You've probably seen those videos from Apple. They look f*cking sick
Hi, I'm leo. My team produced over 50 product videos this summer for companies like @TrustWallet @fomo @PrizePicks
Here's some of our recent work:
I've already wrote an article before about Apple videos, it was a bit surface level tbh and it absolutely boomed
https://x.com/leomeethewoo/status/2098032450731720823?s=20
So In this article we'll go more deep and I'll share some of the frameworks my team uses to produce this kind of videos. I've written everything manually without use of AI, I hope you'll like it
1. Branding (Premium storytelling)
The strongest brands aren't selling products, they are giving people a way to identify through their choices
The whole world knows apple. Their goal in their videos isn't to make more people know them, it's to make people that are already familiar with brand feel like they are special by using their product aka "premium" feeling
From it comes the whole brand ideology that they use in their videos:
Intention is everything
Nothing is done on accident
Every choice needs a purpose:
-The font
-Background
-Music
-Color theme
A simple but huge part of having a premium - feeling brand is not doing things that make the brand feel less premium
And this is where many people fuck up: experiment with too much effects, add unnecessary sound effects and rap music.
Give yourself real rules and guidelines (give yourself 3 colors that you will use for the same type of videos, same backgrounds, similar music choice for certain type of projects)
To the audience it feels like you decided that it should be that way
This is the most important part to understand and the following points will all be based on that
2. Design
Like it or not, every great video starts with a great design.
Many people think that to make a great product video they need to hire a skilled motion designer and he will do all the work
Big companies like Apple take this approach completely different. They focus on design first and then anything else.
Their approach is simple - Apple developed a brand design guideline over the years: guidelines for typography, backgrounds and many more
They stick to it from video to video.
Besides that, 10's of the most talented product designers on their team have a great understanding of the apple's style
They follow those key principles:
- One shot = one idea.
- Every scene has space to "Breathe"
- Key objects are in the center of the frame
- The background fits the brand guidelines and never interrupts the key objects
Our approach is same - we have 5 full-time product designers on the team that first storyboard each animation frame by frame in figma to make sure that the final result looks good.
Here's for example how our recent storyboard looked like:
The point here is simple - your video won't look good without a good design. Focus on it first and the rest will follow.
3. Animation
When it comes to animating, there are couple of great techniques to make it feel more expensive
1)Smoothness
Smooth out any motion by easing your keyframe graphs and overlapping them
In most cases, linear motion looks more out of place and cheap comparing to the eased motion
2)Dynamic transitions
When one scene smoothly transitions to another, we just think that it belongs there
Avoid direct cuts between scenes unless they are neccesary for the message
3)Adaptive rhytm
The rhytm of a video shouldn't always be linear.
Depending on the part of video, it should speed up, slow down or stay same
4. Music choice
You can control the video energy by a sound track
Including the "expensive" "premium" feelings
Start with a BPM choice:
60 – 80 BPM associates with Regal, Cinematic, Heritage vibe
90 – 110 BPM is more Smooth, Cool, Effortless
115-123 BPM feels Elite, Kinetic, Sophisticated
Everything more than that is more drive and hype and can fit well certain projects or destroy others
Then you can experiment with genre, certain types of music will target different audiences and fit different projects.
5. Sound design
The cherry on top of every video is great sound design.
Here goes the same psychology as in the first point
Try to avoid sound effects that do feel important
And after you're done with sound effects listen to everything and ask yourself what feels off
If there's a sound effect that feels too loud, out of place or doesn't help people to stay engaged or understand your product better - remove it
Thanks for reading, follow me for more cool stuff :)
