Looking for creative ideas...

Hello all. I'm pretty new to both production and post - though I've been around other people doing a lot of it for the last decade... Now looking at doing it myself and man there is a learning curve...

OK. I have a thing I want to show and I'm hoping that more creative people than I might have some ideas about how to achieve it. I'm creating several video productions - actually a whole lot, maybe fifty or so over time - about wireless technology for machine to machine communications. I need to depict a wireless signal (itself an invisible 'thing') travelling through the ether from a device - let's say a utility meter in a house - to a system in a different building. It will travel over a distance of several km, perhaps over a cityscape, perhaps over a different landscape.

Right now I'm wondering if I can achieve this effect without attempting to make the invisible visible (it's not an animation) by perhaps zooming out of the device, transitioning through a dissolve to continuing zoom from outside a window, a pan up towards the sky followed by the reverse at the other end of the link (i.e. where the wireless signal is being received).

Slightly more tricky but would a zoom into and out of a sky with clouds create the effect of movement through the ether?

Any creative suggestions on how to achieve this effect gratefully received.

Cheers


Al

I'd use an animation over the video to show the invisible. Otherwise folks won't get it.

Way back when I was a young child (and we spent days avoiding being eaten by dinosaurs) there was a product called Mercurochrome. You put it on cuts and scrapes to warn off infection. It originally had no color and didn't feel like anything but water. Thus did not sell. Marketing showed that folks need to have sensory input to be aware of things. So they put a drop of rubbing alcohol to make it sting, and a drop of red dye so folks could see it. It sold like hot cakes.

Point it, folks really do need to "see" the invisible to "get it". I understand what you're going for, as I have some involvement with the two way radio business from back in the day. Conceptually it sounds great, but realistically, you have to "show" folks what you're talking about.

Perhaps a distortion in the shape of curved lines. The Bump Map filter in Motion does this really well. Or use a ripple effect and only mask out a path the signals would be traveling.

Thanks BenB - I've had a quick look at the MacProVideos you recommended - yes. No substitute for learning it properly rather than just jumping in. Thanks for the steer.

I see what you're saying. I wanted to be subtle but subtle is no good, especially for a business audience we are 'selling' a concept to if nobody gets it. It has to communicate, not win Oscars. So literal is the way forward.

Basic editing is first on my agenda to I'll worry about how to create bump maps when I've cut my teeth! Like I said, it's a steep learning curve - esp when this is only one element of my work. I have to try to write press releases and organise events whilst I'm playing with FCP!!!

Have to agree, something visible will help people understand considerably more. However, if your videos promote smartmeters, you must also counter a tremendous groundswell of negative campaigning against them.

Send me a PM (Private Message thru this site), or preferably an email thru my website.




Global•Watch•Media
www.GWM2.com