let's get experimental

It started with this little guy:

I saw him, and I loved him.

Incidentally, I saw him (and loved him) around the same time that we added a full-time videographer to our team, versus the editors-who-also-shoot-video model that served this company so well for the preceding 20+ (!!) years.

We’ve always focused extensively on creative and technical development, but historically we’ve been most comfortable doing that in postproduction, where the stakes seem lower because at least we didn’t send anyone to shoot random video for eight hours, only to come back and have what we were picturing not quite work out.

BUT NO MORE!

I sent the baby seal GIF, a wish, and a prayer to our production team and asked them to experiment with split-depth videography, for ourselves, for our clients, and partially for my amusement (sorry).

As is usually the case when someone here—or one of our clients—has a crackpot idea, someone else here figures out how to retroactively turn it into a great idea with a little sighing, a bit of trial, and often some error. Here are some samples of what we were able to produce, with our own footage and with some experimentation with footage we have on hand from client projects of yore:

And for this one, we had a little fun with our Instagram feed. Hat tip to the office Stormtrooper for being a good sport.

Riding that success high, we tasked our videographer with shooting some sample cinemagraphs of Norman, Oklahoma street scenes and people. We sent him out alone, though, which is why he’s actually in one of them (sorry again, and also how did you even do that?).

Armed with that knowledge, we applied the technique to more archived client footage and came up with a few cool examples of what we can do for our clients, even if cinemagraphs weren’t on the table during the shoot:

My personal takeaway: I am constantly impressed by our production team’s ability to take our de facto slogan to heart: “Yeah… we can do that.”

So, if you have something a little outside-the-box you want to try, we’re here for you. And if you’re a caretaker of baby seals, we’re here for you pro bono.