Luxurious innovations

This has been my most planned and structured project so far. The result is something between video and animation.

The story

A number of teams within the Cartier organization have been transformed into “Labs” focused on innovation within manufacturing, supply, product and retail. To tie these different innovation labs together, and make the innavtions available globally Nansen Chicago and Occtoo had built an innovation hub for Cartier.

The hub was launched during Cartiers global meetup in Maracesh, Maroco.

I was asked to direct the intro video for the Hub.

Animating the storyboard for faster progress

Opposite my normal run-n-gun type of projects. I had to start this with a plan and a storyboard. This is to get a broad and general by-in from the client and then drill down on details, looks and feels.

The process was:

  1. Hand drawn story
  2. Adding look and feel
  3. Incorporate test shots
  4. Final edit

Images: animated storyboard + screens from iPad

Phase 1 - Paper on iPad

Pretty straightforward. I prefer WeTtsnsfers “Paper” for the iPad. It has the 4x4 storyboard templates that is super useful.

Export as .pngs and import to Premiere.

Now I can make a rough animated story that has all key moments and tempo.

The key here is to make it in Premiere so in future phases I can just replace media and thus not waste work already made.

Images: timeline in Premiere

Phase 2 - Look and feel

Quite often brands don’t have a super-clear look and feel for videos so I try to gather and present styles, colors and imagery that fits the brand and the project I’m directing. In Cartiers case I needed to find a netrual color as a background that can make the content and screens from the Hub standout. So I looked a lot at their Instagram to see what style they use there.

images: Designed storyboard + reference screens

Phase 3 - Testshooting on location

I borrowed Almroths photostudio for three days and rehersed angles, lighting, tempo and shots. The studio has consistent lighiting and I can rig my gear for there for three days if something needs to be reshot.

images: animation with test shots.

Phase 4 - final edit

I brought my daughter in for some handmodeling.