Short promo video for Ableton’s entry-level music software, Live Lite.
What is Ableton Live Lite?
Directed, edited, and produced by Ray Wassef
Voiceover performed and produced by Hannah Smith
Scripted by Norom Bou and Lani Bagley
Music by Jesse Abayomi
Photography by Zoe Noble
Featuring video excerpts produced by Ralf Kleinermanns and Michael Kirchberger
Additional video and photography by Michael Kirchberger and Ray Wassef
A “simple” update to an outdated video led to a sprawling discussion between various teams about how to “sell” something users already own.
Before
I was tasked with updating the video which greets potential new users of Ableton Live Lite. The previous video was several years old, and so didn’t reflect how the software had come to look and feel since then. But more importantly (to me), it didn’t seem to say much, or be aimed at any clear audience:
Process
To better understand for whom I was tailoring this video, and to use this as an opportunity to possibly rethink and ideally improve it, I initiated inter-team conversations between those responsible for Live Lite itself, the web experience where this would be found or activated, our larger communications team, and our own Product and Learning Movies team. My main learnings:
- unlike other promotional videos, this one isn’t enticing the viewer to buy something – they already own it, as it came bundled with the MIDI controller or keyboard they purchased
- the viewer is most likely a music-maker with more experience in analogue than electronic music creation
- so: the purpose of this video isn’t to sell the product, but to help introduce a new tool into an existing creative process
With this in mind, and with crucial input from the Live Lite team, in the new video I set out to focus less on the software, and more on humans making music:
Rather than focusing purely or immediately on visuals of the software itself, the aim instead was to begin with artists and their hands, then show their devices, and finally reveal the computer in their workspace, and how it connects – literally – to the physicality of making music:
Final Video
I effectively created a showreel, drawing on the vast library of Ableton videos about music making, and added new footage and original motion design work. The final video introduces the viewer to the world from which Live Lite comes, and various ways it can be incorporated into their own music-making: