Havana Club 'El Ron de Cuba'

"A dynamic and edgy montage supported by an upbeat soundtrack, a reflection of raw energy from the melting pot of various cultures, the romantic land of Cuba."

This video remains on of our most watched video on YouTube. I remember bringing back a CD worth of photographs to our Motion Graphics team. Considering that the video duration was to be 3 minutes, we really didn't have much to work with.

Our team had a look around and found a magazine sporting images of cocktails made with Havana Club. That was all we needed to create the concept for the video. Havana Club was made in sunny Republic of Cuba. Workers harvested sugar canes under the humid tropical sun. Cuba's colourful night life and its resilient people provide the inspiration for the Havana Club Product Video.

Our Motion Graphics team scanned and animated various photos to create a dynamic and edgy montage supported by an upbeat soundtrack, a reflection of raw energy from the melting pot of various cultures, the romantic land of Cuba.

BMW X5 Launch Video

BMW X5: Launch Video

"It was satisfying to watch my video projected on large screens, even more so when the end of my video became the cue for two X5 to make their grand entrance."

Although this project was completed a few years ago, it still maintains that contemporary feel, similar to the famous X5 itself. The X5 Launch Video remains a milestone video to us because it won us the coveted 'Cyberjaya Digital Video' award.

We wanted to introduce dynamism into the video, complemented with technology inspired elements. The BMW logo is a shape begging us to play with so we went all out. We chose to draw the viewer into the video by taking our time to reveal the logo using motion graphics.

Armed with only a brochure and some online photos, we set out to make a great video. All motion graphics were created with Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro. I remember back then AE didn't have the plug-in 'Strokes' even the Trapcode '3D Strokes' wasn't invented. The glowing lines that revealed the logo were drawn in Illustrator and imported into AE. We animated the mask properties to get the desired effect. All photos in the video was taken from BMW's press site and animated in After Effects.

It was FCP's first debut and I was one of its first users in Malaysia. I used FCP version 1.0 to edit the X5 video and I have one regret, that I didn't colour correct any of the footage. I was using a G3 and any effect in FCP required some rendering. Time wasn't on my side as the launch was only a few days away.

I attended the launch of the X5 in Malaysia at BMW's Glenmarie showroom. It was satisfying to watch my video projected on large screens, even more so when the end of my video became the cue for two X5 to make their grand entrance.

My inspiration for this video came chiefly from the James Bond film, 'Tomorrow Never Dies' starring Pierce Brosnan. The motion graphics elements were created based on inspiration from Digital Vision's stock images. The waveform/oscillation graphics was animated frame for frame based on footage shot off an oscilloscope from another project.

The fruit of our labour was truly a sight to behold. It was a hectic 2 weeks but it was worth it.