TL;DR: my reel is cut across four programs and a pile of BlackMagic hardware, and the hardest part isn't any of the software — it's choosing which 8 seconds out of 25 projects earns a spot.
Motion graphics for advocacy is a genuinely different discipline from motion graphics for a brand. Nobody's selling a sneaker here. The job is making a 40-page attorney general filing feel exactly as urgent on-screen as it already is on paper, and that constraint shapes literally every tool choice downstream of it.
The stack, such as it is
My reel is cut across four programs, and none of the four is optional:
- Cinema 4D — 3D type, camera moves, the bigger transitional pieces that need to feel genuinely cinematic
- After Effects — everything compositional: overlays, lower-thirds, kinetic type, the colour pass
- Apple Motion — fast templated work, lower-third packs, live-broadcast graphics where I need something cut-ready in 20 minutes flat
- Final Cut and Premiere — offline and online edit, whichever the rest of the pipeline is already using that week
Hardware is the unglamorous but decisive part: BlackMagic, top to bottom. Decklink cards handle I/O, a Mini Recorder does clean capture off live broadcasts, an ATEM switcher runs real-time titling on press conference days. When a live show is rolling, "I'll render it later" is not a plan, it's a confession. Everything either has to be rendered already or renderable inline, full stop.[^1]
What actually earns a slot in the reel
The genuinely hard decision on any reel is which 8 seconds out of 25 projects makes the cut. My working rule: a reel has to prove range, not catalogue every project I've ever touched. Four categories earn a slot and nothing else does:
- Concert and live event — multi-cam broadcast feel, real audience energy, no fakery
- Broadcast journalism — title cards, data visualization, chyron work under actual newsroom pressure
- Commercial direction — a couple of tight cuts where I directed talent, not merely edited footage someone else shot
- Motion-native design — pure graphics work, where the type and the form are doing all the talking
That pacing gives whoever's watching — a producer, a client, a journalist — three separate reasons to keep watching past the first ten seconds, which is the only ten seconds most people actually give you.
Why advocacy motion is the harder version of this job
A soda ad has exactly one job: make you feel a feeling, then weld that feeling to the logo. An advocacy piece has two jobs running at once — make you feel a feeling, and leave you with enough verifiable information that you could go check the claim yourself afterward.
You cannot just lean on vibe here, the way a brand spot sometimes can. The type has to stay legible at speed. The data has to be cited on-screen, not implied. The pacing has to let a real statistic actually breathe before the next cut. That's the constraint that shaped my whole style, and — small mercy — it's also exactly what makes the commercial work feel easy by comparison.
[^1]: I learned this the hard way, on air, more than once. "Render later" has personally cost me actual broadcast seconds I do not get back.