Campus Falke Werbefilm

This was a short ad for the student magazine, which I conceptualized to run at the student cinema, for our campaign to also distribute our magazine there.

This was a small project I did for fun, when we had the idea to distribute our magazines at the student cinema as well. This project sparked my interest and ultimate change of course from aeronautics and space engineering to audiovisual media, since I began to see a wider range of career possibilities in visual Media beyond my main interest back then, photography.

Concept and Structure

My concept was centered around the Campus being more than just a place to study, and since it’s aired at the student cinema, tying the magazine in with the positive feelings associated with the student cinema, since that’s also a project that elevates the Campus beyond studying.

To start, I planned an eyecatching timelapse of the Campus accompanied by serious music to get the attention, followed by the quite existential question „Why are you here?“. To defuse that tension, it is followed by the next question „To Study?“, since the student cinema is taking place in an auditorium, together with the campus timelapse makes the association clear, though tying it to the university and not this auditorium and event.

This is followed by a shot of a student studying diligently, until – „No!“ – is flashed, with a record scratch sound and a fun jazzy beat starting, followed right with „For Entertainment“ since obviously that’s why they’d be at the student cinema. Cutting back to the same student flipping over his college block, revealing, the Campus Falke Magazine always having been there. Which he promptly starts reading.

The central message „The Campus is more than just studying“ is finally displayed, followed by the animated logo of the Campus Falke Student Magazine, connecting the previous message „more than just studying“ to not only the physical campus, but also the Campus Falke Magazine.

Finally a last shot of the logo is slapped over a cinema background with the final message „Campus Falke – also available at this cinema“ or more specifically „Gibts auch hier im Kino“, which is a specific slogan used to promote ice cream in cinemas and which you hear whispered seductively before every – and I mean every movie showing at german cinemas. So this was a final play on the well known slogan to communicate the Magazine being there available for anyone interested to take with them.

Motion Graphics

A unique element of the film are the bespoke motion graphics I custom made for this project. The text is animated by using the path of the characters and AEs trim paths feature. To connect the letters additional paths were used.

The most challenging element was animating a mask to have the Campus Falke Logo look like it’s being written out in real time, though I could probably do that a lot quicker with my current knowledge, but I remember sitting a looong time on that part of the animation.

Learnings

I’m still happy with the concept, but I’d change the background of the animated text, I chose the dark grey because it was part of the color scheme together with the green, but from todays perspective I should’ve done a more complex background, maybe animating blurred ink swirls, or something of that nature, as I think the dark grey is quite ugly in this context. Another small detail is the very small font unter the Campus Falke Logo, which is the accurate Logo printed on the Magazine, but too small to read properly in this spot.

Other than that I like the film and the animations, it turned out to be a fun ad, though we don’t have any metrics on its performance, as the Magazine was free and that would’ve been too much effort to track.

You can check out my other work in design and layout at Campus Falke here.