Motion graphics on a deadline: what to cut first
When the timeline gets short, some cuts cost you nothing and some cost you the whole point. A rough order of operations.
Cut the number of animated elements before you cut the polish
When a motion piece is running late, the reflex is to lower the quality of everything. That is the wrong cut. A piece with twelve animated elements done adequately looks cheap; the same piece with four elements done properly looks deliberate. Reducing what moves costs less time than reducing how well it moves, and the result is better.
Start by listing every element that animates and asking what each one is for. Anything that moves because movement was available, rather than because it is carrying meaning, is the first thing out — and nobody watching will notice its absence.
Keep the first five seconds and the end card
Two parts of a motion piece do disproportionate work. The opening earns the next twenty seconds, and the end card carries whatever the viewer is meant to do. If time is short, those two get the attention and the middle gets simplified.
The middle simplifies well because it is usually explanatory. A transition that was going to be a bespoke build becomes a clean cut. A three-stage reveal becomes a single state. The information survives intact; only the choreography around it gets thinner, and that is the right thing to lose.
Protect the brand rules, not the storyboard
Deadlines tempt people to drop the brand check because it feels like an extra step at the end. It is the one step that should not move. A piece that ships fast and wrong in the type, the colors or the logo lockup costs more to fix than the time it saved, and it goes out with your name on it.
This is where working inside an existing brand system pays for itself: the type, the palette and the lower-third treatments are already decided, so speed comes from not re-deciding them. And because the studio runs two shifts about nine hours apart, a piece can move between them overnight rather than waiting for one person to log back on — which is usually where a day gets found.
Full-time teams in Chile and India, about nine hours apart. Chile covers your working day; India picks the file up as you sign off, so weekday work does not wait overnight.
Tier 3 is the top of our creative scale — and the only tier we run. The thinking behind this article is the same thinking behind every brief we take on.