Process Breakdown
This project was a skills test I did for a Motion Designer internship at my university. I chose to promote the Barcelona study abroad trip we offer in the summer to showcase how my motion graphics skills can help get the word out on opportunities the university provides its students.
The concept was pretty simple: background footage of a street in Barcelona (sourced from Pexels), additional footage with a distinct pattern that will be used for the displacement map, and a 3D camera track that would display a contrasting textbox with the call to action. To bring the phantasmagorical effect to the background footage, I used S_Rays and S_TrailsDiffuse from the Sapphire plugin, then made the footage black and white so viewers would focus on the colored box with the event details.
I made the creative decision to do a glitchy/eroded style for this piece because most informational graphics posted to the university's various Instagram pages have a limited color palette of black, white, and gold. While these are the university's colors, they're dull and blend in with all their posts, so I asked myself:
"If I was a student scrolling through Instagram and saw 5 black and gold posts back-to-back, what would make me stop and actually interact with them?"
If I wasn't quickly scrolling through my feed out of habit and skipping right past the post, I'd probably pause momentarily to view it, then scroll if it felt like study abroad just wasn't for me. So, my objectives were to hook people enough that they sought out more information on the trip, and to attract those who thought an international experience might not be for them. I did this by using a neon color to contrast the black and white background, and I chose the background footage to be real footage of Barcelona so students could get a glimpse into the very streets they could be walking this summer.
By making a post immersive and stand out among others in someone's feed, I hoped to get more students involved in the opportunities that await them beyond university walls.