How hard is it to trick your brain and mind to work backwards? Pretty hard -- at least in the beginning. As the project progressed, comfortability and ambition increased. Eventually, the practical canvas became almost like an After Effects composition. The result is a dynamic stop-motion piece that flows from show title to show title.
:60 Spot
Original Style Frames
Open - Anything that featured paper rebuilding or redacting was shot and cut up in reverse order
Title Card
Logo Animation
Title Card - Transitions to footage were created by printing out the first frame of the shot we wanted to use in editorial. We decided that once the shot was completely resolved, we would keep the framerate at 10 FPS
Raw Photograph
Featured as a Hot Spot on Promax Brief
from Viewpointcreative.com
History asked Viewpoint Creative to help brand their new Monday night documentary franchise. Each series’ installment reveals new and game-changing information about some of the world's greatest mysteries.
The creative solution exposes the truth by unmasking words and images from apparently censored and redacted information.
To bring the concept to life we used editorial and a stop-motion technique that involved designing and printing layers of ‘practical’ documents and archival photos. We then photographed the process of each historical record being destroyed and crossed out. Finally, we ran the sequences in reverse in order to visually ‘restore’ them and literally uncover the truth.
The practical technique gives the end result a memorable look that is real, mysterious and in line with History's organic style of branding. We edited and animated a :60 second launch promo, and created graphics for a series of ‘topicals’. We also built a flexible toolkit allowing History to produce new spots going forward.
Fun Facts:
We shot all the photos in reverse order for most of the composites. This forced us to think backwards when plotting the rips and movements of the printed photos.
We quickly found that dull X-acto blades made better rips and tears than fresh blades.
Creative Director: Ted Roberts
Editorial & Composite Director: David DiNisco
Designer: Greg Herman
Art DIrector/Animator: Matt Barretto
Production: Nick Abbondandolo
Editor: Jon Anderson
Assistant Editor: Jack Sheehan
Audio Engineer & Sound Design: Todd Hrinda
Executive Producer: Katie Tricot
Producer: Sarah Williams
