Packaging trailer for Kurpatov's 36,000 students – has been on the homepage for 3 years
Birch – Ivan Sheleveys' production house, which has sold ₽1.5B worth of courses – came with the task: make a 60-second image trailer for Kurpatov's Intellect Academy. 36,000 students, 12 courses, 50,000 hours of lecture content. The trailer is still on the academy's homepage
The brief
Birch was making ads the old way: separate voice-over artist, editor, sound engineer, colorist – each contractor in their own boat. They needed a video that answers the question "what is Intellect Academy?" in 60 seconds and closes the "info-gypsy" objection.
The brief in one sentence: make it so that after watching the trailer, Kurpatov no longer has to prove anything – only invite
Why it was hard
Three non-trivial problems:
1. Kurpatov's voice vs the narrator's voice. Andrey Kurpatov has a distinctive, dense voice – the jump to a voice-over artist was audible from the first frame. Solution: matched frequencies through EQ and compression. The seam disappeared
2. The client wanted a "meme-series" – the format they had done for Khakamada. The Academy's themes (anxiety, psyche, thinking) didn't allow it. Rolled the idea back at the start, restructured into 4 blocks of 15 seconds with Kurpatov's live voice in the finale instead of a narrator
3. Mixed-quality source material: lecture footage, stock, public appearances – different color temperatures and sharpness. Full color grade brought everything to one pipeline. That same pipeline later became the standard for every Birch video
How it was made
March – June 2022. Full cycle end-to-end: concept, script, content collection, edit, coordination of narrator and sound engineer, color grade.
4 blocks of 15 seconds – strict structure, not a cut-down:
- – Attention hook: "Intellect Academy is not just lectures"
- – Product: 12 courses, tracks, who it's for
- – Social proof: numbers stacking up
- – Finale: Kurpatov's live voice – "Welcome"
The narrator was picked against a reference – "voice like Sherlock" – so it would stitch seamlessly with the founder's voice without a seam
Result
The trailer was shipped and has been on the homepage of Intellect Academy since 2022. Per Birch data: tens of thousands of views, the showcase itself brings in around ₽1M per month in the background – without active spend.
The color-grade pipeline and approach to sound established on this project became the standard for every Birch video that followed.
After close-out, the client immediately handed over the next project
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