moment.film

As we slowly grow into providing more services beyond just video, the underpinnings remain much the same. One thing we continually have to remind our clients (and ourselves) is that there is difference between propaganda and marketing. It's a subtlety we need to get better at embracing. Propaganda: Trying to convince someone to buy something. Marketing: Just telling your story. Talking about who you are, what you do, what you hope to achieve. More goodness (we hope) in the world. A lot of us (we're looking in the mirror while we say this) get sweaty palms when we think of trying to sell, etc. But just telling our story? We're getting a lot more comfortable with that. Here's a screenshot of a project we'll be sharing in early 2025:

Yes, we were supposed to post this last week. Check it, some cool stop motion we threw down for our client A1DesignBuild. And yes, this involved hours of pencil wrangling, some missteps and false starts, but we got there in the end. https://lnkd.in/gHnFAauc

If you saw our post yesterday, you get a little glimpse into how the creative process works for us (and it's different for everyone - and for every project). We love this quote from accomplished visual artist Kara Walker: I don't know about anything, really. I always feel like I'm a novice and I'm just starting out... it's a lot like just starting from zero. When we started to feel that maybe the direction of the story board we shared yesterday was working, we made a pre-vis. Collaborator Julien Scherliss was the magician behind this. Note the music, which ultimately fell to the wayside in favor of something a little more cinematic:

Excited that we finally get to launch this spot that we created for A1DesignBuild here in Bellingham, WA - coming this Thursday. It's also a good time to reflect on the question 'where do good ideas come from?' In our experience, good ideas come from a pile of bad ideas, and often it's hard to tell the difference. You pile them all together, try them on for size, maybe start scripting a couple, maybe even poke around for some music that fits the tone/feel you're going for. For this one, our idea was sparked by an ad that A1DesignBuild had already produced, the screenshot of which is included below. From that, we created a little storyboard just for reference, which you can see at this link if you're interested. Basically, it's not so different than sitting in a giant sandbox, being handed a shovel, and then starting to dig. In one of those piles of sand, maybe you start to see a little magic. Link to boards: https://buff.ly/4eL2USX

This week we're going to be discussing the ins and outs of a stop motion project we've been working on. Here's a sneak peak. Stop motion is challenging because it is so dang slow. It took about 3 hours to film this small little section. The upside is it focuses you to be very intentional, methodical, thoughtful. Moving one pencil at a time. Which reminds us of the on set mantra we open every shoot day with: slow is smooth, smooth is fast. More to come.

Painting pencils green for a little stop motion project we're working on. The things we do.

Magic hour in a VW bus. What could be better?

We've had the good fortune of working with some fine people over the last six months. Here, director Chris Donaldson sets up a shot with the one and only Aaron Feiger from the esteemed Food Court Creative:

Throwback Thursday: During COVID times, the murder of George Floyd sparked outrage across the country. In Seattle, a group of protestors took over an area of downtown to express the need for change. To get a clearer perspective, we went and talked to a few people. Here's their story:

This is a fun story board we put together for a series of 811 'Call Before You Dig' spots we shot for WA State. Very rough, of course, and long. But this exercise always gives us an idea of whether things are working or not. This one was close. Shout out to Ronny So - who drew these for us. Boom! https://lnkd.in/gkHcE22U