Everyone loves Highland Cows. Visit Scotland even have Highland Coo Day on Tuesday where they share social media posts about Highland Cows. Who doesn't love the big shaggy-haired beasts with their long, straggly fringes and giant horns? When I was asked by the Inveraray Marketing Group to create a promotional film for Inveraray as part of the Wild About Argyll project I really wanted to use the love for highland cows to help with the promotion.
In the high digest environment of social media, where most videos get consumed these days, you really need a propellant that is going to hook the audience and engage them with the content. There has got to be a real point of interest (Highland Cows - tick!), and point of difference (talking highland cows - tick!) in videos produced in the current environment.
There's something about highland cows that creates a sense of trust, so getting the highland cows of Inveraray to talk about the great attractions and activities on offer in Inveraray is going to help the audiance believe what they have to say, especially after they have been hooked by the fact the highland cows are talking and the fact that everyone loves highland cows. It's no longer good enough to have a happy smiley family having a lovely time if you want to promote a destination - and there are a lot of those videos out there! Thinking creatively and differently is what is required, with a strong propellent.
How did we get the cows to talk? Initially my idea was to film the cows chewing the cud and then try and synchronise the audio to the chewing of the cud, but that failed miserably. There was no way to synchronise the words to the movement of the cows mouths as they chewed the cud. Fortunately, I found a much better way of animating the cows mouths and synchronising the movement of the mouth to the spoken words in Adobe Aftereffects. The hard part was finding footage of the cows with their mouths closed and not moving, because I'd originally gone out to film them chewing the cud.
I would thoroughly recommend Inveraray as a holiday or day-trip destination. It is a beautiful wee village with many interesting attractions and entertaining activities on offer - there's even some talking highland cows if you can find them!
If, like the Inveraray Marketing Group, you want to have a creative and novel video made then please visit our website to find out more - www.morroccomedia.com - or get in touch to have a chat about your requirements - 01250872017 We look forward to hearing from you.