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.