DONUT JOY
CELEBRATING THE JOYFUL SWEETNESS
OF THE HUMBLE DONUT
I wanted to create something new and jubilant for my portfolio; what better subject could there be than a donut? As with my previous projects, I started by choosing a theme, and since this was a video project, I also picked out a piece of music to help set the mood. I wanted something with some fun musical transitions and a catchy beat. A little humor or quirk was also on the wish list.
The music helps me determine how many shots or clips I’ll need to create on shoot day. So, even before sketching anything, I plan out the editing in Davinci Resolve with just text callouts and color blocks, breaking up my clips by musical beats, transitions, and unique sounds. It doesn’t look like much at this point, but I can tell by watching the colors change when I play if I’ve got too much, too little, or just the right amount of energy from start to finish. It makes for a lively edit and a very watchable final result. I like to have a mix of quick staccato moments and some longer clips where you can revel in a prolonged donut hero shot or a tasty donut tear.
After reviewing my work and playing my text edit back multiple times, to confirm I like the direction (thus making an earworm of the song for myself), I begin the process of sketching. I love to use Procreate on the iPad to develop my sketches and animations. It’s easy to use and intuitive, and it has built-in animation capabilities. My animations are pretty rough, but only need to get the basic idea across to my team. I created sprinkles shooting as if from a cannon, a buttercream icing flick, and a jelly donut squeeze. I can tell our food stylist what we want to have happen, but if I can SHOW them, it’s even better.
Jubilant sprinkles scattering.
Piped icing flick
Comical jelly squeeze
THE ANIMATIC
The animatic combines some of my text cues, along with drawings, and my rudementary animations from Procreate. This helps my entire team align on what we’re looking to capture and address any concerns or ideas that may come up in the process.
THE RESULTS
On shoot day, I ran two sets, one for stills and one for our motion. With the sketches printed out, we all had a road map we could follow. The food stylist knew how the donuts needed to look, made the icing colors and experimented with the nonpareils and jimmies.
All motion was shot on colored paper or panels I painted a few days earlier with matte wall paint on masonite boards. The matte finish prevents any spectral glare, it’s wipeable as we work and get icing and donut grease everywhere, and they’re relatively lightweight and easy to wrangle.
We were able to use some fun gear, including a turntable and slider, to add more interest to our motion clips. And I had a launch rig set up for the sprinkles to fly through the air. That element was reimagined as a scatter across the paper instead. Even if we’re shooting at 120 fps, some things will be moving so fast that they just don’t look how you imagined. My sprinkles were quickly out of frame and just a blur when launching them… tossing them through the air just wasn’t working. However, changing my camera perspective to overhead and scattering the nonpareils across colored paper worked perfectly to get the look I wanted… plus I had fewer sprinkles to clean up afterward. ;)
All stills were captured in my small studio on white vinyl, allowing me to capture crisp color (avoiding reflections of other colors onto the donuts) and dial in my background colors in post.
As we worked, I dropped clips directly into my animatic to confirm we captured the moments just as I needed them.
BEHIND THE SCENES