Jesse Rosten

Sometimes I think the creative process is akin to Frodo’s epic journey to return his bling to Mt. Doom. Frodo had the destination in mind, but no idea how to get there. The way was fraught with danger, despair, self-doubt, successes, failures, and giant hobbit-eating spiders (aka clients).

Just like Frodo, finding the path to your creative destination requires discovery and exploration. You’ll probably go down a lot of rabbit trails and dead ends before arriving. The more practice you have the better your sense of direction and intuition (don’t follow the lights), but there’s always an element of unknown when creating something new. The creative process is just that, a process.

This process of discovery is always evident when I’m in the editing stage of a project (NerdAlert: I use Final Cut Pro). For me, editing looks like this: I have a hunch, I try it then review. If it works, keep going. If it doesn’t work? Well, I back track and go a different direction. Slowly a path begins to emerge and by the end of the process my work space is littered with unsed chunks of ideas, directions, arcs, moments, colors, fonts, and empty cherry Diet Pepsi bottles.

OK, finally to my point. The video above is one of these leftover bits from the last project. I had a hunch, mocked it up in After Effects, then felt it was too flashy for the subject matter. So rather than let the clip sit unused and dejected on my hard drive, I’m going to set it free in hopes that you might be able to use it.

Unfortunately, it’s not exactly drag and drop project file. You’ll need After Effects CS5 and plugins Optical Flares and Trapcode Particular. If you have all of those you’re good to go. Change out the text. Put a video clip on the stage. Maybe add a crowd with waving hands. Feel free to tweak and modify however you see fit.

Stay tuned to this space. I’m rather enjoying giving stuff away. Hope to have more goodies for you in the near future.