Moonrise Cinemas Motion Graphics

I’ve got a lot of respect for the team at Moonrise Cinemas. I was raised in an entrepreneurial family— my dad and both of his brothers all started and lead successful businesses for decades— and so the hustle is in my blood. As I mentioned in a previous post, Moonrise Cinemas is an awesome story of adapting to the world post-COVID and is changing the face of Drive-In entertainment. At the time of writing this, they’ve already sold out their soft opening events! I was fortunate enough to continue to partner with Moonrise Cinemas to help develop content for their giant 52’ screen.

Part of their evening entertainment before their feature film, guests enjoy music videos as the backdrop to dining and games. Between the every couple music videos, they roll ads from their sponsored brands. I was charged with modifying the existing marketing materials from these companies and adding a unique call-to-action to help drive sales. Each ad received a unique amount of treatment and a motion graphic on the end with a QR code that points to Moonrises Menu. Check out these examples!

While I would have loved to be a part of the creative teams that developed the original ads, it was a great exercise in branding and graphic design for me. As you can see in the videos, I used various transition techniques from chroma keying "burn through” effects, to targeting color wipes, and masking sections of the original video during the transitions. All the editing for this series was done in Adobe After Effects and this was my first major project series utilizing this software.

Speaking of my experience learning After Effects, I think project-based learning is truly the way to learn creative skills. Watching lectures/videos about menu hierarchy or what different icons/buttons do is an incredibly slow way to getting started with a new software. Actively creating, refining, and trial-and-erroring on a project is how I learn best and I’m always happy to go back and study the fundamentals after the pressure of delivering a project has let up. I think of it a lot like studying music: learning your scales, music theory and technique are incredibly important, but get started learning songs is what keeps you motivated and contextualizes all those different fundamentals.

To learn more about Moonrise Cinemas, check out their website and to see the rest of the sponsored ads below!

I don’t earn anything from the links above— just making it easier to learn more about the tools I use and the people I work with!