User Feedback

Here is some user feedback from the Facebook page for my media course. As well as the likes and positive comments one of my tutors said:

"I felt that the pace changed a bit much through the piece"

I personally felt that that pace of the video flowed well, and I allowed very small breaks or slower video just to add pauses, however overall I kept the video quick and flowing as it was only 40 seconds long. Potentially I can see issue with the social media part of the video, where I created fast movement around social media logos which them progressed into two slower pans over logos and a video channel. Personally I was happy with my end result and feel like this could only need tweaking slightly.

Other feedback from friends was positive, and overall with the positive feedback i received from the client I am happy with the final outcome of this project.

Another point raised was the use of Charlie Chaplin footage, of which i sourced legitimately for used from a stock video website that has a public domain section of video that is allowed for free use in projects. (Pond5 stock video)

Client Feedback

After completing my final video for VPoint TV I asked the Co-director Sally Reynolds for feedback on the final product.

"HI Dale,

This project has come on a long way since I last saw it.  I like the flow and pace of it.  It's a good length for a promo.  We discussed whether we should have a male or female VO, and did think that a male voice might sit better with the music.  But I think that there's a nice juxtaposition with the softer female voice and the harshness of the music - this works much better than I thought it was going to.

Regarding the storyline. I think the script is much punchier now and that the visuals reflect the message of the words.  I like the 'metaphorical' imagery that you have chosen to help get points over - for example, the 'crowd' of penguins, the two 'lost at sea' messaging shots, the Russian dolls to represent different sized client companies, Charlie Chaplin, the Go section of the Monopoly board etc. 

The only thing that I'm not sure about is the relevance is of the aerial shot of the canal, the combine harvester and the bloke walking along before we get into client logos.  At this point, the VO mentions 'we've made lots of compelling videos for companies'.  Of course I know that these are all shots from some of VPoint TV's compelling videos, but would somebody else?  

We're not pretending that the penguin and the sea shots are from our videos, so how does the audience know that we've now moved to showcasing some work.  Perhaps there could be some other element here to 'signpost' this.  As the video creator, what would you suggest to help do this?

Otherwise, I think it's great!  Really like the speeded up sequence of the green screen shoot!"

Overall I was very pleased how the project came together and I think I managed to create a professional video that perhaps with further revision the client would be happy to publish. This is particularly pleasing as my client is a video production company, so they have high expectations of a video that was designed to promote and illustrate what they do and represent them to anyone who watches the video.

I am really pleased with the music and the voice over working well, and I am pleased Sally herself has admitted although she didn't have confidence in it at first, the juxtaposition works well between the big drum music and a soft but slightly stern female VO.

The only concern Sally raised in her feedback was the start of the video transitions from the first three shots of stock footage into videos that VPoint TV had created, and how I could manage this transition better.

Firstly I would look at my design method of SCAMPER which sits well with changing an edit by Substituting and Adapting the way I have edited the promotional video and what clips I have used. 

In this case with the transition between stock footage to VPoint TV's video I would choose to use a graphical transition at the start of VPoint TV's own footage, with the logo and some kind of wipe or blur in transition to bring the logo in front of the footage actually created by VPoint TV, and then continuing as before.

Another option would be to include one of the behind the scenes videos before VPoint TV's content to show staff there working on a video and then that transitioning into the video they were creating at the time. I did this with a jib crane shot later in the video before the time lapse so I could try Put to other use video I have already editing simply by Substituting it else ware.

Stock Footage

To finalise my video I needed to add two videos to the start that I wouldn't be able to create myself. These were the first idea of standing out from the crowd voice over being overlayed on top of footage of penguins in a large crowd all looking the same. I feel this works well and is a strong image as penguins look very similar and also have a relation to large city crowds in suits.

The next was the very next clip of getting your message out there, for this i wanted a tropical beach with a bottle and sealed message inside. I felt this was a good analogy of having a message in a sea of videos online, and the sealed bottle also standing for not being able to get your message across to the target audience.

I have used other stock footage however this was public domain and free to use, this is why i left the paid footage till the end of the edit to make sure I definitely needed to purchase it for the production to be a success.

