Promotional
videos are an art in themselves; too fancy, or too cheesy or too expensive!
When promoting something, it is important to keep to the basics and eliminate
anything that is negative or unnecessary. Moreover, it is important to portray
the truth - without giving the audience a biased viewpoint.
Over the
early part of summer 2013, I took on the task of creating a short promotional
video for my old secondary school. On agreeing to this task, (as I hadn't made
anything of the sort beforehand, and therefore had to do a rather large amount
of research) I looked up how to make a promotional video.
Prior to filming, I talked with several of the
directors and staff to write down the basic structure for the video and this
then enabled me to create a basic storyboard.
As my resources were limited at the time to a
compact Ixus Canon Camera and Adobe Premier Elements (which the school kindly
bought me in return for creating the video), it was difficult to achieve the
desired look. The camera used has no manual lens and I
was therefore limited to either normal shots or macro shots (close ups), and
was not able to transfer from one to the other (tracking/pulling). I did
however use a tripod for the some of the interview footage, although mostly it
was handheld. The internal microphone on the camera was used as I did not
possess one at the time.
I had aproximatly 2 weeks to film, which mainly
consisted of interviewing the students and filming around the school. Specific
lessons were noted such as art, science and P.E. (physical education) to ensure
that a broad and varied amount of footage was shown. As always, it is important
to make sure that enough footage is taken. In total, I took about 45 minutes
worth of footage.
When it came to editing, I created a simple
structure for the video and kept to it once a rough edit was done, and then the
fine tuning and shortening of the length. Although the video lasts a total of
approximatly 4 minutes, it was difficult to fit all of the information
in.
When most of the editing had been completed, a
piece of music was recorded by Ashley Hall on the guitar - a cover of 'When I
survey the Wondrous Cross' - which was then added to the edit and the project
was adjusted as necessary.
Here is the link to the finished video: https://vimeo.com/79559596
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