If you’ve seen “Aliens!,” you may be interested in why we made it, or how, or how you can do something similar. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it now.
And now that you have, we’ll get to the behind-the-scenes goodies.
Why Make A Funny Marketing Video?
We believe that part of the magic of marketing with video lies in the combination of entertainment AND information delivery. We chose a narrative format so we could slip in some statistics from our research without calling too much attention to them. To demonstrate our design and animation capabilities outside of the traditional ‘reel’ format we introduced alien invaders. And to make sure our message wasn’t too heavy-handed, we added some humor, just like some of the biggest companies out there.
How’d We Make It?
Our previous short, “Mastermind,” from 2012, was shot in an afternoon around a conference table. That made for a relatively painless production process, and we enjoyed the idea we fleshed out, but it didn’t quite have the ‘wow’ factor to draw in viewers visually. This time, we knew we wanted to go bigger, and it all started with a plan.
Pre-Production
Because we had marketing on the brain, we labored over a script to strike the right balance between our message and the fun stuff. When we realized we’d be dealing with invaders from outer space, we began our pre-visualization process.
This involved some conceptual sketches of the ships to get us all on the same page, and a rough animatic (a still of which is above) of the big special effects ‘reveal’ so we knew what kind of shot we’d need, and about how much time it would take (and therefore, how much it might cost.)
Autumn in Chicago is unpredictable – and we were shooting outside so we knew we had to have a game plan to finish everything on time (and budget). That plan took the form of storyboards, which let us plan where the camera would be, who would be needed on set, outside in the cold, and handling audio-recording in outside conditions. All this planning led to the discovery of some new ideas – including shooting the four of us from more angles, and capturing the aliens’ point of view.
Production
When making a video without a big budget, you’ve got to use what you’ve got, and if you get creative, you can make what you have work well. As a marketing agency, we naturally have more resources, but utilized a combination of cameras to achieve the effect we were going for. Starting with our own HD camera (best suited to filming for long durations, like 8 uninterrupted hours,) we also used a digital still camera with interchangeable lenses to get a more cinematic feel, and we even used an an iPhone with its HD camera (on a mini tripod) for a couple of shots. The combination of looks and techniques at our disposal was seamlessly integrated into the final product, and demonstrates how effective utilization of your resources can achieve great results.
The weather is the ultimate ‘use what you’ve got’ aspect of production. When we set our production plan, we knew that we’d need two days outside to get everything. We wanted to get started outside on a gray Monday, but the forecast for Tuesday was for gray skies AND rain. Wednesday and Thursday were supposed to be clear, so we made a conscious choice to push our shooting days back rather than try to force it. Good planning means having contingency plans – in our case, we shot indoors.
Our script called for a scene to take place in the interior of an alien spaceship, and our budget called for a real DIY approach. We used $70 worth of faux crocodile skin, courtesy of MJ Trends (we ordered more than we needed, and now John has some new pajamas!) and were pretty excited about how it looked alien and organic under some creative lighting, but felt it could use a little more. So we ordered up some slime in the form of $25 worth of methylcellulose powder from Amazon.com (We’ve still got lots of slime, and powder, left over.)
It’s what made Bill Murray ‘feel so funky’ in Ghostbusters, and with about 24 hours of prep time, it produces a non-toxic, very gooey, great-looking alien mucous.
Some thrift-store costumes ($30 dollars worth, courtesy of The Ark Thrift Shop) were to be sacrificed for the cause, and once we had made sure that every other shot with Andy was complete, we set to sliming him. It was more fun for us than it was for him.
POST-PRODUCTION
Sound and picture editing, and the addition of special effects, are the heart of what’s called post-production. Editing the basic story took about 46 hours, much of which was spent logging all the takes we shot and deciding which were the better performances, slime shots, etc. Windy conditions on the roof made it so only some portions of some takes were usable (mainly for audio reasons,) and amateur actors make a lot of goofs so we shot maybe more footage than we would’ve liked.
Once we had our story told, we wanted to add some atmosphere. Music and sound effects brought our alien invasion a little more realism, and of course, there were the visual effects (about 23 hours worth) from our design department.
Publishing
We included our video in an email campaign and on our blog, which was promoted through social media. Through the use of metrics and analysis, we’re able to see not just how many people watched our video, but how much of it they watched, and where they found it. This information will set a baseline against which our future campaigns can be measured, and will help us figure out just how long our videos should be, when and where we should post them, etc.
You Can Make A Marketing Video, Too!
It all starts with the script. Write within your capabilities, get creative, and try it out.
To see some of our other internal promotional videos, click here.
If you’d like for us to do this type of thing for you, click here to contact us and we can talk about the possibilities.
