Voices for National Service
Annual award ceremony for leaders in national service
The Friends of National Service Awards, held in Washington, D.C., is hosted annually by the Voices for National Service to recognize leaders who champion AmeriCorps and service programs. These awards honor public, private, and nonprofit leaders for promoting civic duty, often with bipartisan congressional support and participation.
Each award is preceded by a short video explaining the achievements of the honoree. I created 15-20 videos for the award ceremonies that took place in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. Each video involved getting a voiceover artist’s recording and setting it to photos and videos of the honoree, transition animations, finding appropriate music and sound mixing, and captioning.
The client wanted the videos to be simple and elegant, so I used only light motion graphics and movement to add interest. In the first three years, I used a parallax effect on one hero photo of the honoree, in which the foreground and background are separated and moved in 2.5D space to give the illusion of dimensionality. I also animated the closing bumper of their logo in 3D. In 2020, the client was concerned that many of their photos were low-resolution. As a solution, I suggested that we use a motion graphics environment and keep the photo smaller in the frame. This achieved the goal of making it nice to look at while keeping the pixelation at bay.
I learned so much about the wonderful honorees while making these videos and am glad to see bipartisan support for community-building efforts across America!