That’s right, North Point Media is looking for found a junior summer design intern!

Are you a gifted young designer looking to get a little real world experience? Do you desire to have your work critiqued in a way that pushes you to be a better designer than you are? If so, this is for you. You’ll be clicking, dragging, learning, growing and if nothing else, walking away a better designer with a better portfolio. It’s a chance to be a part of the process of creating irresistible environments.

➤ Responsibilities

You will be getting to create a plethora of versions of current artwork—maintain artwork and our branding integrity. You will be a part of designing everything from print, screen, web, and e-mail design. Your responsibility will grow as you show growth in your capability and successes.

➤ Internship Details

• Proficiency in Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign
• Motion & 3D a plus but not required.
• Submission Deadline: May 1, 2012
• Internship Duration: 8-Weeks
• Submit your résumé & portfolio of work to: media@northpointministries.net

Update: We’ve found our intern and are excited about what lies ahead! Thank you all for your interest , retweets, and recommendations.

For excitement – Horror and thriller films

For amusement – Action and comedy films

To feel inspired – Artsy non-mainstream films

To feel more normal – Dramas

To feel good – Romantic comedies

To join the bandwagon – Twilight

I’m sure someone else could do a much better job at this list than I just did. The interesting thing, though, is that whatever the reason, I think our taste in movies has a lot to do with how we feel or want to feel. As a video producer, this reasoning gives me a litmus test for what does or does not make an impact on my audience. For a video to really communicate something, I think the most important thing is that it appeals to an emotion. Sometimes I forget about this when things get busy – but what use is putting information in front of an audience if they never really connect with it on a deeper level? I think every project deserves the question, “Why would someone watch this?” And hopefully it’s not just because they have to.

The premise (surrender) and imagery (a white flag) were pretty straightforward.  However, we’re always challenging ourselves to come up with fresh, unique designs rather than just take the easy way out.

Our initial inspiration came from papercraft; we liked the depth and dimensionality in the designs we were finding, as well as the unique symbolism found in the juxtaposition of the cut-out and the model itself.  It also allowed us to steer toward a design that was completely white and yet still interesting and dynamic.  Unfortunately, none of us are papercraft masters, so I needed to try and fake it using a 3D modeling program (Cinema 4D in this case).  Plus, this needed to look like white fabric, not white paper.

(CLICK THUMBNAILS FOR FULL-SIZE IMAGES)

As these compositions were pushed toward better and better execution, the general consensus was this: the idea was cool, the designs looked cool, but something was missing.  Whether it was lacking emotion or some sort of undefinable “it” factor, I wasn’t hitting the mark.  I thought that the flag had the potential to be a very strong symbol, but it was perhaps being overwhelmed by the text.  So I started to steer away from the papercraft idea and toward designs with a more prominent flag.

At this point I started asking myself some tough questions.  Did this design really need to be 3D?  3D modeling adds a lot of potential for visual interest and can allow you to do some unique and even mind-bending things; however, it’s not necessarily always the answer.  I hadn’t to this point allowed myself to explore other options.

I decided to strip the design down even further, and relied on negative space, contrast, spacing, and scale to pull the necessary emotion and meaning out of this design, rather then trying to be overly complicated.  The white flag was a strong symbol, and I wanted to maximize that potential.

This design, by a longshot, generated the most positive response.  It may be the simplest design we’ve ever done– honestly, I spent about 15 minutes on the composition itself– but in this case, simple was the way to go.

Click here to view the embedded video.
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ORIGINAL CLIP (purchased from iStockVideo)
 
FINAL PRODUCT
 
Different Levels of Animation
 
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AfterFX SCREENS

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CREATING LANDSCAPE 
Original image felt very flat to me.  So i wanted to add some depth/scenery.  Remember your Old Artbeats Nature footage- it’s still useful for compositing & makes things better.

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COLOR TREATMENT
CREATING A QUICK SUNSET.  Place this Color Solid above ALL layers and blend it down.  I chose “Color Burn”, but whatever works best in your situation.


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ADJUSTMENT LAYER - Add Contrast
Place Adjustment Layer above ALL layers, Add LEVELS to it.  Jack the contrast and you’ll be amazing at what was once flat quickly becomes DYNAMIC!
   
Before & After LEVELS
 
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LIGHTING
Add a Light to your 3D Camera.  Helps create a Vignette Effect, and can really do some cool things as foreground objects fly by.
Make sure your layers have 3D turned on, or the light will not show up.
 
Before & After Lighting (Subtle but Nicer)
 
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FOREGROUND OBJECTS
Adding Foreground layers really makes your 3D camera move become dynamic because of the different speed it moves as compared with background.  Also has a nice effect when you have your camera DOF turn on.
 