Video Creation: Do not pass go!

 

As part of my voice over towards the end of the video is the line "We go that extra mile for our clients". For a while I was puzzled how to represent this. The extra mile part of the voice over seemed obvious, and using some kind of car footage would be useful and almost to obvious not to 
use. However I wanted to represent the word 'Go' with something that was icon and recognisable as 'Go'!

At first I thought about using a traffic light turning green as it would link in with the car footage and also represent 'Go' well, however I thought that it would possibly be to similar to the car footage as I wanted the video clips in this video to vary as much as possible.

Finally after thinking about ideas for this I spotted the pile of games in the corner of my room and immediately realised using a monopoly board go square would be ideal. It says the word 'Go' and also is iconic which is ideal for a video where vidoe clips are montaged quickly and could easily be missed or not understood if they didn't have enough recognisable value.

Final 'Go' clip from my video

When i finally filmed this clip I decided to do a quick pan onto the game piece to add movement into the clip, this is because I felt a stationary image of the word 'Go' wouldn't lend itself well to the connotations of the word. This clip then led into a car related clip and I felt it worked well and resulting in one of the more iconic images in my client video.

Public Domain Video

When originally pitching the video idea to VPoint TV I mentioned how I would like to add some character to the video with some archive footage. Luckily some stock footage is available for free due to the amount of time it has been publicly available.

A stock video website called Pond5 recently launched a section of there site where you can download over 10,000 stock royalty free public domain clips. 
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/en_uk/blog/10000-film-clips-now-available-for-free

"about 5,000 of the film clips had been nearly impossible to access for most filmmakers. The Public Domain Project directly digitized the footage themselves and combined it with 5,000 more copyright-free clips, making an easy-to-use marketplace that unifies a huge portion of the country's historical resources."
This was useful as I wanted a couple of old clips in black and white to add character and portray some points I wanted to get across in the video."

These clip were:

Astronaut at sea

The astronaut was linked in with a message in a bottle video to demonstrate being stranded and struggling to communicate. This linked with the voice over of "sometimes its hard to stand out from the crowd and get your message across". This demonstrates being stranded trying to communicate, and symbolises being stranded within a virtual sea of videos online trying to get noticed in between all the other videos on youtube.

Charlie Chaplin

For this part of the video the voice over mentions keeping your viewer engaged. This is said whilst a video of Charlie Chaplin plays pulling funny faces to camera. Charlie Chaplin was an iconic figure and links to engaging with audiences at the time. The funny face also adds an element of comedy I think the viewer will remember once the video is finished, this makes the video stick in the viewers mind far after the video has finished playing.

Old cartoon

This is late on in the video where the voice over mentions "we go that extra mile", before this I used my owned recorded footage of a monopoly go square on a board, and the extra mile is represented by this cartoon car driving into the distance. I think this works better than a simple video of traffic as it has more personality and is more likely to be remembered that video of traffic that most viewers see everyday.

Using these older videos to illustrate points at three different parts of the video help break up any monotony of similar clips and add character to the promotional video. This is something I haven't see used in other promotional videos as most of my research indicates companies simply choose a song and layover their best clips without voice over or quirky archive footage.

Video Creation: Graphics

One part of the video talks about graphics and social media, to demonstrate this I have created graphics that show social media icons and a youtube channel. I created these images first in photoshop by gathering social media logos and arranging them into on image:

I selected these social media websites based on how I use social media and how my friends use social media. Even if VPoint TV aren't currently using Vine or Snapchat to distribute video I think with an ever changing landscape of social media websites it's important to show what is current and what is being used, as VPoint TV could likely use them in the future. I created this document at 2560x1440p to allow me to crop in and animate in after effects without losing resolution for a 1080p video file.

