A decade of experience on video production

Studio 52 has been working on defining company cultures through video production since 1977 and we are happy to share some of that experience with you. In this article, we’re going to take a look into the evolution of the animation and production techniques we’ve worked with for the past decade.

Keep in mind that we’ve worked on hundreds of projects over the last ten years, we’ll just be covering some of the highlights. Hopefully, learning about these techniques will help you with your video production projects.

Animated Captions

Video: https://vimeo.com/97905078

We’ve come a long way since producing this safety video for Arabian Drilling Co. (https://arabdrill.com/) Wherever heavy machinery is involved, safety is not a joking matter, If you’re using that heavy machinery to obtain flammable substances in large quantities it’s better to go the extra mile.

Researcher Harald Weinreich & Jakob Nielson published a study that measured 45,237 page views from 25 different users. According to their results, the average user only read 20% of the information on a page. When it comes to safety training, that’s just unacceptable.

This is actually worse for Millenials. Reply published an article on the subject “Today, attention has become a commodity for marketers. It’s scarce. And like anything in economics, scarcity means higher demand, higher value, and ultimately higher costs.” There is some debate on this subject, however, there is a general agreement that stimulating visuals are a must have for modern content.

Sure, the resolution and cuts might appear a little ragged today, a lot has changed over the last decade. Regardless, the video is a great example of the animated overlaid captions. Still a common element in modern videos, remarking important information with overlaid text will help deliver the message.

One of our favorites is the slow zoom in, this effect generates a lot of visual weight and can make the text very memorable. It’s important that your captions are properly animated, if they’re too still, they won’t be engaging. However, too much motion will make them hard to read. A balance between engagement and readability is crucial.

3D Animations

Video: https://vimeo.com/97639343

Moving forward a few years, we produced a video presentation for the “Dubai Lighter than Air Project”. This project involved using blimps for corporate promotion and skydiving tours in Dubai. They wanted a presentation that captured the excitement of their concept, which was no easy task. Jumping from a flying blimp can be very exciting.

In this case, our clients Van Wagner and HF Facilities Management wanted a 360º take of their blimp mid-air. Nowadays, filming technology has improved significantly. Plus, drones can severely reduce the cost of aerial takes. Back then it was a different story.  

Actually making a take like that was too ambitious for the project, that didn’t stop us from delivering our clients the video they wanted. The desition to solve this issue using software was simple.

Using 3D animation, we were able to create the take they were looking for. Building a 3D model of their bling was a much more realistic approach, and the results were amazing. In the end, a good video is about the message. The cleaner graphics allowed for better visibility of the promotional potential of a blimp, which was the goal of the take in the first place.

Nowadays, there are many available API’s and user-friendly software, almost anyone can animate their content. Now, to achieve these levels of quality and customization it’s necessary to have expert modeler and animators. One of the reasons we’ve managed to sustain a thriving business for so long is our desition to work with the best experts in each field. Results speak by themselves.

2D Animations

Video: https://vimeo.com/113825177

After a while, 2D animations with high visual impact started trending. There was some controversy about this at the time. Novice production companies started shying away from 2D animations, trying to ride a promotional wave originated from CGI characters. This turned out to be a great opportunity for experienced producers to leverage 2D animation for our projects.

A TV commercial we produced for AXIOM comes to mind. For this project, we leveraged the perspective of visually charged 2D assets. This allowed us to simulate 3D motions with a sharper look. This is a great way to make content memorable.

The contrast between complex motion and simple graphics works great generating visual weight. Let’s not overlook the fact that 2D artwork is less expensive than 3D models, this allowed us to spend more time on the details with the same budget.