I wish I had the time to put together a gag reel out of the discarded shots and takes that Caitie, Aleks and I filmed while producing our two-minute promo video for UC’s Rhetoric and Professional Writing degree.
It would’ve been great.
But alas, no “making of” documentary for me. Just this blog.
It would’ve been great.
But alas, no “making of” documentary for me. Just this blog.
Stage One: Telling a story
Even before the assignment was given to create a promo video, I was thinking of ideas. I’m a storyteller, and so I knew that our promo wouldn’t be some slideshow of facts and figures, but a narrative, a short story. Thankfully the group agreed, after we’d thrown a few different possible approaches on paper.
The story: a job interview. One hapless chap doesn’t have the RPW degree; the follow-up femme fatale knows her stuff with degree in hand. It’s on.
(oh yes, the cheese...oh, the cheese)
Even before the assignment was given to create a promo video, I was thinking of ideas. I’m a storyteller, and so I knew that our promo wouldn’t be some slideshow of facts and figures, but a narrative, a short story. Thankfully the group agreed, after we’d thrown a few different possible approaches on paper.
The story: a job interview. One hapless chap doesn’t have the RPW degree; the follow-up femme fatale knows her stuff with degree in hand. It’s on.
(oh yes, the cheese...oh, the cheese)
Stage Two: Storyboarding It was actually pretty fun learning to storyboard and make a shot list. Our practical use of these things was limited, but I think we fundamentally got the idea. By working together on the storyboards, we were able to get a unified vision for how the filming would go instead of having to figure it out (and hash it out) on set. Caitie wrote a solid script for the film, which I expanded with the text to be freeze framed at certain parts in the video. |
Stage Three: Filming This took very little time, in fact. Again, preparing beforehand with the script and storyboards helped a lot here. Our shot list was pretty simple. We filmed Caitie saying all her parts, Aleks saying all of hers, and me saying all of mine, and then we cut and spliced them together in the editing room. This simplified the camera setup since we didn’t have to film each scene sequentially. |
Stage Four: Editing
Editing took the most time. We used the Alienware computer lab in the Langsam Library, which gave us access to Adobe Premiere. After the tech expert showed us around the interface, we dug in, splicing our shots into order and slowly figuring out the best way to do freeze frames and transitions.
I volunteered to compose, play and record a short piano piece for the video’s background music. The simple march progression ended up varying at just the right points in the story to increase tension the way that I envisioned.
Here’s the video itself in its final format as we presented it in class. What would you do differently? Does it successfully promote the degree to an audience of incoming students?
Editing took the most time. We used the Alienware computer lab in the Langsam Library, which gave us access to Adobe Premiere. After the tech expert showed us around the interface, we dug in, splicing our shots into order and slowly figuring out the best way to do freeze frames and transitions.
I volunteered to compose, play and record a short piano piece for the video’s background music. The simple march progression ended up varying at just the right points in the story to increase tension the way that I envisioned.
Here’s the video itself in its final format as we presented it in class. What would you do differently? Does it successfully promote the degree to an audience of incoming students?