Use Blending Modes as Needed

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ADDING MORE LAYERS (Realism)
I purchased pre-made birds in iStockVideo.  You can also create your own birds.  Sometimes it’s just worth the $25 to save you the time.
CreativeCow Bird Tutorial

Multiply Layer or key out white. I multiplied layer and slowed down footage for effect.

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LENS FLARE
Creating a realistic sun.  AfterFX Lens Flare can suffice, but I really wanted the sun to feel as realistic as possible.  We purchased an amazing plug-in from Video Copilot called OPTICAL FLARES.  This plug is incredible!  So many options and Flare FX.  This won’t be last time we use this.  You know all those Star Trek lens flares… this can create those as well.

 
I masked out tree trunk and put it above FLARE layer as to not completely blow out tree.

Before & After
   
Keyframe your Brightness to create your sunrise.
 
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WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE TECHNIQUES IN AFTERFX or FCP?

Shooting on location can often be a little tricky.  Shooting on location 800 miles away in a town you donʼt know can feel almost impossible.  That is the challenge Matt Gibson and I were facing when we traveled to Pittsburgh earlier this year.  We had the opportunity to share the story of a family that had moved from all the familiarity of their hometown of Atlanta, GA to Pittsburgh, PA.  A big part of their decision to move to Pittsburgh was the presence of a familiar church home–NorthBridge Community Church–which is a local Strategic Partner of North Point Ministries in Pittsburgh, PA.

First of all this shoot would have been impossible without a lot of planning and some serious help from the good folks at NorthBridge, who manage to transform a school into a church every week and are doing an incredible job at reaching their community.  It was encouraging to see their staff & volunteers breathing fresh life into their adult & children environments.  We’re grateful to have spent some time with them!

Before Matt and I left Atlanta we put together a pretty extensive tech sheet and shooting schedule and while formulating our plan we decided that we should travel light and rent our heavier gear on location.  After some searching we decided that View Point Production Services was the video rental company to go with.  The folks at View Point were extremely helpful and they had really good quality gear.  From there it was just about executing the plan and trying to capture the environment & spirit of the story with the limited time that we had.  The finished video is above and our shooting schedule/tech sheet are below.

What are some of the things that YOU guys have learned about shooting on location that you would want to share?

Earlier this month, I was given the task of creating a new promo for this year’s MarriedLife Live Christmas event.  Last year’s promo was both simple and effective, so we wanted to build on that foundation with a fresh coat of paint.  Charged with merely adding “more pizazz” (I believe that was the phrase), I thought this was a good opportunity to experiment some.  (Note: This is not always a good idea.  It can be time-consuming and has a 46.5% chance of ending in tears.  It’s better to experiment in your free time and apply later.  I got lucky this time.)

Creating the Scene

I’ve dabbled a little in 3D modeling in the past, mostly with the headache/opportunity known as Blender (a free, open-source 3D program).  Most of my work, however, was based more in typography than actual objects or scenes.  But after searching around the internet for some Christmas motion graphics inspiration, I thought I would try my hand at modeling a three-dimensional cartoon-style forest.

After about an hour in Cinema4D, I had something that may have resembled a few trees, but was probably more akin to some clusters of green Hershey’s Kisses.  Still, it was an okay proof-of-concept– even if it’s not the greatest looking thing in the world, it’s good to reach a point where you know that, if you keep pushing it forward, it’ll eventually get there.

The models ended up being the easiest part of the project.  Other little details– like camera rigging, lighting, and especially texture work – proved to be a bit more difficult.  I spent probably more time than I should have trying to perfect the texture for the fallen snow, trying to find that right balance between smoothness, bumpiness, and reflectivity.  I also played around with actually modeling the clumps of snow on the trees themselves, and it could have looked great . . . after a few weeks of work.

Making the Scene…Magical?

My renders out of Cinema4D were actually pretty bland.  Fortunately that was part of the plan.  Cinema4D and After Effects work really well together, and it saves hours if you leave tasks like color correction, effects, and particle systems to After Effects.  When you render out of Cinema, you can also tell it to create an AE comp, complete with camera and lighting data.  From there, I was able to create falling snow with Particular within After Effects that actually reacted to my Cinema4D camera.  Thanks to a new feature of Particular 2, the individual particles can be shaded by your After Effects lights (which in this case, again, were originally generated by Cinema4D).  This little trick added a lot of realism and depth to the falling snow, if even only for a couple of seconds.  All of the other little finishing touches– the sky, the stars, the glow, the general color of the scene, and the text– were all done in After Effects.

Bringing it Together

The team did a great job of giving me feedback early on in the process.  This was essential since each Cinema4D scene took anywhere from 1 to 4 hours to render, even at the most basic settings.  The last part of the project was spent in Final Cut, just like any other project, making sure the timing, the music, and the flow of the story all felt right– not to mention the actual information presented by the video…which can change at any moment, including the last one.