How we created a CNY video for less than $5!
The Year of the Monkey has arrived and we’re getting cheekier!
It’s the time of the year where we ask ourselves: what kind of “corporate” e-greetings do we want to make this year for our clients? (Got budget? Got time??).
Two years ago, if you remember, we had no time to do one (well, we did lah. Here it is again for posterity: 2014 CNY video).
This year we were determined to do a nice one. No monkey business. And so we did. And what fun we had!
These were the guiding principles behind our video:
- Everyone must collaborate (and have fun).
- It must be cheap and easy to produce
(Clara growled: “no time/designers for you!”) - Because of point 2, we wanted to do EVERYTHING on our iPhones.
- Finally, the video should be sent easily via WhatsApp.
And so we embarked on a journey to the app store to source for ideas, and we found these amazing apps* that when combined, did everything wonderfully for us:
We used Myidol 3D Avatar Creator (by Huanshi Ltd.) to individual personalise our own 3D avatars. Its 3D engine is indeed truly amazing! Better still, its latest update contained cool CNY themes, and that’s where we got our Monkey God impersonations!
Then we needed an app to compile and create a collage of all our 14 videos. No video collage app in the market offered us a 16-frame collage, but PicPlayPost app (by Mixcord inc) came in pretty handy for its ease of use. We had to use some creative juices to finally compile our 16-frame montage… see if you can figure how we did it! (And this is the only app we spent some money on – some $4.98 to have the watermark removed – but it was truly worth the money spent!).
The third step was to find a video editor that allows us to add the cover shot as well as the final closing frame with text. I already had the Replay Video Editor app (by StupeFlix) in my iPhone and its little snazzy effects came in really handy too. Easy to edit, easy to compile!
Lastly (and I thought we were done here), the Video Compressor app. The eventual video came up to be 14.5mb – too large for cellular data users to download. So in comes the Video Compressor app. Which amazingly compressed our video into a nifty yet sharp 1.8mb file. Presto! And we ere done!
Ok, so that’s how we did it. Very easy, very quick,and very very fun as it involved everyone in its creation. A truly collaborative effort that gave all our monkeys here a chance to express themselves to the max!
Have a happy, cheeky and prosperous year of the Monkey!
And oh, this is a snapshot of the working grid… see if you’ve gotten the “who’s who” correct!
*this is not a paid ADVERTISEMENT, but rather, a ringing endorsement from a user perspective! Feel free to check them out. They cost NOTHING to download!