The Making of the Open Runway Concept Video

For the past two weeks we have been working on creating Open Runway’s new concept video. A few days ago, we finally finished and uploaded it to our Youtube Channel! Andrea described the video to her friend as “my life’s work,” and even though it only took us a couple weeks to create it, it is one of our proudest accomplishments! We hope you like it as much as we do!

Open Runway Concept Video

Andrea’s Experience: When I started the project I was familiar with iMovie thanks to an overzealous Egyptology professor who liked to incorporate media into his curriculum by having us make movies about everything from the Sphinx to the typology of pre-dynastic pottery. But now that we’re done I can say with confidence that I am an expert! Kailai and I created scenes and animations that I didn’t know were even possible. When Monika, Open Runway’s founder and CEO, requested we have words flying in one at a time over an image, I was tempted to say, “Impossible! Lower your expectations lady, I’m not a professional film editor!” Instead I sucked it up and tried to discover a way to accomplish the task. Ok, I may have complained about not knowing how to do it, but I still figured it out! With a combination of Kailai’s supreme Photoshop skills, some PowerPoint innovation, and an application called Camtasia that allows you to record your computer screen, we created our masterpiece! So if you are looking to make an expert promotional video using only the resources found on your computer, take some advice from me. The help tab is your best friend! Without it I would never have known there is a green screen effect in iMovie or that you can group objects in PowerPoint in order to make them animate at the same time.

Kailai’s Experience: Working with Andrea on the concept video was really fun. In the beginning I was worried that I would not be able to contribute much to this project as I’m a total rookie on video editing but my powerpoint and photoshop skills combined with Andrea’s iMovie expertise proved to be a great combination. In my humble opinion, the video looks awesome! I am really amazed how different the final video looks from our first version. After we came up with the first draft video, we spent hours discussing and getting feedback from the entire Open Runway team to make sure that we were conveying the right message concisely and effectively. We are basically using the same storyboard for the video as what we first developed at the very beginning of this project. However, after two weeks of polishing and MANY versions later, the video looks much more professional.

As we were resource constrained we found a way to create the video just using using Powerpoint, Photoshop and Camtasia to fake the effects of professional video editing software. We think we did a great job of fooling people’s eyes. Well, at least my friends’ eyes.

Good luck in all your movie making endeavors and don’t forget to check out our masterpiece!