🧠 5 Visuals for Your Next Video

Author

Rickie Ho
February 17, 2024

Happy Saturday everyone,

I’m sending this week’s edition a little later. The end of this week was super busy for me and it didn’t help that I felt a bit slower with my work. It’s coming back though… I think.

OpenAI just release videos from the new Sora model and the results are… veeeerrryy interesting. Lots of editors are having an existential crisis but my take is a little different than a lot of them. You can read my thoughts below.

Enjoy today’s edition!

- Rickie

5 Visuals I Loved This Week

1. This Area Chart Over Time + Money Jar Animation

  • I’ve never seen an area chart like this move over time and whenever I see a new way to visualize data, I make note of it.

  • There are so many ways to use charts and certain ones tell the story of the data differently.

    • This area chart that moves over time tells the story of how each following generation’s bubble gets smaller.

      • If they had made a line chart, for example, that takeaway may be a little harder to see

  • As always, I’m a fan of blending motion design with physical props and in this case, it blends that + the bar graph for each earning level.

  • Great job done by the WSJ lately. Not every video is up to this standard but the direction they’re going with their explainer videos is a good one.

2. This Chapter Graphic + Motion Design

Video: why america is addicted to cars//Answer in Progress

  • I came across this channel on my homepage after watching a few urban planning videos and I quickly realized that they are based in my city: Toronto!

  • Sabrina, the motion designer and the face of the video, is one of the most talented animators I have seen on the platform.

    • Not only animating but she makes a damn good video!

  • Every animation is a component for the next animation which ties the whole visual together.

  • The movement, the colors, how dynamic the visuals are in the video.

  • The extra effort really pays off here paired with actual good content!

  • Definitely going to watch more Answer in Progress content.

3. This Method of Text Display

  • Faceless Youtube channels have to do a lot more to engage a viewer since they can’t fall back on A-roll to push a story along.

    • This makes faceless content some of the hardest stuff to edit on the platform.

  • I often look to faceless channels to give me ideas on different ways to visualize seemingly boring and unengaging parts of a script.

  • In this case, text display is usually pretty simple: put a screenshot of some text and highlight/underline it.

    • But what fern does here is mattes the screenshots onto a ripped up piece of paper to give it an old dyed paper look that persists throughout the entire video.

  • I need to find paper cutouts like this for my own video. Paper cutouts and highlighter texture that give it a hand drawn look. I’ll take a look online to see if I can find some good ones and link them next week.

4. This Waveform Graphic + Timeline Visual

  • I really like the opening waveform graphic here for its simplicity and how easy it is to follow.

  • I should try doing this when I have long bits of audio that need to be on the screen (like if I had a Zoom meeting clip, or a phone call)

  • I think having the captions stay on the screen the whole time make it a lot easier to follow along and if the viewer misses anything, they can still go back and read it.

  • As for the timeline, this shows how dynamic a timeline visual can be.

    • Popping up events, adding time blocks, moving the camera around. The animator could have also leveraged 3D motion into this clip.

5. This Distribution Graph with 3D Assets

Video: Why Night Owls Die Younger//Memeable Data

  • This is another faceless channel making explainer videos but takes a slightly different approach that fern, for example.

  • If you give the video a watch, they basically use 3D modeling to push the story along. It’s like an old Sims character from my childhood.

    • It’s really cool. I haven’t seen anything like it before and I wonder what program they use to make their models.

  • As for the chart, I wanted to note a couple things.

    • The movement from the bottom of the screen onto the graph seemed a little messy and maybe even unnecessary.

      • I felt that they could have just gotten into the chart or used some other method to get them from off the chart to on the chart.

    • Each of the sections light up. Usually, when I make something like this that involves spotlighting a specific section, I fade the opacity in and out. This creator took the approach of flipping a light switch and paired with sound design, I think this works really well!

      • This will be something I incorporate in a future video for sure.

X to Inspire

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