Yep, there's an app for WKU

WKU released an iOS, Blackberry and Android app in the summer of 2010. As part of the promotional effort to inform students, parents, faculty, staff and alumni of the app's launch a promotional video was commissioned by the WKU Information Technology Division. (Disclosure: WKU-ETV is a department within WKU-IT.)

The app itself was based on "Blackboard Mobile Central" . The natural first place to go with a promotional video about an application for mobile devices seemed to be allowing a heavy influence from the commercials promoting the Apple App Store, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Armed with the idea of paying tribute to the simple white background of iOS device commercials, we set off to our studio to shoot a round tests for the production. Utilizing the existing white cyc wall, a pair of Kino Flo Diva-Lite 400's for cyc lights, a pair of Diva-Lite 200's for the foreground, Sony PMW-EX3 XDCAM EX Camcorder, Sachtler 0450 tripod system, a volunteer hand model and an iPhone.

We quickly discovered that 'simple' was not the word to describe the process. What I meant to say was "Wow, that's very difficult to pull off and they make it look so easy, but real people breathe and have a heartbeat!" After reviewing the test footage (and deleting it so no one would ever know how poor of an imitation we attempted was), the decision was made to use screenshots from the app along with a mock up of an iPhone to create a completely virtual demonstration for the video.

Now armed with just the iWKU app, an iPhone, Photoshop CS5, Avid Media Composer 5 and an IPhone GUI Photoshop file from teehan+lax . I was able to recreate the experience of a simple white background and iDevice in the foreground displaying the various functions of the app. No need to worry about lights, tripods, cameras or heartbeats. This approach proved to be incredibly simple to execute with a pleasing result.

The entire process took about three hours from start to finish. I used the iPhone 4 to capture the screen shots of iWKU's features and transferred those into Photoshop. Where I used the iPhone GUI template file to place the screenshots into the device. Next I pulled all my files into Avid Media Composer 5 and quickly edited and exported a file for review.

The review process went quite well and we ended up with two versions of the video a 75 second and a 30 second version. Both were shown to prospective students and their parents at various WKU events, along with being embedded into the iWKU Support page.

- Jordan, Special Projects Producer

iWKU Promo - Version A from WKU ETV - PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

iWKU Promo - Version B from WKU ETV - PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

Location:Bowling Green, KY