PROJECT: OMG Halloween Video
Client: Omnicom Media Group
Executive Creative Director: Athena Maroulis
Creative Director: Ryan DeCarlo
Compositor: Ryan DeCarlo
Editor: Christian Conyer
3D / Motion Design: Ryan DeCarlo, David Szmit
VO: Alex Yetwin
Audio: Christian Conyer, Ryan DeCarlo
OMG'S "THE KREEN"
While I may not be a huge fan of 80's slasher films, the rest of my team at Omnicom certainly was, and I saw this as an opportunity for some enjoyable creativity. To celebrate Halloween, we crafted a promo paying homage to this classic genre, incorporating the infamous jump scare and dolly zoom techniques while aiming for a PG viewership. Concept: To maintain a PG rating, I drew inspiration from numerous children's books, identifying rhythmic patterns that made storytelling in a short timeframe more accessible. The montage of quick cuts narrates the story of a girl in the woods fleeing from the Kreen. The choice of a laptop as the centerpiece stemmed from the realization that everyone shared a common connection – working off their OMG laptops. Initially, the Kreen's costume didn't work on set, prompting a shift to 3D animation with a focus on precise timing and audio. Due to time and budget constraints, we streamlined the video into a single dolly zoom. Techniques: Alongside the jump scare, we aimed to experiment with the dolly zoom. Location: Our setting was my cabin house in Upstate, NY, providing the perfect backdrop with an authentic 80's style. Equipped with our gear and a fog machine, we worked tirelessly throughout the night to bring the concept to life.
FULL SPOT :30
Explorations
A dolly zoom (also known as a Hitchcock shot, Vertigo shot, Jaws effect or Zolly shot) is an in-camera effect that appears to undermine normal visual perception. The effect is achieved by zooming a zoom lens to adjust the angle of view (often referred to as field of view, or FOV) while the camera dollies (moves) toward or away from the subject in such a way as to keep the subject the same size in the frame throughout. In its classic form, the camera angle is pulled away from a subject while the lens zooms in, or vice versa. Thus, during the zoom, there is a continuous perspective distortion, the most directly noticeable feature being that the background appears to change size relative to the subject. The visual appearance for the viewer is that either the background suddenly grows in size and detail and overwhelms the foreground, or the foreground becomes immense and dominates its previous setting, depending on which way the dolly zoom is executed. As the human visual system uses both size and perspective cues to judge the relative sizes of objects, seeing a perspective change without a size change is a highly unsettling effect, often with strong emotional impact.
Explorations
We designed our typography based on a number of 80's horror film classics.
Explorations
A jump scare is a technique often used in horror films and video games, intended to scare the audience by surprising them with an abrupt change in image or event, usually co-occurring with a loud, jarring sound. The jump scare has been described as "one of the most basic building blocks of horror movies". Jump scares can startle the viewer by appearing at a point in the film where the soundtrack is quiet and the viewer is not expecting anything alarming to happen, or can be the sudden payoff to a long period of suspense. Some critics have described jump scares as a lazy way to frighten viewers, and believe that the horror genre has undergone a decline in recent years following an over-reliance on the trope, establishing it as a cliché of modern horror films.
