Communication objectives (The problem we needed to solve]
Sound Transit is building the second-largest transit expansion package in the country, tripling the amount of light rail mileage the people of the Puget Sound region use to get to work, school, or play. One consistent challenge for us as an agency is helping the public adapt to the short-term frustration light rail expansion brings – loud and dirty construction, traffic disruption, and a wait of up to 20 years or more until people can benefit from the new service. This video’s objective was to heighten interest in the project by providing “behind the scenes” access to the work, the history-making technology, and the people who tell the fascinating story of how this project is coming to life. By knowing more about the project, the people, and the complex work involved, our audience should gain a deeper appreciation for the work that is transforming the region and thus become more tolerant of the short-term nuisances.
The creative approach (The solution)
In this video, we wanted to highlight a first-ever technology developed especially for our project laying light rail tracks across a floating bridge. The inspiration came from a graphic one of our designers had developed to illustrate the technology. We thought, “This is cool! We should animate it!” But a simple technical animation wouldn’t tell the story of what made this project amazing. And the video concept was born. We concocted a mix of simple and accessible technical animation, quirky narration, fun, and inspirational music and dynamic in-the-dirt construction footage, all tied together by a storyteller – a real engineer! This easy to digest and highly educational approach was built to help our audience better understand our work and get excited about the future. We used the seamless integration of multiple Adobe products across two teams to simplify the production process and meet our deadline, no sweat.
Skills in applying Adobe products (what Adobe products you used and how.)
The project was an excellent reminder of how we maximize the Adobe suite across teams. The original technical illustration was drafted by one of our designers in Illustrator. The layers were imported into After Effects for animation. While the animator plugged away, the editor built a timeline in Premiere Pro, using Adobe Dynamic Link to update the iterations of the parallel animation work seamlessly. A simple audio mix in Premier, followed by color correction, warp stabilizer, and a couple speed changes to finish the on-line edit.
Graphic overlays and lower thirds were drafted by another graphic designer in AI and layered into AE. To finish, the AE project was nested into the Premiere timeline, and the caption tool was used to fulfil our 100% requirement for closed captioning on videos and onto export using Premier native plugins.
