Teeny Bits Commercial.

S

sdelahoyde

Active member
Here's a weird little spot I put together over the last couple of days. This is a lot of mostly After Effects stuff, but I shot the one live action segment with the DVX, along with most of the non-stock stills.

Quicktime: http://ic.funk.nu/Quicktime/teeny.mov
or
Real Player: http://ic.funk.nu/Real/teeny.rm

Here are the lyrics to the accompanying Teeny Bits song we wrote, in case you can't understand a word, as the whole thing goes by pretty quickly:

Every little girl and boy in town
knows the favorite snack around
Teeny Bits, they're awfully good
The pope would eat them, if he could

Teeny Bits
Teeny Bits
Teeny Teeny Bits Bits (x 2)

Corn
and
Squash
and
Carrots
and
Beans
No, these things aren't Teeny Bits!

Teeny Bits
Teeny Bits
Teeny Teeny Bits Bits (x 2)

You will not be led astray
They're a cookie dough bouquet
Now, please hear this what I say:
Make it a Teeny Day!
 
Re: Teeny Bits Commercial.

Weird is right! ;D

I like the movement of the "camera" in the beginning tho. Nicely done.
 
Re: Teeny Bits Commercial.

Wacky! ;D I love it. Terry Gilliam is shaking in his boots. keep 'em coming.
 
Re: Teeny Bits Commercial.

The other posters thought this is weird, but consider this. I'm 43, and this reminds me of commercials I watched during kiddie cartoons in the 1960s. Except then, they had no After Effects.
 
Re: Teeny Bits Commercial.

Yeah, that's what I was going for, the really fast, flashy colored ads they'd run during breaks from the cartoons and kids shows. Really colorful and too fast to even comprehend what was really going on. There's a Keds commercial from the early 60's that I have on a tape somewhere and it's like that, except it's perhaps one of the most brilliant, weird things I've ever seen. I've actually considered redoing it, just to learn from whoever the amazing director was.

Thanks for the good words!
 
Re: Teeny Bits Commercial.

Everything was put together in After Effects. Other than that, I used Vegas to capture the video/stills, and did all of the image trimming in Photoshop. Except for the Teeny Bits box, which I scanned and then just assembled as a 3D layer in AE.
 
Re: Teeny Bits Commercial.

The whole thing didn't take too long in AE, maybe twelve hours in total. The hard, tedious part, is working in Photoshop and cleaning out backgrounds of photos. That part, for this thing, was an on again off again project for a little over two weeks, whenever I had a chance. It was always a nice break when I got to get into AE and finally work with the material. Then it was fun.
 
Re: Teeny Bits Commercial.

Have you tried any of those Photoshop plug-ins that take out the backgrounds for you? There are a few on the market ranging in price from $99 to about $299. If you plan to do a lot more of this, such a program would be a good investment because of the time involved.
 
Re: Teeny Bits Commercial.

CRIPES! :o

I need to learn AE. Are you self taught and/or have a background in annimation? I come heavy from the production side, but I need to learn this baffling post magic to even be competitive. Any advice on learning it? Does the Classroom in a Book series help? I know it's given me a pseudo-working knowledge of Photoshop.

Very cool spot. Love that kinda stuff. For some reason reminds me of the frantic commercials the boys watched in the 'Chinpokomon' episode of South Park. Well, in spirtit, not so much visually. You've got it all over South Park there!
 
Re: Teeny Bits Commercial.

Glad you enjoyed it. It was a labor of love.

As for learning, I'm just self-taught with it. I picked up the program and kept coming back to it again and again, determined to learn it, but would get frustrated in the first twenty minutes and give up. Come January of this year, I just decided to stick with it until I knew what I was doing or die trying. Turns out, it wasn't so bad after all.

A good working knowledge of Photoshop is a very valuable thing to have before you make the transition over. Think of AE as basically just Photoshop for video. Also, I did reference the AE Bible 5th edition, which is slow and basic, as most of those books tend to be, but I picked up a lot of little tidbits.

It's got a learning curve to it, definitely, and you kind of have to alter your ways of thinking when you're editing with it, but once you get it, you'll be amazed at how simple it is. I'm putting together a series of short little animated pieces for The Sundance Channel, and I've finished up three :30 spots already in just two days. When I was first learning, it took me a week to put together something that was :15. Just a matter of putting your nose to the grindstone and fighting through it.
 
Re: Teeny Bits Commercial.

Was that all in 3D space in AE? How did you do the rack focusing? Looks great!
 
Re: Teeny Bits Commercial.

90% of it wasn't 3D. I used 3D a couple of times to throw in some lighting effects, and to do the spinning box (just scanned each side of an actual box).

As for the focus, that was just blur effect keyframes. Just guessed about focus depth basically. The whole thing moves so quickly that you can't really pick up on any of the little blur details.
 
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