Designer Nick Gilkes chats about making his own movie trailer…

If you look around our website, you will see that CWA is a full-service agency. We support our clients with events (in-person and virtual), media and communications, digital solutions and video production.

With this specific feature, or series if you will, we’re shining a light on those unsung heroes in the design studio. The talented folk behind the social imagery, the eye-catching posters, the slide decks at events and everything in-between… but this feature is a little different.

CWA’s Creative Director, Martin Lovegrove, regularly set his team of designers a task to test themselves and improve their expertise and skill. This time it was about using After Effects. So, the task you ask? Make a movie trailer of course!

Have a read of an interview with the filmmaker himself, Nick Gilkes…

THE INTERVIEW:

What was the main purpose of creating the internal project?
NG:

The main purpose for the doing the internal project was to showcase and to explore what different things we could use AfterEffects for and to test our video editing and animation skills for event stings & social videos etc. It was also a training exercise as not all of us could use the software (including myself), so I wanted to develop my skills.

Where did your idea come from?
NG:

I have always been into retro kinda things and obviously… you have to love a film from the 80s! I have often said that my commute into work is like time travel… sometimes you forget parts of the journey.

This lent itself perfectly to the film Back to the Future. Also tied in nicely my passion for a pun.

What is your favourite part of it and why?
NG:

I like the Saul Bass look to it of course, and I enjoyed doing the illustrations as everything is created from scratch by me – there isn’t one bit of stock or videoed footage. The electricity parts in particular are quite fun to create.

Finally, what did you learn from doing it?
NG:

I have learnt a new piece of software and discipline in animation. I have also benefitted from this task being a really creative project where I had free rein to whatever I wanted to produced.

Treat yourselves to the full movie trailer below…