IMT Insurance was in the process of unveiling a new type of cultural structure in the company based on servant leadership. They had originally approached us asking for help in designing a PowerPoint presentation-style video but after learning more about their new process, we suggested that they take a slightly different approach. A story-focused approach.
Creating an animated wayshower with motion capture.
As our industry transitions to more digital everything (digital locations, digital products, and digital people), the need to make these digital assets seem more and more lifelike is in high demand. We recently acquired a motion capture system to assist with our traditional 3D animation services.
One of our team members spent a lot of time perfecting the best practice of rigging digital characters for a cleaner motion capture recording.
When Wayshower College contacted us to help with updating their “Man and the Universe” Lecture series, we presented a “what-if” scenario of using their iconic stick figure character to “host” and deliver the lecture. After a sample rigging and view test, our client was sold! So we recorded several hours of motion capture information that was used to export raw animation files of the stick figure on a white background. Then the animations were combined with a professional voice-over artist reading of the lecture and some minimal supporting graphics.
You can view a clip from the original “what-if” motion capture test here and see our team member, Brandon Cory putting the system through its paces.
The next clip shows actual recorded output of the animation with our client performing the motion capture for the stick figure in our production studio.
Using motion capture provided a more hand-on, interactive animation session that turned a week’s worth of animated work into a few days. We expected the technology to help speed up the animation process but we were blown away by how much time we saved and still ended up with a very believable animated character.
Exploring Habitat for Humanity’s mission through a child’s eyes.
We are fortunate to work with the incredible team at Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity year after year. Their work is driven by the love and the hope that all families deserve an affordable home to call their own. While many of the videos we have produced for Habitat include extremely moving stories, this specific video took form during a reading of a short statement during one of the first creative meetings we had with their team. The power of video becomes evident when the audience is presented with unique and different perspectives to experience. In this case, choosing the perspective of a child defined the animated toy style of revealing the strategic vision after starting the video with kids being kids at their own home. While the strategic vision speaks of hopes and dreams yet to come, the video starts and ends with the success story of a real family living their everyday real life.
A river-based city with environmental problems does not sound like a great place for growth and opportunities. Impact7g fought to change that.
Learn more about the beautiful city of Burlington, located right on the Mississippi River. The City of Burlington, Greater Burlington Downtown Partners, EPA, DNR, and Impact7G have all worked together to preserve Burlington’s rich history through a series of restoration efforts downtown and across the city.
Company culture runs deep with Graham Construction. They call it the Graham Way.
Every company has some kind of culture. Maybe it’s a culture that’s intended and maybe not, but still, some kind of culture exists. When our clients come to us, we start our discussion by really digging into what their culture actually is and what the leadership team actually wants or had hoped for. These discussions are sometimes rough because the leadership team finds they’ve got some work to do to reset their culture so it aligns better with their mission statement and other unique differentiators.
When was the last time your leadership team truly experienced what your company is like for the new hires, the experienced workers, the HR, Marketing, or Sales team? Do you ask for feedback from all of your customers about how they experience your company, products, or services? And is that feedback authentic and truthful? Even if it’s the horrible, we-dropped-the-ball kind of feedback?
Before you can create a video about your culture, you should probably have a realistic handle on how those that experience your company actually feel. If you release a video promoting a culture that is not who and what you are, your customers, your employees, and your competitors will see right through your messaging and lose trust. When a company finds themselves spending a lot of resources trying to maintain their customers, often there is some problem within your culture. Identify and root it out immediately.
The best people to tell your company’s culture story is…not you! Find those individuals that have to put up with the leadership’s decision-making skills, styles, and directions and let their voices be heard! What do they say keeps them coming to work day after day? Why do they continue to offer incredible customer service and support customers? Why do they inspire and motivate others to excel at their own job? Or from your customer’s perspective, why do they choose your company over your competitors? Has your customer had a personal and meaningful experience after interacting with your company?
It’s about emotional stories that take us on a journey of before and after or problem and solution. Remember that your business is filled with other humans that have needs and wants. Take the time to hear and reflect on the impact your company has had on people in meaningful ways.
When you think of your culture, how does it manifest in others? Do employees support one another without being asked? Do you find products and services are being refined in subtle ways due to customer feedback or informal review cycles by your employees? When your customers and employees talk about your company, how do they describe it to someone else? Positive and glowing reviews or something more negative? Or even worse, they don’t care and say nothing at all. Your company doesn’t even warrant a positive or negative feeling.
Take some time to look at your mission statements, values, rules of engagement and anything else your customers and employees might use to define and understand your company culture. Start making a list of actions taken, mindsets created, or distinct behaviors and individuals connected to them.
How do you know if your desired culture and actual culture are one and the same?
This is the most important question to resolve before moving forward with any visual communication solution. Hopefully, by working through the first three questions, you now have more data to make answering this question easier.
The challenge of creating a solution to show and explain highly technical services in an innovative way.
Our client was in the process of overhauling their website and approached us with an urgent need for a video that could quickly explain their services in a visual manner. The challenge was laid out for us to determine how we visualize their expertise providing security systems, national integration, physical infrastructure services, and A/V lighting, network and telephony solutions. We turned to using 3D animations and graphics combined with video footage that showcased aspects of their service performed by real people. Why? Because it’s the human element that makes all of the difference. In the end, we choose to work with businesses run by people not cables, machines, and data switches.
We would all love to have every project come to us with unlimited resources and unlimited budget but that just isn’t real world conditions. Stock photography and videography is a tremendous asset to helping our clients communicate properly with their audience. Maybe time is limited to be able to set up and capture every scene we would like. Maybe there just isn’t the budget. Whatever the reason, stock assets help capture those moments that help tell your story better. And that’s what we are all about. Help you tell your story better. With creative visual treatments, we work to make stock imagery unique to your own production. It’s hard to convince your audience that you are a unique and special business when your videos look just like your competition.
One of the things that really makes this video stand out is the interaction of 3D spatial settings to help you understand the relation of various networking technologies that span between rooms and integrate between various security and networking systems. When you watch this video, what do you think? Does it make you want to have us create some custom animation work for your next video?
