Getting Slick

Once a quarter, we put together a film for the latest Limited Edition launch. Sometimes in these films, we barely show the books at all, frequently only at the very end. Though just as often, we’ll bring the new books front and center and show nothing-but. For the new “Ignition” Edition, since it had so much going on, from the shiny Yupo covers to the different interiors, we thought it would be great to make a slick :30 spot with the books as the constant hero.

Inspired by Apple‘s 1999 “Colors” campaign, we wanted the books to spin around and be as dynamic as possible, but as usual, also we wanted to shoot it practically, using real books that would interact with the lighting, and real motion. We had just received the awesome RGKit Play, with lots of motorized tabletop tools, combined with an eMotimo motion control head, and a probe lens, so we figured we would be able to get really fun, wide-angle macro shots.

We took over the main space at HQ and spent four days experimenting with how the camera movements could play with the books and how we could move them around, figuring out transitions, details to focus on, and generally just following playing around with ideas for building shots. As always, we left a ton of footage on the cutting room floor. After that, it was a week-long push to do all of the compositing, days upon days of masking (After Effect’s RotoBrush 2 was a life-saver), the re-timings, color work, and all that fun post-production wrangling. For fun we made this quick video taking a look at some of how it all came together. Check the final “Ignition” film, and lots of others, in our Film Archive.