Behind The Scenes Video: Altus Wireless Multi Room System Website
AUTHOR
Gina
|
POSTED 9/15/2009
I'm not sure you've had a chance to check out the new micro site for our recently released Altus Wireless Multi Room system. If you haven't checked it out, I'd recommend it.
The site includes interactive demos of each component and a cool widget that customizes a system based on your room and listening preferences. For me, it recommended a premium speaker with remote and a wireless music transmitter and receiver for PC.
Our design team duo; Jon T. and Brian B. at Sony Style not only led this site effort but were lucky enough to be on location during the video shoots. With a Cyber-shot in hand, they snuck in some quick snippets of behind the scenes footage (of course in between working on the set all day). You can see at about 50 seconds into the video Brian snagging a quick shot.
With a slue of quick clips in hand (or rather stowed away "in pocket"), we combined what our creative duo escaped with into a little video for you to check out. My buddy Russ had some of the final cuts so you can see what the raw clip looked like and how it changed post production. There is a huge difference between the two versions: special animation was added, TV screen footage was inserted instead of that green screen, and it was on a crisp clean background. All special effects done after the shoot. I think my favorite spot is at about 1:30 when you can see the same shot from all different perspectives, actor, director view, and actual view.
As shown in this video, it's night and day between the raw cut and final production video - and this is only a portion of what you see on the Altus Wireless Multi Room website.I had a chance to interview Jon to get a little more insight on the project.
What's your favorite part of the site?
Well, I have two favorite parts, actually. Within the Experience section you can see "How it Works," which features 3D demos of how the products work. We partnered with two agencies to make the 3D animations work within the structure of the site. The Configure section allows you to interact, and create a custom solution based on what the music source is and how many rooms you want to listen to your music or audio content. You can share your custom configuration with friends over e-mail, too.
Do you have any fun stories to share?
One of the funniest moments was the catering during lunch - we were at a production facility in the middle of Hollywood, so there were a number of productions going on in the area, and multiple caterers. As we broke for lunch, the production manager reminded us that our catering truck was NOT the one with steak. I actually liked the food we had better, and Annie went back for seconds!
Was there anything in particular that influenced this concept? I think the way the visual design came to life had mostly to do with the sleekness of the product and input from our Creative Director. The look and feel is admittedly different from other projects we've done, and I credit our agency for their concepts and the ability to quickly modify the concepts based on feedback from everyone closely involved.
Can you tell us a cool aspect of the site or production that you think few people know about? Early on the concept was to share this wireless experience with the people in their environment - to be an onlooker that indirectly engaged with them, while they were in the midst of the experience. As an example, at the start of the Experience video, Annie (actress) walks in to the Foyer and takes her iPod out of her bag, and places it in the docking station. The user hears the music when she does, and is then able to freeze that moment in time to learn more by clicking on the hotpoint. When that happens, Annie patiently waits until the user is done and closes the content box - you can see her moving. It's subtle, but it's there, and is really unique. I know you asked for one aspect but I'll give you another: The sequences were shot one at a time, but when put together, it appears to be a single seamless video experience from left to right - from the Foyer all the way to Julian's (actor's) bedroom.
What was your favorite thing you worked on?
Not necessarily part of the site but aspect of production. My favorite was the day of filming - it was incredible to see so many different people with different roles come together and make magic. Everyone was so focused on their own area, from rigging and setup to lighting, set design, direction, acting and so forth. Seeing the rough video for the first time on the site was a big deal for me, too, because it was like a dream I had coming to life, that I could play again and again.
If you have other questions for Jon, I welcome you to ask them. He'll post the answers in the comments. Special thanks to the actors, productions, crew and our own internal team (Jon, Brian and Russ) for snagging this video. If you enjoued this post and would like to see more behind the scenes shots like this, let us know and we'll work on doing this for future projects.