we were able to accomplish the effect of a large location shoot without all the equipment moves and setups,” said Cody. “It really took the stress off me that day to not have to think through those aspects. Even though we were just experimenting with angles with the LED wall in the background, it made the video feel very lived in and immersive.”

Our first video for Lightbeam featured the sunny Hopewell taproom on the LED wall, and our well-coiffed ACD Jake in the foreground taking a sip of the beer. The idea was that he would then enter into a world of flavor, drawing slight inspiration from 90s advertising for Tang, Gushers and other teeth-rotting delights. Aimé’s animations then transform the taproom into a colorful squiggly interpretation of the beer label. Marissa and I got to work dueling hair dryers to create a transformative “flavor” effect of wind blowing back Jake’s hair. Practical effects are back, baby.

The second video was for Clover Club. This was an interesting creative pivot from earlier iterations of the project. We were thinking of maybe another “location turning into animated label” bit, but Kelsie brought up the idea of creating a video based on, well, good vibes. Inspired by the gin cocktail of the same name, Clover Club features a vibrant, flowery label. So we decided to create a sunny picnic with a high-definition nature background. Our director/editor Nick, who shot the footage, saw the LED wall as a unique advantage.

“The LED wall was great because I was able to keep an eye on the background and use that changing light and react to what was happening in real-time,” said Nick. “This was especially important for the picnic scene, where I made sure to shoot footage that featured light reflecting off the glasses, cans and other objects to really make it vibrant and feel outdoors.”

An interesting learning was that the luminance of the LED wall isn't always your best friend when it comes to shooting beverages. We found that the light reflecting off the cans was indeed a little harsh from certain angles, and was throwing off the desired vibe of the footage. We sprayed the cans with a a little bit of dulling spray, reducing reflections and light glare. This is a common issue that MK Films encounters for such shoots, and they have a full toolbox on hand for problem-solving customizations.

The day was moving and grooving, and soon it was time for the third and final video for Ride or Die. It was also time for me to serve as on-screen talent. This video featured myself and Ossian as two buddies meeting up at the Chicago lakefront to enjoy a tasty beverage, which would then transform into the Lake Michigan-inspired packaging. It was the role I was born to play—step aside Daniel Day-Lewis!

Although Ossian and I’s actions were pretty minimal, my takeaway was how much intricacies and timing are often necessary for key moments like a can opening or even toasting. When the pressure is on and the cameras are rolling, it’s funny how you can overthink everyday actions. Fortunately, Nick and Kelsie were there to guide our timing. “Alright enter…walk…open cooler…crack beer…cheers!” If there's no need to capture audio, there's nothing wrong with over-communicating and working out a plan for choreographing small actions.

After the shoot wrapped, it came time for the edit. This was handled by Nick, and former Duck and current freelancer partner Sam Powell. Since Hopewell wasn’t an official client per say, it allowed our team to explore the right story or shot mix that we wanted. When it came to the edit, Nick’s main goal was to have each video feel slightly different, and feature the product shots in unique ways as well.

Lights, camera, chug! Aimé, Jake and Chris get ready for their on-screen debut while Kelsie helps direct.

Last Call

Three delicious brews. Three delicious videos. And of course, lots of learnings from our first experience working with the LED Wall. We still love building immersive live action sets, or utilizing green screens or colorful cyc walls. It’s all about what is best for the client and concept. Hopefully these videos—and the transformative power of the LED wall—can transport you to a sunny Lake Michigan day with a cold beverage with a buddy. Or if you’re in the Chicagoland area, you can actually visit the Hopewell tap room in person. Maybe you’ll see me there…strictly doing research for the next video series, of course.

The post Inside Our LED Wall Shoot for Hopewell Brewing Co. appeared first on Demo Duck.