Originally I created only two videos for this sequences, a slanted slow movement on the icons, and a slow movement on a youtube video channel seen below. In after effects I used the camera tool, made my image a 3D layer and panned the camera around quickly to generate movement and interest so the image isn't too static. I later refined this to make the music

Initial social media representations

After some feedback from my client they felt the music was too fast paced for this slow movement and suggested more movement and close ups for this section. To do this i revisited the camera tool and after effects and played with fast zoom and pans, along with selective focus to help draw the viewers eyes to certain icons:

Close up frame grab using selective camera focus on After Effects

On this close up I focused on the facebook like image, this is because it is easily recognisable and facebook is becoming more and more relevant in the online video space, so I felt including them in this was important to stay current with younger generations. This links back to my research with Emma Hubbard a social media marketer who talked about being up to date with current trends.

Here I highlight Vine and Instragram, two very popular video sharing platforms, also around this is Periscope a very new live video streaming platform, but also Google one of the most recognisable companies on the web and owners of the largest video sharing site YouTube. Overall I feel after making this portion more faced paced it will help keep the video moving overall, I think the icons work well as people can recognise them immediately which helps to keep their screen on time short and to the point. 

If I were to do anything differently I would have collated these icons in after effects and that would have allowed greater control over animation of each individual logo, however that would have been too time consuming for the project and is something I would have done with more time.

Video Creation: Russian Dolls

In this segment I of the video I wanted to communicate the line "whether you're large or small" visually on screen for large or small businesses. My original idea in my storyboard was to have two separate objects, one that is usually small and one that's usually large.

After talking through my story board with Ian of VPoint TV he raised the idea of instead using identical objects with only different sizes being the stand out difference. After thinking through ideas like a car and a toy car, and other miniature versions of normal objects I came up with the idea to use a Russian doll. I like this idea especially as there were several different sizes between the largest and smallest Russian doll, which i felt communicated both large, small and businesses in between those sizes. It also allowed me to play with stop motion animation for this part of the video.

close up of largest Russian doll

After borrowing a Russian doll from a friend of mine I created a clean white background using two pieces of white card, then I lit these with soft boxes to prevent reflections as best as possible as the Russian dolls had a slightly glossy surface.

Here are a couple of shots of the key wide shot of the dolls, I animated these by first placing them all in a row, recording a few seconds of footage and then taking one away. I repeated this process which then allowed me to animated each one appearing. To achieve this I simple put the videos together in the timeline in reverse order so they appeared rather than disappeared. 

Close up of small Doll

I then ended with a close up of the smallest Russian doll when the line ends with "or small" to point out even small companies can get in contact in a fun and visual way. I decided to leave the second smallest doll in the frame as it gave some perspective to the size differences.

Overall I think this idea worked well, both to illustrate large or small companies, but also any size in between, the animation was simple but effective and when cut to the music will help move the video along quickly without staying on the point too long.

Video Creation: Phone connected

For the majority of the footage in the promotional video I will be using either stock footage, but mostly archive footage from VPoint TV. However there are some elements in the video I have created and I wanted to go through the process of those clips and why they're included. For this post I will be talking about a shot in the video with a mobile phone I created more than one element for.

Final shot of close up of phone

This part of the video is for when the script mentions connecting with your audience. For this i wanted an easily recognisable item that connects, so my first thought was using a mobile phone. To make this stand out further i created a graphic for the phone with a wifi logo and the word connected. I also created a fake top bar with the company name in it as a small way of linking back to VPoint TV.

Original graphic i created

I created this graphic using photoshop and simply transferred it too my phone and recorded the footage as if this was the phones normal screen. Challenges came when recording a phone screen as exposing for the screen meant the surrounding areas were too dark. This can be seen here in the original shot I created that lacked brightness and colour of the new shot.

Initial shot of phone that i later reshot

To combat this I used two large soft box lights to give an even but bright lighting over the white backdrop and the hand in the shot. Eventually after adjusting the lighting and the phone screens brightness I managed to create the shot for the final video. As you can see in the original video the screen is slightly over exposed and the rest of the shot is under exposed. I'm please that I revisited this shot to make it better. I feel this lends well to the scamper method as I substituted this element of the video with a better shot.

Music

Music is a key part of video, it can really set the tone/mood of a video and change the context of the content entirely. Initially for this video I wanted to use something different but not too different that the context of the promotional element of the video would be lost.

