IJM Motions

Motion Graphics & Live Design. Client: International Justice Mission (IJM).

Every year the International Justice Mission holds their Global Prayer Gathering, where members of their international field offices and many of their supporters gather for a conference to hear stories from the field and to pray for IJM and its partners. This year I had the amazing opportunity to work with them to create a visual environment during the GPG.

To help create this environment, IJM’s creative team decided to use photos from the field as a large background behind the stage. As they were working through this plan, the idea to have all the photos move came up. My job was to make these photos move in a way that would add depth to the photos without distracting from what was going on in the room.

Problems, Challenges, and Solutions

The first challenge that arose was how many pictures there were. Originally, we were shooting for around 30-40 images (I think we wound up close to this). Another issue was that each image was different and would require a different technique to achieve a workable effect, since we needed each to be a seamless loop since they’d be showing for 15+ minutes at a time.

Thankfully, I was able to find some good solutions. Thanks to the Fractal Noise effect in After Effects, I was able to add light rays to many of the images. Even better is that Fractal Noise allows you to loop things seamlessly with just one parameter. For the photos that didn’t have light rays or animated shadows, I used other footage or moving layers to create an effect.

For example, on the first alley and the final clouds shot, we cut out the sky and added time lapse footage and set it to loop. Dissolve, an awesome stock footage company, allowed me to find these clips very quickly and for an incredible price!

All the main sessions are posted on youtube so you can watch here.

Some Tips:

Cut out elements (the sky) in photoshop before going to After Effects, the magic wand tool will save you so much time. (Think smart, not hard.)
Designing for the screen. When designing for large screens, exaggerate what you’re doing ever so slightly. Most of these motions looked a little too distracting on my laptop, but when they made it to the big screen they looked absolutely gorgeous.
Have some good resources picked out. I can’t tell you how much Dissolve helped me out. I just needed a cloud time lapse and they made the hunting process, easy, and affordable. I highly recommend them.