Promo Video
"Dont Move To Amersham"
Reserch
As a group we decided to follow the don’t move to Amersham brief for multiple reasons, the voice over and basic scripts have already been created and have more support which makes it easier to plan and create since the resources are already available.
We looked briefly at this advert from Nike with Nick as an example of a great but simple advert, gets its message across as it needs to, this one also has a voice-over in the soft style as some of the others and our provided one. It’s obviously not a travel advert so it cant be compared like that but a good example of simple but effective advertising.
I looked at this visit Britain tourist advert created in 2011, inviting people to come to the uk. It has a similar voice-over style to what we are working with minus of course the fact we are telling them not to come. When I watched this I thought it was almost annoying it just kept repeating the same lines over and over and that just did not work for me.
I looked at this other British tourism video, I like this one a bit better it has no voice-over as such just kind of music and the odd speech, I liked how they integrated it with some movie scenes to spice it up a bit.
I did feel that it was maybe a bit long, it gets to the point where you are just watching a mixture of clips for a period of time, however, it does work.
I would say it would also work with a voice over but they would have to come up with something that would fill the time without being annoying like the one I looked at above.
Pre Production
The documents below contain the shooting script, the script, and notes based on the project we came up with in class,
The Storyboard: (Ellie)
Risk Assessment:
We all worked together on preproduction and research, these are the production roles on the day:
- Adam – Sound Engineer / Behind the scenes / Tech
- Ellie – Cinematographer
- Gareth – Director
- Harley – Editor / Second Unit
- Charlie – Sound Track / Assistant / Actor
- Jack – Actor / Props / Graphic Design
Kit List:
- Canon 700D (Adam)
- Canon E60 (Gareth)
- Tripod (Gareth)
- Mic (College) (Adam?)
- Mic Boom (college)
- Mic Cables XLR (Collge)
- External Recorder (College)
- SD Card x2
- Cleaning Equipment
- Jack
- Planning Papers
- Reflectors (College)
Location Scouting:
On the day before filming (Wednesday) a small team consisting of Charlie, Ellie, Gareth, and Jack will head into the high street to do location scouting before the main filming on Thursday. (Edit) Due to the college’s policy on the filming of campus due to covid we were forced to do it on the following Wednesday in our personal time.
Production
Please View Attached Post
Gareth later on also had his heart set in filming some shots in old Amersham in addition the high street due to the environment being a lot nicer and specific locations we wanted to capture so on a day after college he went out with Ellie and Matthew (One of our friends) to do these additional shots which expanded our options further when it came to the edit. These other shots where shot with a canon 60D.
All in all the filming was a great success and we got way more shots we actually needed for the project, in fact, we had 5x more than we actually used, however, it’s always best to have way more than you need.
I did just want to evaluate a couple while I get the chance, including this one shown in the image beside. Jack was laying on the floor and Gareth went from a high shot and attempted to create a down motion shot using Ellie as a secondary operator, now this did work. It was not the best shot ever and was slightly shaky, I don’t think we used this one but it could have been cleared up with premiere warp stabilizer. For this shot I would say we were limited on equipment, this shot would have normally have been carried out with a crane or gimbal stabilizer however we made do with what we had and it worked to an extent.
I also wanted to take a look at this shot, this is generaly one of our all-time favorites, this was shot on a college canon 30-50mm lens with my 700D Body it was such a nice shot due to the depth of field which was perfect, we spent a while playing with the settings but got this result. It also got a great focus and framing ignoring Jack’s head and focusing on charlie.
After a discussion with our tutors about this exact shot it was also mentioned that the backdrop was perfect for the time of year with the exact colour palet we would be looking for in a location.
Post Production
After we had collected all the footage over multiple days it was uploaded and sent to Harley who due to covid was isolating at home during this period, Harley had also been tasked with getting a couple of shots of chi chi the cat which he could do safely from his garden.
This was Harleys first edit, I really like the shots and voice-over work really well, the voice-over was already provided so that was one thing less we had to worry about doing.
We discussed this in the class where we were all able to watch it at once and then Gareth proposed our changes to Harley via voice call.
We changed to add a couple more shots, maybe at the start and end to make it a bit longer and also swap some of the footage around so it worked a little better.
The layout and initial edit though was great and gave us a good look into what the final edit would be like.
Final Product
This is the final edit of the project, It changed a bit we have moved around some scenes, sound effects and added some reviews further to the end. We spent a lot of time thinking about where to position and how to style the text having 3 of us in a voice channel for over an hour because we could not get it to look right.
We did eventually come to what we have now which I feel could have still been nicer but we were worn out and had no more ideas. I think it looks really good and fits the brief well but I will assess that fully in the full evaluation below.
Evaluation
To start this off, this has been a long-winded project but not at the same time, We have had the time we needed for it if anything it’s covid that’s been a pain again like normal currently. The main issue was that due to lockdown and college covid rules we were not able to go out and film the shots we actually needed for the project so once we had finished preproduction we were stuck until we could finally get out on our own time to do it, which was just over a week from deadline. With our editor stuck at home and people with poor wifi struggling it was a battle to get the files sent and received remotely which once again added days towards the deadline.
The other issue is Unit 11 is quite a big unit I have so many other projects do be getting on with at the same time which has almost been a bit neglected while we focused on doing this which is also due by the deadline. Most of this is the cause of covid and probably can’t really be helped but it was a major setback.
Putting time and organization aside, its been an interesting project. I half froze on the day of the filming but it was a good day and we got some great shots I also assessed previously between the multiple filming sessions. In fact some of the better shots we have produced to this date which is excellent and the final outcome of the video is really good and Im very happy with it. It could see it being used as a tourism board video if it was not designed to be funny. Talking about funny I feel we have met the brief well, what we have produced has the perfect contrast between the audio and video to which is exactly what we where looking for, its also really funny we have already shown it to a couple of people including tutors who said they found it amusing.