How exactly did we get those photos in there? On today's How It's Made, Craig is showing us how we used post-production to go inside the legendary ball machine at Akron Children's Hospital for Bill Considine's 40th Anniversary Video.

Video Transcription: 

Hey guys, welcome to another edition of How It’s Made with PEG. I’m Craig, and today I’ll be showing you some of the photo effects we created for a really special project with Akron Children’s Hospital, celebrating Bill Considine’s 40th anniversary.

This video played during the event, and our concept centered around filming the hospital’s iconic ball machine and finding a creative way to weave in dozens of meaningful photos from over the years. What we came up with was something whimsical and charming that also gave us the flexibility to swap out images as needed. It wasn’t the most complicated process technically, but it was all about how we could use visual storytelling to support the concept.

Here’s a look at part of the intro:

“I would describe Bill Considine as a true leader.
Friend. Mentor. Ultra-positive.
That’s more than one word—in fact, it’s probably a hundred.
But it really is a testament to Bill and how you describe him.
You just can’t do it in one word.”

[Music continues briefly]

Now obviously, we didn’t actually put the photos into the ball machine’s glass and film it that way. You can see the photos fading in and animating within the video, and while it would’ve been possible to place them physically, we wanted more creative freedom. Filming them in the glass would’ve limited our flexibility, and we were really aiming for a look that felt more stylized and imaginative. So we chose a digital approach to help reinforce the tone we were after.

Some of the shots involved photoshopping images into stills we took of the glass, while others were built with video footage enhanced in After Effects. One of the big moments comes just before the title sequence. It starts with a time-lapse video of the ball machine. If I hide the picture layers, you can see the raw footage. This was a one- to two-minute time-lapse we shot using a wide-angle lens. We also used a motion-control slider to program a tilt move during the shot. Because of the wide lens and the tilt, we ended up with some interesting distortion—especially in the shape of the glass panel. What started as a rectangle shifted perspective throughout the move, which looked cool but made it a bit trickier to place photos inside.

To make it work, we first created a main composition in After Effects that acted like a canvas where we could lay out all the photos however we wanted. Then we tracked the camera movement from the time-lapse. That involved selecting small groups of pixels for After Effects to follow—basically telling the software, “watch these areas and create keyframes based on how they move.” This gave us position, scale, and rotation data that we could apply to the photo layers so they moved in sync with the video.

To match the shifting perspective of the glass, we used an effect called Corner Pin. Once applied, it let us manually place the four corners of each image and adjust them frame by frame to follow the distortions in the video. I used a red solid rectangle as a reference for the glass’s original shape, which helped line things up over time and made it easier to track the corners.

Another cool moment happens right before that scene, where a photo fades in and a ball rolls right in front of it. We didn’t need to track this shot since the camera was mostly static. We had a clean, 4K 120fps shot from our RED camera, which gave us plenty of room to animate. Starting with the base footage, we placed the photo in digitally and timed its animation to match the ball’s movement. Instead of tracking the ball or masking it out from the footage, we simply cut a hole in the photo layer. As the ball rolled by, the hole created the illusion that it was passing in front of the picture.

To add more realism, I pulled small highlights and reflections from the original video—like glass glare—and layered them over the photo. This helped blend the image into the environment. Then we brought everything into Premiere Pro, added a 21:9 crop for a cinematic look, and animated some final framing to simulate camera movement.

So that’s how we pulled it off. Again, it wasn’t about flashy effects—it was about crafting a unique and charming visual treatment that supported the story we were telling. Thanks for watching this edition of How It’s Made with PEG, and we’ll catch you in the next one.

[Music fades out]