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For those from MUG-SW who may be interested, here's a little info about the project. I learnt a huge amount making this project, and maybe some other beginners like me will benefit from hearing how it all went down. I was very pleased with the result, even though it's very simple, and I just wanted to do a little rundown of the project.
The video was made for a charity called UWG Aerial Ministries Inc. They are a Christian organisation involved with flying a small aircraft to very isolated people and communities in country Australia, and helping them in a lot of different ways. If you're interested, go to www.uwg.org.au or just watch the video.
A slightly different version of this video was shown publicly on DVD at a fundraising night in September. Thankfully, it was received very well. A few copies of the DVD have been sold to raise funds for UWG, and it will continue to be displayed, distributed and possibly sold in the future to help support UWG.
First of all I met with the client to find out their requirements. I spent time gathering free stock photos, mostly from stock.xchng. A lot of time was spent finding the most suitable music which conveyed the desired mood. AE was used to cue the song on every beat. It was imported into VE and the video was basically built around it. Transitions were set to the beat and major segments generally changed when the music changed section.
After a lot of wasted time 4 logical sections were settled on: Introduction, What problems exist, Ways UWG helps, Who UWG helps / What UWG is. Afterwards a Bible verse and credit section were added.
The flying plane was of course simply a still image of a plane with the sky around it replaced with transparency, then animated with a moving path. The sound effect was purchased from Sound Dogs.
The map sequence was built out of 13 .TIF files made in DrawPlus. First I auto-traced a public domain .PNG map of Australia to get it in vector format, then added shadow, texture and colour. Then I added the state lines, towns and blue oval area of operations.
From there I made a sequence of images with each picture having progressively more of the above elements. In MSP the final image was inserted and made as long as the whole sequence was meant to be. This was animated to follow the whole moving path I wanted. Then working backwards I replaced sections with the previous image in sequence, copying and pasting the moving path. I just crossfaded between images. I came across an annoying aspect of MSP moving paths - in one section I simply couldn't cut the image without it drastically changing the moving path. No matter where I made the cut or how many extra keyframes I added, I couldn't get past this, so had to work around it. I'm sure others have come across this and know a solution!
Thanks for your interest!
Jono Cowdery
Sydney, Australia
13 Oct 2007