Featured Project

Stopmotion TV Commercial Series

ABOUT FCCU

First Community Credit Union has been open since 1939. It’s the largest credit union in North Dakota with assets totaling $1.06 Billion and providing banking services to more than 45,000 members. The credit union is a member-owned financial cooperative providing banking services including savings, loans, and other financial services to members. Membership is also open to immediate family of current members. As a credit union, profits are returned to members in the form of better services, accounts and favorable rates on savings and loans.

SERVICES WE PROVIDED

Video Production

Photography

Graphic Design

The Challenge

FCCU came to Abovo needing a series of 30 second commercials. Abovo was to produce three videos total with each one focusing on a different aspect of FCCU’s business: Kasasa checking and savings accounts, Community, and Loans. This was to be filmed during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and with many businesses still being shut down, doing a large shoot with the FCCU staff was not going to be an option. The secondary challenge was to create continuity between the three ads so they seemed like part of the same campaign, while still allowing each spot to run on its own and communicate something completely different.

The Solution

Stop motion as a means of making a commercial allowed for a minimal amount of people to be in the studio during the shoot days. This allowed Abovo to create a commercial in a time that the rest of the world was shut down. This medium also created a series of ads that would not only be able to run during the pandemic, but would be appropriate for any time in the future as well. By using the same stop motion animation style between the three videos, the continuity was there, allowing the script and imagrey to distinguish the ads from eachother.

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hundreds of photos taken
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"money folders" needed
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shoot days to acquire images

About the Project

Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back. In the case of the FCCU shoot, movie money was used as the medium to be maniuplated and photographed. Once the initial script and storyboard were created and approved, the fake money was cut and folded to represent the different elements the scene would need. Once ready to shoot, the money was laid out, photographed, moved slightly, and photographed again. A total of 1350 photos were taken to create the three commercials. The frame rate selected was 15 frames per second, which stylisticly creates a slightly less fluid look and emphasizes the stop motion look and feel. After all of the photos were color corrected, they were imported into a video editing software and given the duration for the specific amount of time needed to create a 15 frames per second video. The ending logo animation, the voice over, the sound design, and music were all added to create the final fished videos.

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