One of the songs I had in mind was a dramatic drum song called 'Run Boy Run' - WoodKid. This kind of music would make the video fast paced and make it enjoyable to cut to the beat with.

The beating drums with the dramatic orchestra I think would work really well in a video with various different video clips.

After searching through various song on audiojungle I found this song called Epic Drums:

http://audiojungle.net/item/epic-drums/3260170

This song is very similar to what I imagined the video to be like with the Run Boy Run song and it is certainly something I feel is unique and stands out from other promotion/showreel videos that the majority of seem to use electronic music.

The epic drums in this case are really pumped up and I think would get the audience excited, however I will need to try this with Sallys voice over as a female voice maybe be difficult to hear over a large track such as this one.

Voice over

The voice over for my client project was initially I thought I good idea to be male to fit with the potential dramatic music, and also be one of the staff members as I feel whenever working with people in businesses on camera if they talk about what they know in their field of expertise they usually come across quite confident on video.

To test the voice over I recorded a VO myself to test the edit with. This is a common practice in video as it allows the use of editing to a timed piece of script without needing to pay for a final version to a voice over artist and then find changes need to be made to the script and the voice over need re recording.

Although I think my male voice worked, I would be better if someone from VPoint TV with a better VO voice were to do the VO. Sally the co-director often takes on the role of VO artist, so for this project it would be interesting to try her female voice out with the music choices I've been looking at.

Script length and mistakes

When i started the process of script writing at first i found it difficult as I prefer working with footage in a documentary fashion of creating a story from what has been captured. I think the mistake i made at the start for this video was not appreciated how short it needed to be, and because of the idea of a script I felt like i needed to write more than was necessary for this project.

Ultimately this experience has helped me work on my script writing, and also appreciate revisiting and revising work, much like the SCAMPER methodology of revising, removing the unnecessary, and adapting what is there.

Script Development

After having several meetings with the team at VPoint TV about the promotional video I decided to finalise a script and reduce down the number of words within it. I removed any unnecessary wordings and reduced the time down to around 40 seconds. Originally I had proposed a video of 60-90 seconds, however I after discussing this with the team we decided if the video could be as short as possible then that would be ideal as a promotional video needed to be short and sweet and leave the viewer wanting more.

Script Draft 1, longer 60 second+ video with ideas of potential visuals

Finalised script for wording, with ideas for key visuals included

At this point I still needed to think about the various clips that were going into making this video. I decided to outline the key elements on the script, and then left the part in between down to working with the archive footage that I had from VPoint TV and then reviewing the edit with my client to think about different ideas for footage that would work with the voice over in parts that were less obvious about what should be on screen.

This process has taught me that I need to constantly revise and get feedback when scripting as my initial ideas were too broad and the voice over had too many unnecessary words that only made the video longer than it needed to be and didn't add anything to the message.

Story Board Feedback

I spoke to Ian at VPoint TV about the initial storyboard ideas and how i could progress them further to work on the project. Here is the video where I discussed this. Having this discussion really helped further my ideas and begin prototyping some ideas with the team at VPoint TV.

The storyboard we discussed:

Marketing Online

Carrying on from my last post about marketing research I read an interesting article from the Guardian about the future of video and why it is the future of content marketing:

http://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2014/jan/14/video-content-marketing-media-online

Some interesting stats from that article were that youtube receives more than one billion unique visitors each month, which is proof about why it is important to have current up to date content that represents your business on youtube. This was why i wanted to create a new promotional video for VPoint TV.

"Nielsen claims 64% of marketers expect video to dominate their strategies in the near future. It's not difficult to see why."

This quote especially outlines why it is important for VPoint TV to really target businesses that will be looking to create videos to help market their company. 

"By 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic, according to Cisco. Video-on-demand traffic alone will have almost trebled."

VPoint TV currently specialise in VOD (video on demand) and online video to help promote a business or a product. This will be a key message to get across in a video, especially as the video itself will be more than likely viewed on either the VPoint TV website or the VPoint TV youtube channel.

