The task was to design a good looking show intro that reflects the demographic and keeps things simple, elegant and ‘easy’ feeling.
‘MumsVillage’ is East Africa larges platform for new Mums, offering advice and help to Mums-to-be and new Mums alike. In designing the show we wanted to achieve a clean, fresh approach, with a set designed to international standards.
Set Design
Building a set from scratch would have been time and cost preventative, so we oped to modify a previous set. The set creates depth as there are stairs and other rooms, couches, and further details that extend the set backwards. It always good to show that there are other unexplored areas in the set. As we were the produciton company we also continued the use of our back-lit logo on the wall.
We also had to incorporate existing furniture into this pilot season as we were trying to keep costs down. To keep the overall look consistant, I added shelves that were of a similar design, and married that with a warm looking wood wall set-piece.
Details
The polished wood floor really helped to make the room feel approachable, and reduce any white/clinical colours.
Adding the MumsVillage logo onto the set-piece, and having it backlit, really gives a nice warm feeling to the set piece.
We also added some books, and childrens toys to the shelves, and the casual nature of the couch, with the pillows not being too perfect helps the casual nature of the show.
We also added a lot of natural light and plants to help warm up the set even more.
Indeed the cast shadows and over light can be changed to change with the seasons.
The show intro
The saying, ‘Each day is a new day’ felt fitting for the intro. So, I decided to keep things simple; using the sunrise to open the intro and bring a nice light to everything. I modified some existing flowers, petals and grass and instanced over a nice ground texture.
As the sun rises, the shadows and light cast nicely over the Mums Logo, ending in a ‘just afternoon’ light, around 2pm. I added a little dust blowing in the wind, and a tiny amount of God rays peeking through the grass.
A nice touch when the sun rises was the translucency of the petals, which was all in-render and needed very little post processing.
The music was also designed to be light and open. Simple.
I used an acoustic guitar and some airy sounds. Intentionally simple, like me.
Overall, I was pleased with the intro. It was designed to appear to international audiences, and have a decent level of production value. All too often here in Kenya, intros are very ‘shouty’ and adding as much of everything all thrown together at once seems to be the norm.
Indeed, when most people see the show, they assume it’s made in South Africa; a nice compliment I feel.