Hi,i I'm Tamara Lackey.
On this part 2 episode of
reDefine Show for AdoramaTV,
we dig into a 9 month long project that
Eric Valind just finished, he shares with
us from start to finish everything that
was involved photography video
stop-motion, the works! Check it out,
So you just wrapped up a pretty long
term project. Yeah! Tell me about that?
So I was working with Etsy, they just
launched a website called Etsy Studio...
you've heard of them, I mean you've
probably bought all kinds of cool stuff
on there yeah. So um, I had a long-term
contract to create an image library for
them, and it was Etsy studio.com which
just launched about a month or two ago.
What's Etsy studio? It's kind of like a
closed loop, so you know how on Etsy you
can buy craft supplies or buy crafted
things. People make awesome stuff. I know. Like
wooden furniture and cool charm
bracelets and stuff. We had an incredible
wooden bench created for our space.
It's gorgeous and they did it exactly for the
space specs, and yeah, like that's amazing.
So like we're Amazon is an ecom platform
for you know manufactured, high volume
product, Etsy puts you in touch with
artisans. You can have someone at Oregon
making you custom wooden benches. Yeah.
Etsy studio was basically like creating
projects, so you could go on there any be
like.. okay I need wedding invitations. So
I can go to Etsy.comn and I can buy them,
or I go to Etsy studio.com and figure out
or see these tutorials with a
million ways to make my own creative
wedding invitations. Oh you can also
click the link to purchase all the
supplies necessary from Etsy.com. So it was
like a closed loop, plus empowering
creatives to go and make their own
things - very conveniently selling them
the tools to do it! Yeah brilliant! So
what were you doing when you were
shooting for them? Oh my god, everything
so we shot a ton, so we did step by step
projects. So I did a lot of overhead
flat lay photography, where it's, you know
hands kind of, nicely styled hands and
cool props walking you through the
projects, and lifestyle images of the
final projects, and products and things
that are featured or available for sale
on the website. And lifestyle nyou mea like
in action? Yeah so like we
would do beautiful interior shots, or we
would do kind of still lifes with human
elements, where hands or arms or people
would be modeling or coming into the
frame, and then we would also do like the
lifestyle like webitorial kind of
stuff. So advertising meets kind of an editorial
look. Yeah nice. Clean beautiful interiors
and that kind of stuff. And did you do a
video cause you have a good video. Yeah, he
was actually helping us set up the
production crew over here! Yeah there
were a lot of hats I'm sure. So yeah we
did stop-motion and we also did video and
hyperlapse. Stop-motion - that's so fun!
That is fun until you're like doing it...
cause it's literally one frame at a time.
The result is fun. So I'm glad you lit
up like that, because that means all the
work is worth it! Yeah. When you see
stop-motion it's like ..oh my god this is
a new way of seeing, almost you know it's
like seeing life at a different frame
rate. It's just really tedious to make
because you can sit there all day and
maybe only knock out five or six hundred
frames, and you're like okay I just put
in 10 hours in the studio, and I have 9
seconds or something you know! So what
are like stop-motion movies? Like what goes
into that ?Ok, it's it's fun you use still
photography. I'll take a DSLR like we're
filming on here. Yeah and I will just
kind of set it up I do a remote capture
some tether tools cables coming down and
so I've got it on my laptop. There's some
specific software that's really good for
stop-motion and you set up a frame like
you would a still picture, and you take
the shot, and then you move it slightly
you take it up, and you move it slightly
and you take another, and introduce
another element, and how quickly or how
much you move the items between each
shot dictates how quickly they move, or
slowly they move in the final video. Yeah!
So yeah I'm thinking about doing the
robot very slowly in front of a camera for
portrait work! Yeah and do you make it
like so it's as natural and smooth as
possible? Or do you kind of mix in some of those
jumps. That's the fun of it,
It can, there's magic to stop motion that
we can't do in video without, you know,
tons of CGI. Because in stop-motion you
can have a product move across the table,
and then something else appears there.
Yeah you can have a lot of fun with it.
We definitely do. Yeah. There's some where
we did smooth animations, where we had
little patches that looked like bees and
stuff flying around, and it was just kind
of a cute looking animation, and other
stuff we basically showed you how to
stitch together an entire sweatshirt, and
put a bunch of decals on it, and iron it
and then pop, there's a miniature version
for your kid, you can buy adult in small
sizes. We really got to like flex
creativity on this stuff, because I mean
you're taking, what could be very mundane
product shots how do you animate them?
How do you give them character? How do
you make them humorous? How do you make
people want to watch it? I draw them in
so how long did all this take? Eight or
nine months.It was the longest freelance
project I've been on in my career, it was
really neat because it felt almost like
I was an employee. Right none of the
downside. Like Hi Fred. Yeah exactly so
it's it's all the plus side of you know
getting to work with your favorite
creatives regularly, you know you don't
get as a freelancer, because you might
work with the client once or twice a
year usually, but with none of the
downsides of you know, twiddling your
thumbs in an office! Right! Cubicle.
Exactly yeah! Wonderful so how can people
find out more about you, the work you do
things you're teaching ErikValind.com.
That's the best way to go and then
social media wise, I am the most active on
Instagram now, so it's Erik V photo.
Then when are you teaching next?
We're gonna be at PPE, so we've got
some classes there, and a
photo walk there. Going to be at WPPI out
in Vegas next year. imaging USA is gonna
be down in Nashville, and I'm always
doing workshops around the country
especially in the New York area too.
So okay check out my website there's an
event section there, and you can see
where I'm going to be. How to sign up and
how to come out and shoot.
Fantastic!
Thank you so much for your time.
Thanks so much Eric. I really appreciate
all your grueling detail.
Check us out here next time on
AdoramaTV and in the
meantime you can hit that subscribe
button for all kinds of tutorials and
walkthroughs and videos and cool everything,