Not so long ago web video was a small industry, where you needed a truckload of bandwidth to even think about watching a tiny, low-resolution clip of a cat falling off a skateboard or a kid riding his bike off a cliff. Along came youtube in 2005…yes, that’s right, just five years ago, and suddenly an explosion of web video was imminent.
Widespread broadband, and even wider-spread enthusiasm from a new generation of people who have never known a world without the internet, and you have a recipe for the death of TV. But all this online stuff is still just getting going. Among the fog of videos of cats, kids, puppies and *insert cute/clumsy/dangerous/fast/slow/big animal/human here* a new dawn of web video is peeping over the horizon.
Brands are now beginning to jump head first into the web video world, even going as far as making big-budget commercials that never actually make it to TV. Recent campaigns for Old Spice and Nike demonstrate that video on the web has grown up.
Agencies are also finally taking all this very seriously, with words like ‘digital’ and ‘social’ being mentioned earlier in the creative meetings than ‘tv spots’. The question that has been on everyone’s minds in agencies across the land is how long before web (or digital as it has now been labelled) sits atop the advertising tree.
Digital spend on advertising now exceeds television spend in most developed economies, with 23.5% of all advertising money in the UK spent on digital compared with just 21.9% on TV. This must lead to the inevitable conclusion that television will eventually die out as a form of entertainment as advertisers abandon it in favour of digital. This shift in money can only render TV broadcasters the penniless poor relation of Google, Facebook et al, and completely unable to spend money on actually producing the TV shows – you know, the bits between the adverts.
This may well turn out to be some sort of abstract doomsday scenario for the future of television, but major commercial TV broadcasters should be clamouring to push their digital credentials towards the big brands who currently still advertise on TV. Attracting major digital commercial deals with big brands must be the new aim, as it is these brands who will eventually find the concept of TV advertising clumsy and expensive compared to the relatively inexpensive, efficient and interactive world of youtube, Facebook and Twitter.
Maybe television in it’s current form will die out and be forced to merge with the internet somehow. It has certainly been a long-held prediction of many a forward thinker in this industry, but yet still television continues, and most of us still go home and switch on the TV in the evening.
What will be the tipping point that means we all throw our televisions in the trash and all gather round the computer instead? Which of the major players will be the first to launch a truly revolutionary device that completely replaces television altogether? The strange thing is that all of the likely candidates for developing such a product are all from different areas of the marketplace. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Samsung, Nokia… they all have the potential to takeover TV, but it somehow seems unlikely that it will be an actual TV broadcaster who takes the initiative.
Filed under: Motion Graphics
Scorch London is looking for a Senior Motion Graphics Designer.
The right candidate will have:
• A mind-blowing showreel that demonstrates creativity, flair and variety.
• 4 years of professional industry experience.
• 5+ years of experience in using After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator.
• Good basic skills in Cinema 4D or similar.
• Experience in taking projects from concept stage through to completion and delivery.
• A friendly demeanor, and a positive attitude.
• Confidence/experience in dealing with clients and attending meetings.
• The same high-standard of work whether working on a high-end commercial or a quick and simple corporate.
Please note, this is NOT a junior role, so inexperienced candidates will not be considered.
Please email your CV/experience, a link to your showreel, salary expectations and why we should employ you to: jobs@scorchlondon.com
A fun and funky little TV commercial that we made featuring an animated bag of flour..
Filed under: Corporate Video, Motion Graphics | Tags: bosch, Corporate Video, Motion Graphics, video
Change, David Bowie and gardening. A heady mix you might think, but that didn’t stop us from plundering our imaginations for a concept that would convey the changing face of Bosch in a funky way…enjoy!
Latest work, a web video for iSend email marketing software. Using the iSend logo and brand we developed a simple branded landscape in which we could demonstrate the main features and benefits of iSend.
This style of software demo video is perfect for use on a website to communicate a lot of key information quickly and effectively without the need for long pages of text which users may never read.
