GIVING 'WINTER NUMBERLAND' A HOMEMADE LOOK
December 21, 2009

GIVING 'WINTER NUMBERLAND' A HOMEMADE LOOK

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Winter Numberland begins with PNC Wealth Management executive VP, Jim Dunigan, introducing the piece and narrating the pricing as the song plays in the background. The video is presented as three “Acts,” and school kids perform different parts from the familiar song. Their performances are enhances by animated text and icons that underscore the points of each line in the song.

“The client’s original concept called for the prices to be detailed within a school play with us ‘puppeting’ the children after they were shot,” recalls Dancing Diablo founder Beatriz Ramos who directed the live action. “But after some experimentation we realized that it would be more effective to shoot the kids as if they were acting in the play, and then create various animated elements to add a dimension of magic to the piece.”

The Jalopy Theater in Red Hook, Brooklyn, hosted the live action shoot, with children captured against a greenscreen using a Red One camera.

“We felt strongly that the web video needed to have a ‘homemade’ look to it, while maintaining a cohesive artistic style that made it interesting to view,” adds Ramos. “So we created all of the props and set pieces used by the kids in a skewed or oversized scale in cardboard, and built miniaturized sets to composite the kids into later on in the post production process.” 

The numbers were created in CGI, and then given the look of cardboard. Final Cut Pro was used for the edit and animated elements were composited using After Effects.