Julmeme –> Communication Design for Wedovideo part 1

Friday May 28th, 2010 by marie

Julmeme'slogoToday, I am very proud to present you the first part of our new corporate identity documents.

These documents are essential in our office daily life, to send letters, introduce our company to potential clients, keep a privileged link with our clients… We already had some, done by ourselves. But we were looking for a real design and sense research.

That’s why we chose Julien Mercier alias Julmeme, a Swiss Graphic Designer from Tokyo, to create our corporate identity, except for our logo (designed by Niko). Julien did research, design proposal, modifications and printing assistance and it’s very great working with him.

This week we received the envelopes, letterheads and compliment cards from the Hong Kong printer.

But that’s not all, to follow: company folder and presentation leaflet, CD and DVD case, DVD folder and presentation template.

Here is Julmeme’s design proposal:

Design proposal

And here the result:

julmeme1
Julmeme2

Posted in design, office life | No Comments »

Japanese Office Survival kit Episode 2: the coffee machine

Friday May 21st, 2010 by marie

coffeemachine

When working in a business where the work rhythm is quite hectic the second necessary tool in Japan is the coffee machine.

For example, imagine yourself being prepared to leave your office at 7 pm and then you receive the following message: The event report edit you take 3 days to realize has been destroyed by some clients crazy children or whatever you want and you have to reedit it by tomorrow 10 am. When this happens your only feeling is to thank God for inspiring in 1800 its Minister Jean Baptiste de Belloy, Archbishop of Paris, the concept of the first coffee machine.

For sure, even if our Archbishop did not do it on purpose, he ultimately helps thousands of creatives and office workers.

An other example of time when the coffee machine became the savior of the office people is the following day of our editing craziness or late night shooting following day. At those time the sanity of our creative team relies completely on the coffee machine. Everyone is afraid of its possible reactions or dysfunction.

The problem is that even if the taste greatly improves, the risk of failure rose in parallel with technical improvement… and so does the risk of nervous breakdown…

JBDB

Posted in office life | No Comments »

Louis Vuitton shadows

Monday May 17th, 2010 by marie

Hello everyone,
lvshadow01
Do you know magic lantern and shadow puppets? You know those systems where you put a light beam on a frame so that we can see the shadow on a wall. I am sure that you all used them when you were kids…

But it’s not only useful to make kids have fun… It’s also quite a nice and original tool for video promotion design.

The project I want to present today is based on this concept. Our client Louis Vuitton wanted to present its bag creation process for an event held at its Omotesando shop a couple of months ago. However filming the real workshop activity is both un-esthetic and not funny at all. The logic consequence is to use some kind of trick to make it appear fashionable while not spoiling the informative aspect of the shoot. The solution is to use shadows…

However, if we suppose that we do not want to make the whole video on motion graphics because the movement will be unnatural, how can we create the shadow?

The solution is the green-screen technique. Basically you put a green-screen on a wall and you wear your model in a monochromatic clothes (white or black) and then make him move. The actual image could be quite funny but the miracle of post-production will make it look completely serious at the end.

lvshadow02

What a nice trunk isn’t it?

lvshadow03

Looks better this way…

lvshadow04

And the final result in the shop is:

lvshadows05

lvshadow06

Tags: , ,
Posted in fashion, post-production | No Comments »

We do voice-over

Monday May 10th, 2010 by marie

Today’s reviews theme is the voice-over technique. It consists in putting a voice upon some image without a direct link to the possible actor shown. This voice is exterior to the video represented scene. It can be an omniscient narrator or some of the actor sprit voice.

In order to make it more concrete I will give a very simple example. I am sure everyone has seen some kind of wildlife documentary in the savannah with lions hunting zebus and other kind of buffalos. Then, do you remember the voice explaining all those technical comments about the lioness hunting technics… This is a perfect example of voice over.

wedovoiceover

At Wedovideo we use the voice over technique for many corporate videos. It can create so much dramatic feelings that it is really helpful to carry messages with very strong impact.

wedovoiceover2

Here is the picture of one small voice-over section held at our office.

Posted in post-production | No Comments »

Mosaïc video / sanofi aventis / Shanghai World Expo 2010

Thursday May 6th, 2010 by marie

Hi everyone, I am very proud to present you a project we started more than a month ago, and that became public last saturday at the Shanghai World Expo 2010, in the French Pavilion! Through Emotion Shanghai, we got 2 video projects for sanofi aventis, one of the 3 privileged partner of the French Pavillon, with Lafarge and LVMH. For sanofi aventis the aim is to reflect its values and international action for health all around the world, in videos that will be shown during the 6 months duration of the Shanghai World Expo 2010. I will talk only about one video, the mosaïc video, the most tricky and interesting one, in terms of story board and post-production. The idea of the mosaic video came from Alain and Alex. The aim was to show 16 persons from different countries, interacting with their “webcam neighbors”, passing from one screen to an other fruits, sport balls and images.

The challenge was very interesting, and it started with the storyboard. You can imagine how complicated it is to coordinate the action of 16 people passing stuffs with their webcam neighbors, from bottom to top, right to left, left to right, top to bottom… But Alex and Fred perfectly handled it.

Then the shooting was quite easy, all the actors understood very well what they had to do. All the more that 3 people from Wedovideo played in this video: Tomoko, Miki and me. Alex shot with the Panasonic HDV 200 on green screen and also on blue screen when the actor had a green t-shirt and vice-versa. The boards (hand-made) you see on the picture are used for the tracking, in order to put any image on it.

mosaicshooting

The result is:

mosaicedited

But that’s only one video out of 16. Obtaining this result by tracking the image on the board and adding the background was not the difficult part of the post-production. The hardest part of the editing was to have all the 16 videos coordinated, especially when one people passes an object to his neighbor, and receives an other one. But Alex perfectly managed it!

The video will be available soon on our website, and you will appreciate the music, tailor-made for it by Davy Bergier, a French composer and singer based in Tokyo, and working with Only Music.

Here is an overview of the introduction of the video, when all the people say hello to the world from their webcam:

mosaichello

Tags: , ,
Posted in post-production, shooting | No Comments »