Dove Oscars

Users created and submitted 30-second videos in a competition to have their video used as the Dove Cream Oil TV advert during the 2008 Oscars Night.

The timelines were very tight on this project, with just a few weeks to complete. I managed a team of developers in the USA and Shanghai to build both the website and the video editing tool. The entire project was built as a pure ActionScript 3.0 project in Flex Builder. The site integrated with .net services and a video transcoding service to enable user-generated content.

The completed web site allowed users to comment on user videos, vote, share, compile uploaded clips and upload their own final edits. The tool enabled users to compile video clips, photos, text, transitions and audio files to enter the competition without having to download any software.

Video editing tools can be quite confusing; one of our challenges was to make the software very intuitive so that any casual user could pick it up in a few minutes while allowing some flexibility to create a non trivial edit. This was achieved by putting all the tools clearly visible and managed through simple drag and drop operations. No more than one or two clicks were required to perform any given operation. Valid drop locations for any given tool were automatically highlighted to reduce any confusion about how the tools worked.

Screenshots

Dove Oscars Home Page

Video editing tool

Video editing tool detail