Digital Hitchhiker

As many of you know, I co-host a video podcast about craft beer called Hop Cast. Its a side project that I’ve been doing for several years now. Its just me and my buddy drinking and talking about beer. Overall its been a lot of fun to do and it doesn’t take too much time to put out an episode every week or so. About a year ago we got an idea to shoot another side project that would explore the cellars of craft beer geeks. We wanted to make it fun and also poke fun a little at how obsessive beer geeks can get about cellaring. Our inspiration for our new project Cellarz was the MTV show Cribs. Once we were finally able to shoot it we had to find the time to edit it and do the graphics for it. Well, it took us a while. It’s hard to believe it took a year for us to get the first episode of Cellarz online. When we first started the project we were pretty excited about it and started telling everyone about what we were working on. You know I’m all about sharing what I’m working on. The response was great and people loved the idea. That’s exactly the response you want to hear. How could this back fire; we had a fun idea and the response was outstanding. You hear from a lot of startups and businesses about the importance of building buzz early. But they never really tell you how early you should build the buzz. Well I think I learned what’s too early with Cellarz. It is easy to get excited about a new product, but if you generate excitement before you can deliver, everyone might not be there when you finally show up. With Cellarz, we had a teaser and a logo done for the show and it seemed like we were in good shape. Since this was a side project, it kept getting pushed to the back burner. Every month it just kept getting pushed to the side and it almost seemed like it was dead. But knowing that we had some of that interest for the idea out there we still wanted to deliver… no matter how late it was. Really we should have waited until we had some sort of rough cut or product together before we started telling people what we were working. There has been a couple projects over the last couple years where I’ve seen how revealing too much about your company, product, or service too soon can really back fire.

This was a fun project and we got a pretty good response when we finally uploaded the finished product. I think if we could have uploaded it within the first couple months of us teasing it, we could have had even more people excited to see it.

Simple, clean and fun was the main goal of this demo video. It was important to show that trying new beers should be a fun and a social activity even if you can’t be out with friends. Too often the “beer snob” can scare people away from craft beer and the experience. The purpose of this video and Untappd is to get as many people trying new brews and recommending them to friends. Because we all know the best recommendations come from friends.

I already had a vision of how I wanted the video to look in my head before starting the script. I wanted to try a different style for this explainer video, one that I don’t do often. I wanted something that would stand out a bit from all the other videos out there and one that would be an asset to my portfolio. Before getting started I had done a number of rough sketches on my iPad days before. My only concern and one Maeve brought up as well was that it might look a bit too childish for something that is being associated with alcohol. Keeping the lines fluid and solid rather than sketchy helped take away from it looking too young but at the same time it was still simple and engaging.

Maeve and I then spent a day or so working on the script trying to make sure the message was easy to follow but also explained clearly what Untappd was all about for those people who haven’t heard of it before. Being very familiar with the service already, it can sometimes be difficult to take a step back and look at it as a new user.

Once the storyboards were done and the voiceover was recorded, I handed the files over to John Filipkowski to knock out the bulk of the animation. Within a week we had an animated video. I then made a few final adjustments and Maeve Price did the audio design work. The day the video was finished was the day it was launched as well. It’s always gratifying to work with startups that are as excited about the video as you are and want the work to be seen as well. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/26391684[/vimeo] The video currently resides on the homepage of Untappd for everyone to see when they check out the service. This video should prove to be a great asset for the Untappd team as they continue to move forward and push ahead of the competition. Not only will it give users an idea of what the service is but it will also give investors a quick pitch at services and help them to stand out.

From idea to completion this video took just over two weeks and the client was surprised and very happy with the outcome. If you like this video and how it was developed, I can provide you with the same level of creativity and expertise for your startup; don’t hesitate to contact me.