Recently I was watching that terrific iPod Nano Ad when I noticed what to me looked like a mistake. Now this wouldn’t have been noticeable had I not happened to be stepping through frame-by-frame but you can clearly see the talent’s arm has been chopped off for a few frames. Now this is not a criticism because no one is perfect and I’ve made my share of mistakes as well. I’m mentioning it because I feel it raises an interesting question — if you know there is a mistake in your work or if you find out after it has been delivered, is it okay if the client and or audience doesn’t notice?
Personally I believe one should strive for perfection in every job but that doesn’t necessarily mean agonising over tiny details that an audience isn’t going to notice anyway. This is particularly true when doing highly detailed work such as rotoscoping for example.
In the Nano example, the dark color palette used and the fact that everything is moving so fast disguises the fact that the arm is chopped off, so is it really a mistake? From a purely technical perspective you could say yes but from a design perspective and when looking at this spot in it’s entirety I would say no.
As a motion designer your work should be high quality but it mustn’t take an eternity to complete. Great designers/operators work “smart” and have a good understanding of what they can and can’t get away with. This doesn’t mean that if you find an obvious mistake in your work that you shouldn’t fix it as was the case with Fox Classics. But in that case it was too late anyway.
2 Responses to this post
September 16, 2008 at 5:22 pm |
I totally agree. After all… making motion graphics or visual effects is all about cheating the eye, so as long as you can get away with something why not make your work easier?
Aside of that I would consider this a mistake. The reason is that it would be pretty easy to fix with a simple masked solid and motion blur. Motion blur is our best friend. So in other words I think this was just a bit sloppy.
But it’s hard to judge without seeing the whole clip in motion. Any chance for a link?
December 3, 2008 at 12:18 am |
I would say it was a time compromise. This may be a mistake but not necessary to fix at the time with everything going on in the clip. Just take a look at big projects like motion pictures. They REALLY know what to get a way with. Example: during the famous pod-racing scene in Star Wars Episode1 the actual driver is sometimes missing because there was no time to render and composit – “But I thought we could get away with it…” It is all about time/money/good enough. Anyone working deadlines know this. (your prestige/professionalism is on the line, though)
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