Recently at Relish, I very happily completed a promotional video showcasing our animation and editing abilities. I encourage you to give it a watch:
As the creative executive at Relish, it can be frustrating to have most of your best work hidden behind NDA policy due to client confidentiality. While the role of my video outputs is similar to a news segment (visual flare and style come second to delivering the facts and quotes) I have been able to squeeze in some snazzy animations here and there, giving what could otherwise be a terminally dry video just a little bit of life. After a recent animation heavy project for a client, I was able to create something we could repurpose with dummy data and use it as a public sample of my ability.
Aside from refining my skills, Adobe’s tools have gotten better over time, with the now-ubiquitous AI generation capabilities shaving off hours of work and allowing me to venture into aspects of post production that were previously cost prohibitive. Outside of Adobe, other third party services and plug-ins have been just as useful. The most impactful of these has been ElevenLabs’ text-to-voice service which, as you can hear above, can deliver incredibly naturalistic voice over. It has allowed us to create more quant focused videos where we can display hand animated graphs for hard figures while the voice over provides narrative.
As a solo editor (at a larger editing house, this would be worked on by 5 or 6 specialised editors) tools like this, stock footage and icons, stock music, and plug-ins are a godsend, but it is a dangerous game to rely on them too much both because a lack of practice can make problem solving a nightmare and, more importantly, it can make your output incredibly generic. Some intermediate knowledge of After Effects and a good workflow allows you to create repurposed templates of your own design, where you can quickly change colours, fonts, scales, etc in a fraction of the time it takes to make the initial version. Even if using a plugin, the curiosity to play around with their in-built parameters will make your work stand out just that little bit more than your competitors.
Case in point, I have already made a Red C version with different colours, altered voice over and a replacement video clip in almost no time at all.
While I love these third party tools, they can also create lots small issues that need a savvy editor to fix. For instance; the AI voiceover pronounces a word wrong. You generate again but now it gets a different word wrong. You can keep rolling the dice in hopes the next generation will get it 100% right throughout, but this could take hours. A simple cut and splice of the sections that work with some fades to smooth out the gaps is much faster.
This all said, even the best laid plans can cause headaches, so despite the shiny new tools a good workflow is vital to keeping a project as prompt and efficient as possible.
- Storyboarding and Scripting:
The voice over script and visuals are created together, preferably in Powerpoint. This way we can have our rough designs and timings laid out before the heavy work of editing and animation begins. Treating each slide as a “shot” of the video means you can also do some layout and design work. Spend plenty of time here. - Voiceover:
Once the above is all signed off, it’s important to generate the audio first as you will need to time your animations to the voice. Good punctuation is key to make sure there are pauses where you need them. My advice is to break the script into sections and generate separate smaller files. - Animating:
Using the “storyboard” and the voice files, you can now start creating the animations proper. Some designs will likely change as you discover what does and doesn’t work in motion, or simply because you get a better idea for how it should look. This is where you can get really creative. For the above video I used stock footage (with a blur effect) as a backdrop as this is what our brand template tended to go for, but we tried various other options before settling on this one. - Video Editing:
Export all of these animations as smaller video files (one per “shot”) and bring them into Premiere Pro for the final edit. Because you have these animations as separate files, you have given yourself the freedom to rearrange the order of the “shots” and to add transitions between each as you see fit. Here is the point where you will also add music, filmed video sequences and perhaps some colour correction. - Review:
Ideally you should be able to do the video in one pass, but realistically you/your client will want to change things once you have a full draft edit in front of you. Always plan for this, either by limiting how many drafts you will do (perfection is the enemy of getting anything finished) or by making quick and easy rough cuts that lack all the sheen and polish fit for public/client consumption until it’s all locked in place. Then from here it’s repeating the steps in the order above for each draft until you’re happy!
Following this workflow, we are in place to create more and more videos like the one above for our clients at a faster rate.
If you like what you see or would like to know more please get in touch with: ryan@wearerelish.com
