Super M Case Studies
Introduction
For the following case study, we will analyze the video we made for La Red Hispana, “ Super M ”.
La Red Hispana produces daily radio programming and social media content in Spanish, covering the entire United States, focusing on education, news and important issues for the Latino community. La Red Hispana serves 40 Million U.S. Spanish-speaking Hispanics with engaging multimedia content.
This video made by Samsa, is part of an awareness-raising campaign, encouraging the viewers to vote. The target audience for this message is the Latino community living in the U.S., the Mexican community in particular, seeking to involve them in social and political participation. Even though La Red Hispana’s main goal with this video is to encourage the Latino community to vote in the next presidential election in the United States; the “M” stands for Martes (Tuesday in Spanish), the day in which political elections are held in the country, so the video will remain relevant and effective, and may be used in the future by itself or as part of a possible permanent awareness campaign.
This video is a very unique product. Considering the different types of video Samsa has to offer, we could place it next to the commercial videos, because it seeks to influence the viewer. Although La Red Hispana is not looking for the viewer to get interested and buy a product, the main goal is to get the attention of the target audience (the Latino community in the United States) and provoke a reaction by the viewer (to register and to vote).
Pre-production
Challenges and particularities of the project.
The production process for this video involved a great collaborative work between our team and the client. La Red Hispana brought the idea of a superhero and the general theme for this product. Samsa’s creative team took it from there and created the main character and the visual proposal, which we will talk about next. We concluded that the success of the video would be determined by the degree of identification of the target audience with the character and with the problem raised.
So the main challenge at the time of creating this video, was to find the way to capture the viewer’s attention appealing to their Latino identity, using colours, everyday life scenes and a little bit of humor; and at the same time maintain the seriousness and importance of the message.
In order to achieve this goal, and complementing the use of saturated colours and typical everyday images of a Latino neighborhood, we paid special attention to the narration and the language used, creating an authentic message.
Foundation for the artistic proposal
Tools and techniques used based on the video’s main goal.
“ Super M “ is staged in a typical Latin neighborhood in the United States. As to proportion and shapes, sets and characters design is realistic, looking to recreate the reality and everyday life of Latio neighborhoods. With the goal of catching the attention of our target audience, we appealed to typical scenes from the latinamerican identity like kids playing soccer on the streets, stores and social life outside in the neighborhood. Every set has been coloured with digital painting techniques in order to achieve the best possible look regarding texture and visual impact.
The colour palette was carefully selected, increasing saturation in order to reflect the joy of Latino culture, in contrast with the grey from the big American city. In order to accentuate this distinction, we decided to use saturated colour even in places and objects that normally wouldn’t have them, like underneath a car’s hood.
Even so, everyday life has its grey undertones in Latino neighborhoods in America. When the time comes to talk about the negative side of his community that Super M is trying to change, the colour palette drastically changes
There is a very important difference regarding character animation. We decided to animate the secondary characters in digital 2D and the main character with traditional animation, drawing the frames one by one, in order to obtain more complex and organic movements.
Actions from the secondary characters are very natural, calm and smooth, in order to represent everyday life in the most faithful way possible.
Super M on the other hand, bursts into the smooth and gentle pace of the video with energetic attitude and actions. We used camera movements and fast video transitions, in order to highlight his civic activities.
Final comment
While it took a big team and many hours of work, Super M is a product with which we are very satisfied. Especially, with the way Samsa’s creative team selected and implemented the appropriate techniques, in order to be able to convey La Red Hispana’s message the best way possible.
Being a different product from the ones we usually produce, we were obliged to step out of our comfort zone, but we consider that we managed to develop a creative proposal, achieving the identification of the target audience with the visual proposal and the characters we created.
We are very much looking forward to your comments. Thank you very much.