Marketing Secondary Research

After discussing social media and marketing in my primary research I decided to further research into the ways video is used within market and social media. A useful resource I found was this entry of 6 examples of social marketing with short video.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/use-short-video-for-social-marketing/

The key points in this article were:

• Show how to do something
• Highlight your skills
• Showcase an event
• Reveal a product
• Go behind the scenes
• Use what you have

Although these ideas are primarily ways for businesses to use social marketing with video this article help provide a good insight into how video is consumed online for promotional purposes.

The whole goal of my clients video is to highlight their skills, show how they do something and also go behind the scenes. These three points from the list apply well to the video I am created for my client, and I think connecting with an audience online using the shortest video possible will be a tough but ultimately rewarding task.

Marketing Primary Research

To investigate my target audience further I did some primary research by asking questions to Emma Hubbard, she is a staff member in charge of social media marketing at Gymophobics. She is someone VPoint TV would likely need to communicate well with to be hired for video production jobs.

Firstly I asked her what would a company need to do for you to want to use them over other video companies:

"It's important that as a client they are made to feel unique. They won't want to see something that is done all the time. A lot of companies are looking for a way to connect with their audiences, by keeping up to date with new trends, which should be reflected in the video." - Emma Hubbard

This is an important part of my initial ideas, I wanted to get across that VPoint TV create unique videos designed to make an impact. It's interesting she highlighted the fact of keeping up to date with new trends. I think with a video company as old as VPoint TV it has changed the style of video making with the times and it's important to show that they create modern looking video productions as well as more tradition video too.


"Older generations might struggle to create innovative ways to attract new customers, so that is what they would be looking for from you." - Emma Hubbard

It's interesting that Emma assumes older generations may create old style videos, and may be important to reflect that even though a company is old the staff within that company can be quite young as well as old and change from time to time. Also the current staff could easily move with the times like i feel the staff at VPoint TV do so it may be important to get that across.

"They want to know how much confidence they can put in you to get a good result, so your skills need to be obvious from the start. Clients want a quick turn around in their investments so they have to feel happy that they are getting that." - Emma Hubbard

I think by showing the range of videos that VPoint TV have created as best I can within a promotional video will be useful to help show marketing people like Emma that they produce good consistent videos within a small time frame. I want to communicate the skills of the staff but without saying it within the video, I think it can be easy to ignore if the video says "we're great at video and editing", instead I would rather show previous videos that show the skill is clearly there from the staff.

"It's important to stand out from the crowd, you equally have to stand out from other competitors to show that you have strong skills in that industry." - Emma Hubbard

This is ultimately the goal of created a promotional video, to stand out from other competitors and get hired on video jobs. I feel like creating something unique that speaks well to people will both be able to get VPoint TV's message across, but also prove that message itself by having produced a video that does that very thing, proof is in the pudding so to speak.

I'm glad I took the time to talk to Emma about what she personally looks for from a video production company, this helps back up my ideas for the video to create soemthign that communicate well, in a short space of time and engages the viewer.

Developing Ideas

To further the discussion I had with my client we discussed further ideas to the initial ideas of what the video needed to contain and deliver. This footage was recorded by myself as part of my research, I felt having the discussions on video would make it easy to reference back to, and would provide better information than writing notes.

Researching for marketing

The video I am creating will be aimed towards either business owners or more than likely marketing people or departments within a business. I have decided to get in contact with a marketing person to talk about what it is they would like to see from a business advertising video services. I will blog about my findings from them and include their input into my final design.

From my meeting with VPoint TV I decided that it would be important to show not only the fact that VPoint TV create videos but also work with marketing departments to decide how to deliver these videos whether that be traditional advertising or through platforms like social media.

I think this is an important message to get across as many companies may worry about what to do with a video once it has been created and how to get the best to help return on investment for their business.

Client Interview

After having an initial meeting with the team at VPoint TV I decided to meet with Ian the director of VPoint TV and narrow down the exact reasons he wanted a promotional video and what he wanted it to achieve.

