The people composing the Gong Spot Burning Man theme camp brought along David from DotFun and me in order to help them make sizzle reels for their audiences.
This was mainly done as a pre-fundraiser event for their Burning Man theme camp later on in the year. So with that in mind, I was given access to footage shot earlier by the group in a different event and tasked with creating a “sizzle reel”.
The tone
If you’re not aware of what Burning Man is, it is an annual event held in a Nevada desert, where people come and live together as a community and then ignite “The Man” made of straw towards the end.
The tone we originally went towards was one of self-expression, art and then later on, psychedelics. Seeking to convey those points, I took to showcasing all the main activities present on the camp grounds for the participants in a flashy way.
Someone say match cuts?
Lumira is a fashion brand, that has deep ties with the Gong Spot group. And with the debut of their LED cat ears, it only made sense to feature them & get some eyes on them throughout the event.
I chose to go for a rapid match cut transition style to convey the significance of this LED device, because I think it captures the energy, style, and playfulness of this product perfectly.
Burners on the Playa
This is one of the main mantras of the Gong Spot theme camp (burners being the members, and playa being the desert basin where the event is held), so we wanted to be able to express it visually in a style that felt fitting to the entire vibe of the video.
After some fiddling around and trying various approaches and ideas, we finally set down on doing a little VFX on one of the camp member’s handfan.
I used Mocha AE to get a decent planar track to hold the text. Once that was done, I had to conform it to fit the “psychedelic” vibe of the whole reel, by adding in a lot of different trippy elements.
Is this trippy enough?
One of the main challenges I faced in creating this sizzle reel was to find a way to express the psychedelics and trippy aesthetics that hold cultural significance for this group. David helped research and describe it to me, and I tried my best to convert it to visual fidelity in the storytelling.