Sling + OTA Explainer

February 2, 2023

I was tasked with fully developing an explainer video for Sling TV. This included scripting the video, designing artwork, storyboarding, music sourcing, voiceover artist auditioning, editing, and animating over the course of 2.5 weeks. I worked with QuickFrame in planning the project timeline and production schedule and then worked more closely with the Sling TV team in developing creative. This video was meant to showcase a deal for receiving an Over the Air antenna with a monthly purchase of Sling TV.

Software

Pre-Production

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In the pre-production process I focused on developing the script with the Sling TV, sourcing music, auditioning voice-over, developing concepts, and developing designs. While I waited for feedback on concepts and scripts, during this stage, I spent my free time audience VO talent and sourcing music. I use Voices.com for finding the right VO artist and Artlist.io for sourcing music. Once we agreed on a concept and script we were able to quickly choose a VO artist and music from the selections I picked.

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I use Milanote for all of pre-production organization to make sure I have everything in one place.

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For this project the Sling TV team gave me some creative freedom in developing the video concept.

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I put together 3 concepts with visual references, basic descriptions, and rough scripts.

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Ultimately, the Sling TV liked a blend of the first two options, so we blended those together and finalized the script.

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Storyboarding / Design

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Once we had the concept, script, and general visuals agreed upon I jumped into designing the visuals and cinematic shots. Due to the quick timeline of the this project I had actually started the design process before everything was locked in order to keep everything moving. Normally, Sling TV would include featured stations and content, but due to the timeline we did not have the allowed time to approve all of this content. That essentially meant that we could only use pre-approved content/UI and original designs.

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To get an initial idea of how I wanted the shots to be set up I worked quickly with Photoshop to test out a few compositions. I typically will try to make this process happen as quickly as possible. I use a combination of pre-existing assets along with drawing on my Wacom One Tablet to build rough compositions.

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The Sling TV team wanted to showcase some of the UI in the first section of the video and were able to provide me with pre-approved UI in a XD file. This gave me everything I needed to setup what the focused UI would be.

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After several rounds of revisions I was able to design and polish out the frames in Adobe Illustrator. I spend as much time in the design process as possible to make sure everything is organized, named, and built properly so that animating is super quick and easy.

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I brought together the visuals and script in Adobe InDesign. So far in the storyboarding process I have not shared anything with the client. Since I was able to get a head start on this process I was able to get everything together quickly and get them the first storyboard 2 days after the script was finalized. Normally, I would aim to spend closer to a week in this step.

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Due to how quickly we were moving there were adjustments and tweaks that needed to be made in visuals, text on screen, and the script. We were able to quickly address the important ones and jump into animation.

Post-Production

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After storyboarding I started working on bringing everything together in a video format. I always start off by putting together an animatic which is simply a video with just the frames, VO, and music for setting up timing. This is often not shared with the client, but is essential for making sure that everything that is developed is working together. From there I jumped into animation! This is typically the step I get more involved in, but since I had personally done all the pre-production and development I felt extremely comfortable jumping right into this.

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In creating the animatic I initially use my own voice over record since we were still finalizing the script and had to hold on having the voice-over artist final record. I recorded directly in Adobe Auditon and made any needed adjustments.

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Once I had the rough VO, design frames, and music I began laying out everything in Adobe Premiere as an animatic. Again, this animatic is mainly meant for me to make sure that the timing is working and to use as reference in Adobe After Effects once I start animating. It usually only takes me about an hour to put together and saves me so much time down the line.

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Once I have the animatic together I bring it and all of my design files into After Effects. Since I have labeled and organized everything this process is super quick and easy. I use a plugin called Overlord to quickly pull shapes from Illustrator to After Effects.

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Just after a few rounds of revisions in 3 days we were able to get the video to where we wanted it to be.

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Additional Version

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In the process of developing the first video the Sling TV team decided they wanted to create a version of the video that did not specifically focus on the current promotion. This version would be something they could post later when the promotion was finished.

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