My Promotional Video Evaluation

For my promotional video unit I  produced a short, fourminute long how-to-use video including a student interview for our colleges photography studio. I chose to include several shots briefly showing students using the studio and included a step by step tutorial (led by volunteering students) on how to create  different lighting effects. My client for this promotional video was the Colleges media technichian, Kayleigh Kendall. I began by approaching Kayleigh in college to suggest the idea for the video. She was delighted with the idea and we conversed about many ideas on how we could portray the studio. After sharing ideas, we decided to document our conversations via email for evidence mof our plans. All emails to and from Kayleigh Kendall have been posted on my blog. Kayleigh decided she would come up with a brief,deciding exactly what I should have to include in the video and outlining how I would be representing the college appropriately. She gave me a list of model students for each course that made use of the studio, and suggested that I ask them to star in my video for the tutorial or interview.

 Then we got all of the talent release forms signed for all the participating students that would be in the video. On the day of shooting, I took two cameras and two tripods, as I would be filming the use of the cameras and lights.

The biggest problem that I encountered was  a health and safety risk of overheating. The photography studio is extremely small and as it is filled with electrical items it gets extremely warm. The windows are blacked out and cannot be oppened due to light pollution and in addition, there were 6 people in the room including myself. We had to take regular cool down breaks which prolonged the shooting time. Another issue was one of the tripod legs wasnt fixing in place, so we had toreplace it with another one; luckily we were already filming in college so could borrow one from the technicians shop. Another problem that we had was that the cameras that we took out from college both had low battery. To combat this problem, we had to alternate between us recording and charging the battery so that we had a good coverage throughout the day.
After we had written and prepped the interview, our interviewee only had a certain amount of time before she had to leave, causing us to only be able to film the interview twice. This resulted in us having a shot of her laughing as her friends were distracting her outside. I combatted this issue by using it to my advantage; I used the clip to make the interview less formal and appeal to its target audience more (age 16-19 students).

In terms of parts that went well, I think that the video itself came out well and is completed to a professional standard. The editing process was speedy and crisp and seemed to go very well to plan.  I decided to keep it short and kept the parts of the video that were really necessary and helpful. I do not believe that an in depth tutorial on different lighting techniques would attract new students to use it. I needed to creeate something that showed off and advertised the studio, as well as inclunding a simple how to use. Also, I think my communication skills with the client were good, as I conversed back and forth discussing the purpose of the video and gained feedback from the client. At the start of the video, music was a large concern for me as I was skeptical about getting a suitable track that would be free of copyright but we were quickly able to find a Soundcloud account that specialised in original copyright free music and after browsing the tracks I found  an upbeat but calming style track that suited the energy that I wanted to convey; I did not want the music to overpower the message of the video.

In terms of other improvements to our video, I think I could have  spent more time with the students planning the setup and script so the tutorial could have been more clear.  Also I could have used a track to move the camera around insteaad of walking with handheld to create more professional looking pans. During discussions of changes, Kayley asked me to make sure all of the fonts were the same and looked professional, as some of them were different and werent placed in the same position. I made sure I fixed this problem.
There was a lack of planning when it came to measuring the success of the video, due to it being unclear how we would see if we had succeeded in creating an effective video. Over time, it will become clear if the video does it's job, based on the amount of people that view the video on YouTube. However, I could benefit more from a quicker way of seeing. One way I could have done this would have been a questionnaire that I could have sent out to friends and college students, asking questions such as "Did this video increase your interest in the studio?".

Altogether I think that this unit was a success and I am very pleased with how everything came out, from the forms to the video, the editing and the feedback from our client.