If you’re looking for inspiration you should read this article #1

It’s too easy to feel like dropping everything when we’re confronted with brilliant videos. Especially if the video is about a subject that, at first sight, isn’t easy to tackle. In this case, tennis.

It’s hard to imagine a video about tennis being interesting. For starters, we’ll have two players, possibly hidden behind the net (out of focus), close-ups of a tennis ball and of the players sweating, racquet strikes in slow motion… But then some unique videos show up, and they’re like a breath of fresh air. In this case, they combine tennis with music, and the result is brilliant.

GAME SET & MATCH

This promotional video in Motion Graphics was created to promote the 2014 BNP Paribas Masters International Tournament. It presents all the artists that assured the event’s entertainment: 20syl, Grems and Trafik.

The concept is simple: take some tennis terms, add a beat that stays in your head and make a remix out of it. Then, add a “simple animation” in After Effects, and this is the result. It even looks easy…!

LET’S PLAY

“An extremely short and empirical homage to the tennis world”. A tennis player, the sounds of the game and a punctured white box are the motto of this video. The melody is unleashed by the actions performed throughout this 33 second match. We can consider the directing of this video more complex, since it featured stop motion and some 3D special effects. It’s possible to see the process behind this video through the making-of.

Then how do I make a video like this?

There’s no recipe, but we can think about what makes these videos so different from what we’re used to seeing, and come to some conclusions.

First off, the content. Like any other audiovisual work, the content is the most important part (without disregarding the sound and image quality). We can have as an example the news reports that are broadcasted on television channels. Although the technical quality might not be the best, if the content is interesting enough, we’ll watch it until the end.

CONTENT + IMAGE + SOUND

Raising the bar, it’s necessary that these three elements complement each other for a video to work. The sound is sometimes set aside. A rookie’s mistake! Sound design plays an essential role when it comes to determining the quality of a video. It might be what dictates the difference between an amateur production and a professional one.

Sound effects be as good as the remaining elements and fit the message that we want to portray. This video is an excellent example of how sound alters the mood of a scene completely.

On “Game Set & Match” the music isn’t set aside, it’s the differentiating factor. The image quality is there, but what makes these videos unique are the two sides of the equation: the content and the sound. And of course, the music is an essential part of the video’s concept. Is this why they work so well?