This was to give me a better understanding of what I needed to make for my client, and to give me something to reference back to when creating the promotional video to make sure I'm creating what is briefed. I have edited this interview down to a six minute (ish) video.

Initial Idea Development

To further my idea to a point where I could begin writing a video treatment and then script the promotional video i was making for VPoint TV, I decided to have a meeting with the team at VPoint TV to get their input on the ideas I had.

The meeting lasted about an hour and from the ideas I put forward we helped to generate further ideas and condense down the message of the video and what the format for the video was going to be, as well as where the video would be delivered.

From the notes I took in this meeting I came out with these points:

Core Message of the video?
What is it VPoint TV can do for you (the client) to help your business/brand.
Who is the target audience?
Either business owners or marketing people within a business
What’s the desired outcome?
To create videos that engage with people and help make a brand relatable
How long will the video be?
A single piece of video of 60-90 seconds
Where is the video intended for?
The VPoint TV website and/or pitches to new businesses/clients

What’s the concept?
A video made from multiple sources (VPoint TV Videos, new material, stock images/video, timelapse, graphics, animation) that creates a fast paced video that explains to brands what VPoint TV can do for them, with the use of voice over and using the multiple sources as visual aids. The visual footage can also help convey images of VPoint TV without the need for the voice over to say it e.g. Technical information showing the use of latest technology, or behind the scenes fun. Other elements such as timelapses with staff to show they're hard working, or interactions with their clients to show they are enjoyable to work with.

Key points:

• Video contains new branding (logo or shot of logo somewhere maybe end with logo animated)
• New colours for branding used for graphics, graphics also an opportunity to show we can do graphics
• Voice over saying what we can do for businesses like yours to show what it is your business is about and why customers want to use your business (the viewer)
• A music track used that is original or quirky rather than common electronic showreel music that is common amongst video showreels
• Use of archive footage from VPoint to help communicate the message if possible
• Use of stock footage or images to help communicate what the voice over says

User Centered Design

When i first looked into user centered design I think I missed some key points and failed to fully understand the differences of it in comparison to SCAMPER. To help with this I did some research on UCD.

http://www.webcredible.com/blog-reports/web-usability/user-centered-design.shtml

"User-centered design (UCD) is a project approach that puts the intended users of a site at the centre of its design and development. It does this by talking directly to the user at key points in the project to make sure the site will deliver upon their requirements."

This is something I will need to do with my project that will likely be aimed at businesses looking to create video content for the purpose of marketing. Ideally I would like to consult with someone within marketing to get their opinion on video and it's role withing marketing online.

"ISO 13407 outlines four essential activities in a user-centered design project:

• Requirements gathering - Understanding and specifying the context of use
• Requirements specification - Specifying the user and organisational requirements
• Design - Producing designs and prototypes
• Evaluation - Carrying out user-based assessment of the site"

Looking at these descriptions on what is required for UCD, it is clear to me that creating prototypes may be key, and getting feedback from my client but also from other people can only help form an opinion on the final product.

I think it will be important to specify the organisations requirements, which for this project will more than likely be to create online video that helps market a company or a product and give them an identity online through the medium of video.

SCAMPER

In this blog I wanted to talk about the SCAMPER design method. Scamper is probably my favored design method with User Centered Design also being a preferred method of mine.

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_02.htm

"You use the tool by asking questions about existing products, using each of the seven prompts above. 

These questions help you come up with creative ideas for developing new products, 

and for improving current ones."

For me I think this is a very natural design process as it applies itself to video editing very well. I think when you edit video it is a constant rethinking process of if this working, do I need to move clips around, do I need to adapt or change them or simply remove them.

Ultimately editing is a removal process, I often think of editing large pieces of video with lots of clips as removing 95% of the bad or not so good footage, just to get to that important 5% that is really key to creating the video.

I think it is easy to become hung up on potential videos that may or may not work with the edit, and it’s simply better to make a decision, leave it and then revisit it applying many of the points of SCAMPER and refining down an idea until it is the best it can be.

This will be important for my client project because I will need to refine down the video to be short but get all of the messages required across in the video.