In this blog, we will talk about the Dharmalife video. It is not the ‘usual’ Explainer video.
If you had an app that could literally change lives, what would you do? Well Sasidhar, our client, had a clear idea of what HE would do.
Sasidhar approached Mypromovideos with an unusual request – make an explainer video that does not explain the product. Yes, that does NOT explain the product. His app, Dharmalife, was set to change lives of those under the influence of the most dangerous of villains – our emotions.
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So we started off with the problem that even the best of us face – Emotions out of control. How many of you have gone ‘Arrrggghhhhhh’ with smoke coming outta your ears when you have slow internet ? Me…me ….me!!
Guilty!!
Dharmalife app claimed to change that. It is not your typical app. It doesn’t eat your time like Facebook or Whatsapp.The real value lies in its scientific approach to emotions and how you can make them your advantage. I don’t know about you guys, but I have always wanted a palm psychologist.
Since it was a completely new concept, we HAD to try it out for ourselves. Udhaya, our Creative Director, began using Dharmalife app. His personal feedback was positive and this encouraged us.
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In our brainstorming session, Vimida, our Scriptwriter, came up with this idea of using a duology of emotions. Our story would be about two people, say John and George. An observer, their mutual friend, would be narrating the story from her perspective.
The only way we could creatively bring in a third person’s narrative, was to do something new with the Voice overs. Technically, the VO’s were the star of the show. We were so glad that our ‘experimental approach’ for the VO’s was a success.Chelsea voiced the narrator. She was sweet and smart, as always.
Hey, didja catch that part where John and George would talk while the narration is going on?? ‘Nayyy…Love Coffee!’ ?!
*missed it? Go on take another sneak peek at the video. It’s at 00:06 so listen carefully 😉
Cool, right?
I’ll tell you what’s even cooler. Both John and George was voiced by the same person!! Andy exceeded our expectations by giving us voices for the BOTH John and George. Now I’m impressed (and feeling quite disappointed with my finite voice skills).
According to our story, John was short-tempered and George was prone to depression. The video had to reflect the duology of the script so we used two different color schemes in the same frame.The warmer reds and oranges for John and the cooler blues and violets for George. Both of them go through their everyday lives and react differently for the same things; what makes John angry makes George depressed.
Johnny Bull – The angry one
You know Mahesh, our illustrator, right? He had to study a million facial expressions before he could portray them. The centre of the animation had to be the characters’ expressions. Mahesh had a challenging job, but he nailed it.
Our use of humor in this video is just to show that life can be taken lightly. I’m sure you could relate to John’s head turning into an angry Bull’s head – heehee…I bet all of us know someone with a temper just like that!
Caged George – The depressed one
Next, we had to show off the poses learnt from Dharmalife. Our illustrators, Ganesh and Mahesh were initially stumped. The poses in the app were, I kid you not, like balloon animals. Here a twist, there a turn… Even if it was possible to do it in real life, it was really, really tough to animate those convoluted poses. They had to be so careful to not give their characters two left feet. These guys pulled it off in the end!
The narrator, voiced by Chelsea, tells us how she notices their odd behavior and is surprised about the evident change in their lifestyles. John no longer gets angry for the little things and George isn’t chronically depressed. So in the end, all is well!
We did it! We created a video that did not explain the product. With the use of parallelism in the lives of two characters, we hoped to bring out the diverse nature of Dharmalife in their branding video. It was not only an anger management course but a life changing practice. It is a global app, so our characters were named ‘John’ and ‘George’ removing any racial differences. People, after all, are People.
Dharmalife was our first project of 2015. And boy, was it a terrific way to kickstart a new year! Dharmalife has proudly displayed this video on their website and also used it on youtube for promoting their brand image.
Our project manager, Shareef remembers Sasidhar as a firm client. Shareef’s role in conveying our progress and ideas to Sasidhar, was pivotal. He made their interaction smooth and ironed out any issues. They volleyed with ideas for the storyboard; Sasidhar provided timely feedback, for which, all of us were grateful. Shareef recalls Sasidhar being patient and reasonable. He would listen to all that you had to say and if at all a dispute arose it was settled rationally.
What sets apart our video for Dharmalife is the suspense of what the app does. I am not likely to break that here 😉 Does that make you curious ? Me too!
Test out the app and let us know how it helped you, in the comments below, while I go suggest this to all my angry bull friends 😛
Let us know if you need an explainer video, we are here to help.
