Virgin America's Safety Video - How a Low Budget Breeds Innovation

Jon Chu, director of GI Joe: Retaliation and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, recently updated Virgin America's pre-flight safety video. Virgin's old video is often credited for starting the arms race of fun and light-hearted safety videos. This story describes about how he worked around tight restrictions and a low budget. For example, Virgin America didn't even provide a plane or uniforms - likewise, the FAA isn't too keen on rhymes.

I wanted to share this because we are no strangers to tight budgets, timelines, or restrictions. And, how ultimately, those sorts of parameters can yield some pretty unique results.

Re-Blog from Motionographer: Commercial work with boundaries: the commissioned work model

Check out the full article at Motionographer.  There is some really interesting stuff about providing options to clients who have a small budget, but still have the room and flexibility to create something that is engaging and rewarding from the artist's perspective.

"I knew this was their first time exploring animation and that their budget was limited. So when I presented the contract, I included two options:

• Option A would take 6 weeks and include x number of revisions and check-ins
• Option B would take 4 weeks and consist of no revisions but would cost less

Julie chose Option B."

He continues to talk about creating a really solid process to become very clear on what the client should expect.  Obviously there is a tremendous amount of trust that has to be in place for something like this to happen, but this is a great example of creating quality work without breaking the budget by having a really solid process in place that creates confidence and trust.

Morris Grassfed from Joe Donaldson on Vimeo.