"Playing" Outside Your Comfort Zone
- Jan 19, 2018
- 3 min read
We have all heard the phrase “Growth doesn’t Happen Inside your Comfort Zone” and while that is true, it is of course scary to think about venturing outside of it. What I have found is that taking the risk and playing outside your comfort zone, can be less intimidating when you remember the basics that got you this far.
One of the most intense projects I have worked on was a Stop Motion Animation for Mattel’s Ever AFter HIgh Series. At the time, I had never produced a stop motion video before, nor had I produced something of this magnitude for a series as successful as Ever After High. However, this project ended up being one of the most successful videos I have done, generating over 2.5 Million views. I was playing in a different sandbox but I knew the steps that I had to take and the process that needed to be followed to get to the final product. We also had a lot of fun along the way.
Starting off with ideation, moving into the pitch process, then Pre-Production, Production and Post was a path I had traveled numerous times. The piece that was new was the Stop Motion Animation process. I had a great team that was able to fill the gaps and we took it one day at a time. Never forgetting that at the end of the day, we were making something for the fans and they were the focus.
While pitching for Mattel’s “Ever After High” line of toys, we pitched the idea of doing a music video, showcasing the toys using stop motion animation. I had never done Stop Motion but thought it would be a cool way to both promote the toys and the upcoming Netflix show. I was both elated and horrified when we won the business, now I had to figure out how we were going to make this happen.
One of our designers put together these great drawings that we used to sell the idea.
We spent a good amount of time on pre-production. Locking down the story we were going to tell, figuring out the ratio of clips to stop motion, and storyboarding. We even brought in a choreographer to help come up with some of the moves the dolls would do. We had to give the dancers restrictions as they had to emulate the moves that the dolls were able to achieve.
While we were working through all of these step, I was still worried about how we were going to pull off the stop motion. We weren’t looking for stop motion that was movie quality, the client wanted something more “Amateurish” that would inspire the audience to create their own. Finding that right mix of “Prosumer” was a bit challenging.
Partnering up with another production team, they got to work on building the sets, props, and reworking the dolls to achieve the range of motion we needed for the video. After a few months of prep, we were ready to start filming.
Principal photography was a long process. For each second of video we needed we were capturing around 24 frames. Meaning for about one minute of video we would need to capture almost 1,500 individual photos. There was a lot of trial and error to get the movements down and even more trying to figure out how to get their hair to flow naturally.
Each scene was coming together nice. Edit and Animation worked together to create the clips and add those special touches. After a few weeks more, we arrived at a final product. Once it went live the reaction from the fans were incredible! Not only were the view counts rising faster than any previous project I had done, but they were really excited about the attention to detail. I was really surprised as to how the fans reacted to the blinking. Some didn't like it, but the ones that did were really impressed:
In the end we created two videos. The main video that was highlighting the show and the stop motion:
As well as a "Behind the Scenes / Making Of" video. As told by the characters themselves:
While this video was outside my usual work, it was a ton of fun and an incredible team effort. “Playing” outside my comfort zone made a big difference in this project. While it was a big risk, it was a calculated one and I would absolutely do it again.
Comments