Short deadline, lot’s of challenges

This project had few major challenges. First one was that Europe went into Lockdown and most people were working from home for the first time. Second was that teams involved in submitting content for final video, were scattered in about 4-5 different time zones. And last challenge was short deadline.

Even with all those challenges in place, I was able to deliver video showcasing OCR technology developed and used in major bank at their quarterly update Townhall. Video was well received by client and his wider team. It brought various teams together, either via content submission or working on a script.

20-05-21 – DB OCR – 004_3_2021-07-24_16.27.34

Unfortunately, I can’t post the whole project online for everyone to see, since it features a lot of corporate secrets and in-house tech demos. But, I can show how I made individual elements and the workflow behind them.

Templates, lot’s of templates

To make this video, I have worked with awesome Product and Graphic Designer, Aimee Dent. I was responsible for animation, template development, video production and final polishing / micro animations. Aimee was responsible for graphic design, script and aligning expectations with wider team.

This video was part of wider quarterly update. We had to incorporate current artwork style used in the client’s PowerPoint deck and other event collaterals, such as colours, typography, icons.

This project featured a lot of text elements – kind of like video chapters – where I would need to keep them all the same, in look, style and animation. It was pretty easy thing to do, since I’m used to creating text templates on all my projects, that fit client’s brand guidelines.

Text template testing

Main challenge of the text templates was to make them fit in various sizes. Some descriptions were 2 words long, other were 2 lines long. Resizable shape layers with expressions that would sample the text length and height were the answer.

I made sure that animation was the same across multiple text boxes, by using Essential Graphics feature in After Effects. I was able to create animation and then tweak it across around ~12 different titles, without having to do it one by one.

Icons + Details

Icons and graphical designs where created by Aimee. I was busy preparing text and graphical templates for later use. Here is a selection of some of my favourite ones from the main video.

Custom Skype Frame

Since we started this project during lockdown, most of meetings took place over Zoom. Early on we had an idea of incorporating video soundbites from various bank’s employees, that worked on OCR tech from around the world. Simple 1-2 paragraph soundbites, how OCR tech helped or changed their day to day tasks.

Because everyone was in different countries, we had very little time to go back and ask for new submissions. That is why I created Skype Frame template, that seamlessly resizes to correct source size. This way, all different videos and pictures submitted, could be used without problem. Even in portrait mode.

Skype Frame testing

Client loved it and afterwards, I have worked on 2 more projects for the same bank, where I was asked to reuse Skype Frame template. Once implemented, it was easy to reuse and make everything look consistent – from phone video selfies to webcam recordings.