A few months ago I had created a video mashup of a commercial (see the original and my mashup here). This video ended with three key words, encouraging people to Explore, Create, Share! I then got the idea for creating short videos to represent these three ideas.

I also set some constraints on myself. First, these videos would be short! This meant each video would be between 30 seconds to a minute in length. Second, these videos would be, as far as possible, one continuous shot with minimal post-production and editing. Third, these videos would always end with a typographical representation of the word. Fourth, and finally, these videos would have some kind of a “surprise” at the end.

I was helped in my task by my kids and my cousin Sonny Mishra who composed three original clips of music for the three videos. Sonny has done an amazing job. All three pieces of music are unique, attempting to express musically the theme of the video. That said, all three pieces have a certain family resemblance, so that they all sound connected somehow, at a deeper level.

I have been working on these videos, off and on, with my kids for the past few weeks. We have created original videos for two of the three themes, Explore and Create. Here is the one on Explore (the video on Create can be seen here).

Though I liked what we had come up with for Explore, I also felt that the video was flawed. Essentially, everything happens so quickly that it is difficult to see, till the end, what the objects are that were picked up from the basket. This I felt, robbed some of the impact of the video. So we decided to shoot it again in a slightly different manner. Did it work? Find out for yourself by seeing 7 tools… one big job!. Another change was that this time my daughter was the performer!

What do you think?

(Other videos created by me, with our without my kids, can be seen here.)