Your video with my song
Time of Creation: March 2018 – April 2018
Type of Project: Video / Websites
Task
In anticipation of the Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon 2018, we received a request from Impossible Software via NDR for an individual music video and the integration of a suitable creation and landing page into the website of eurovision.de for the german candidate Michael Schulte with his song "You let me walk alone".
By participating in the campaign, the user should have the opportunity to participate in a competition in which he had the chance to win one of ten hand-signed Michael Schulte albums. For this he should register with his mail address, enter his name and upload up to three pictures for the individualized
music video. The task was to be able to display the web pages in six languages and the explanatory video in two languages (German and English). Additionally, there had to exist an editorial backend through which the NDR could view and sort the user Videos by country, and, if necessary, delete and copy them. The aim was to make it possible to publish articles that could be fed with this information within the campaign period. In addition, some of the participant pictures were selected, which were displayed in the background on the video screen during Michael's live performance in Lisbon.
Realization/Solution
The landing page was implemented by us as an iFrame directly into the ESC site according to the CI specifications of the eurovision.de website. One of the most important tasks in this project was to advise NDR what is possible in such a video and what needs to be considered in film production. We were involved in the planning of the video right from the start and were able to give important advices to ease later personalization of the video clip. In addition, we were on site during the shooting of the video to give appropriate tips and hints what might look good or where we might see problems in the later editing.
The video completely was shot and cutted by the NDR and had been delivered to us to generate a template for the individualization. We then edited the various parts in the video so that they could be personalized. We also accordingly prepared the two different playout sizes for mobile devices (960x540px) and desktop computers (1.280x720px). This way we were able to ensure that every user gets the right video with a maximum in quality and the most minimal bandwidth use.
Language Selection
The language of the website was automatically recognized by the user's browser settings, but could also be changed directly on the landing page afterwards. The following languages were available: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian.
Name and Email Input
Here the user was first asked to enter his name so that a textual individualization could take place in the video. In addition, by entering his name and e-mail address in full, the user ensured that he will participate in the competition to win one of ten signed copies of Michael Schulte's album "Dreamer". The selection of the country of origin was optional, but very interesting in the course of a subsequent analysis of the countries in origin of the users who took part in the campaign.
Selecting Pictures/Upload
Afterwards the user could upload up to three pictures of himself or his family and nice memories. On mobile devices he could also took photos directly or choose from his album. In the desktop version a simple file upload was available. The selected images has automatically been applied with a black and white filter according to NDR specifications. Subsequently, the image could be edited in detail, rotation, contrast and brightness. The, up to three pictures were the pictorial individualizations in the video and were shown in the uploaded order in the final video. Great importance was given to the realistic representation of these pictures in the video. Despite the short processing time, we succeeded in maintaining reflections, blurring and overlays of other objects for the images. During processing, this was adapted to the areas to be individualized. This gave these scenes in the video a high quality and an extremely realistic impression.
Technology
We use Adobe After Effects and the web-based Impossible FX from Impossible Software to customize the video. The rendering of the videos was done by the cloud based rendering solution of Impossible Software. The VideoFX Player developed by
Impossible Software was used as the video player on the landing page. This HTML5 video player is optimized for streaming and the playback of MP4 videos.
4 Videos in one - without individualization and different personalizations
Step by Step explanation of our work porgress
article from the EUROVISION.DE Website