With the recent news that Youtube now has TV shows on it, and the ever converging broadcast and online media, the next step surely is Google’s move into television broadcasting. Surely it is only a matter of time before you can switch on your TV and the first thing you see will be a Google search screen, where you simply type in the show you want, and up pops 1,436,000 shows that meet your search criteria.
This is all very well, and it is certainly progress, but with the several hundred digital channels already available, will the transition to potentially millions of channels spell the end for high-quality programming? Experts have been saying for years that with so many more channels, the quality has to go down, but it could be argued that we haven’t seen any dramatic drop in programme quality over the last few years, it’s just that we’ve had to sift through a lot more rubbish on the way to finding what we want to watch. It seems almost inevitable that this amount of poor programming will just continue to increase exponentially, as we have more and more choice available.
The concept of Youtube since the very beginning was that everyone with access to a video camera (which let’s face it means everyone with access to a phone) would be able to broadcast themselves. How long before that freedom to broadcast is extended to our TV screens? Within the next year or two I suspect.
For brands in particular this is an exciting time. Television advertising space is cheaper than ever, and there are so many more options to advertise to specific markets on specific channels at specific times of the day. With Search TV as I like to call it, brands will be able to have their ad displayed before a programme which has been searched for on Google seconds before. The viewer wants to watch a show about cooking their favourite food for example, so types ‘thai cookery show’ into their Google TV (using their Google Remote of course), and seconds later, they have found thousands of shows that they might want to watch, and each one is sponsored by a different food or drink brand specific to their search term.
The potential for revenue for whoever controls the search part of this process is massive, and whatever you think will happen in this mass convergence of television, internet, advertising, phones and video, you have to admit that Google, yet again, seems to be the one holding all the cards.
Filed under: Corporate Video, Video Production | Tags: filming, london, Video Production
Our latest work for our good friends over at London Business School can be found here: LBS video production
Filmed over several days at London Business School, this video shows off the experience of being on the ‘Emerging Leaders Programme’ from a students perspective. Potential new recruits can see from the video what it is like to be on the course, and as such it works like a living prospectus for the school itself. Whilst we knew that a lot of detail had to go into the film, we were able to keep it engaging using a fast editing pace and an upbeat soundtrack.
This is a question I have been asked many times, when in any social situation you care to mention. “Motion graphics” I reply. Their face looks expressionless. “I’m a motion graphics designer”. Nothing. “I design graphics, well graphics that move, for err.. tv commercials, promos and stuff”. I can tell at this point that they think I am a geek who does some weird thing on computers that has no relevance to anything. I used to find this strange ignorance intriguing and reveled in showing them something that would illuminate their confused mind.
Now, because I’ve been in the thick of the motion graphics industry for almost ten years, I find it surprising that it is still a largely unheard of discipline in the real world (as opposed to the production world). Motion graphics are literally everywhere, on every screen medium there is; in TV shows, in virtually every TV ad, at the cinema, on websites, on youtube, at live events, in theatres, on phones….in short, everywhere. Every time a brand is visible on a screen anywhere, motion graphics is involved. The average consumer will see some motion graphics approximately 436 times during the average day (ok, I made that up, but it’s probably not far off).
So, at what point will motion graphics be as mainstream as say, website design, graphic design, video editing or even animation? Perhaps soon. Motion graphics is constantly evolving and constantly morphing and incorporating more and more disciplines, from stop frame animation and cartoons, to sonic visuals based on sound. Maybe it struggles to maintain it’s own identity as an art form, as it can be so wide in it’s application. One thing’s for sure, it is certainly more mainstream and more developed an industry across the pond in the U.S. with New York and Los Angeles leading the way. Kids can study motion graphics from a relatively young age now in the U.S, and there are some huge talents emerging who are barely out of school.
With an industry so fast moving and so quick to adapt to new technology, I’m sure motion graphics will be a term with which more and more people are familiar in the UK too. And with more familiarity will come more young talent and more people interested in joining this amazingly artistic and creative industry. And who knows, maybe one day people will ask “So, what do you do?” and when faced with my stock reply, come back with “really, my son is doing that in school” or even better “me too!”
Video Production Blog from Scorch London 