The Military Balance has been published by the International Institute of Strategic Studies since 1959. However, 2016 marked a significant step-change in the history of the publication when it became available in digital form for the first time. As the definitive open-source reference on military capabilities they had a large following and as such wanted to unveil the Military Balance + to a large audience – where better than the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, in front of the US Secretary of State, various world leaders and foreign ministers!
As they were promoting an online digital platform and the added benefits of subscribing to it, we decided a motion graphics video would be the best approach. The platform was still in its beta stages when we needed to produce the assets for the animation so a simplified and stylised representation of the technology allowed for the video to take on a new dimension. We set the motion in an abstract 3D data landscape, with three dimensional motion exploring 2D graphics. The challenge for the promo video is that it needed to address three core markets simultaneously – the corporate world, the academic world and naturally, the military world – who all use the same data for different applications. As a result, the video is longer than a traditional promo video, but as it is aimed at a captive and academic audience we elected that this wouldn’t affect its overall impact.
To maintain interest and to appeal to the markets in a more focused way, we also produced three shorter sister edits which honed in on the specific features that benefit specific sectors.
To view the full scale 5K production that was shown at the Manama Dialogue watch below
