God Bless Bitcoin Movie

In the early summer of 2022, Ambient Press was approached by New Roots Films to create 3D animations accompanying interviews in a documentary about the growing influence of Bitcoin in our modern world. What started off as a single 60 second animated clip quickly grew into the largest scale project that our team has tackled so far. By the start of 2024, our team had imagined, story-boarded, and animated over 16 minutes of 3D animated content. Characters, shapes, movement and abstract forms all set in motion to help communicate ideas ranging from the concrete to the cryptic. Below, you can watch a brief cut-down of some of our favorite moments from our work on the film. If you would like to see more, the full documentary can be found [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4xuRZYLpgk ]

A little about the project.

Eighteen months is a long time to work on a single project - the longest we have undertaken so far. During this time, we gained an intimate knowledge of the project and communication style allowing us to produce the animations rapidly and with a cohesive style. From the first animation that we produced, our team defined a style that was humorous, clear, and fun to watch. This animation style helped to add wit and joy to a topic that was both serious and technical. Working with the team at New Roots Films was a perfect opportunity to work with a client that allowed us creative freedom and trusted our input. The end product is a collection of animations that we are proud of and an experience working with longer format animations.

The process.

Each animation section was completed separately, usually over the course of a few weeks to a month. Our team would receive the script and a video clip of the interviewee. Our job from there was to brainstorm how best to represent what was being said in a fun and engaging visual form. It was a continuous balancing act between being literal enough to communicate the ideas clearly and abstract enough to keep the visuals novel and engaging. During this process of brainstorming, we went through multiple rounds of revision internally with the storyboards before cutting together an animatic with all of drawn images edited to fit the clip.

The next stage, as with all of our projects was to design, model, texture, and light the key frames from each scene. With these key images set alongside the animatic, we had a clear view of what the pacing, content, and visual continuity of the final product would be. Once we had full approval, we moved on to animate, simulate, and composite each scene, methodically bringing each scene to life. Below, you can see the different stages each scene went through - from script, to storyboard, key artwork, and finally, completed animation.

In the example below, you can see the base script that we worked from. After multiple rounds of brainstorming, we landed on showing the Bitcoin network as a variation on a Whack-A-Mole game with each hole allowing a generator to pop up and produce Bitcoins. This was a unique way to show the futility of trying to shut down a decentralized system - as soon as you attack one node, others pop up somewhere else in the world. We took this same approach to all of the hundreds of shots we worked on. Aiming to show the idea clearly, in a novel way, and keeping everything fun at the same time.

During the development of each scene, we had constant revisions internally, figuring out where we needed more or less detail to add context and where we had the liberty to add little easter eggs. From the the time that we begin building the first 3D layouts, we keep the ideation alive until the lighting begins. We use draw overs of early scene builds to continually narrow down where and how we can best communicate the information at hand. Below, we show a few examples of these early scenes and the additions, revisions, and ideas that went in to making them complete.

Over the course of this project which spanned almost a year and a half, we completed 16 minutes of continuous 3D animation. We directed a style that was fun, engaging, and memorable. We strive to find clients that respect our creative decision making and work alongside us to create something novel that we can all be proud of. This project managed to tick all of our boxes, and we were honored to be brought on board and trusted so completely with this production. If you would like to watch the film in its entirety, you can find it here [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4xuRZYLpgk ]

Selected stills and clips.

Client : New Roots Films

Creative Direction : Jake Wegesin

Production Company : Ambient Press