Promo videos

S

star striker

Member
Hello

Me and a friend of mine made a promotional video a little while ago for the Pirongia Forest Park Lodge in New Zealand, i was just hoping to get some feedback and any tips and tricks anyone might have that we could use for next time. they are a volunteer organisation so we did it for free.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl5xXtnryj8

thanks
 
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With what did you shoot this?

First off, I'll say it's a top-notch effort on no budget. And I ask what camera you used because it looks like a consumer camera, which would severely handicap you but also be more understandable.


Few things pop off the screen at me:

Audio: Right away, the voice over was taking me out of the experience. I am not the best and brightest when it comes to audio, so I'll let others speak in more detail, but I would recommend getting a mic that doesn't pop when the voice actor uses the letter 'P.' A lav or a decent shotgun might have worked better.

Also, I would drop the foley from :57 - 1:05. The music bottoms out and brings too much of a surreal atmosphere when you switch to archival images. It creates an effect I don't think you're going for (kinda like Thomas the Train). Keep the music throughout; it's pretty good.

When narrating something like this, it is always important to transition to your video clips or stills with your audio cues. From 2:12-2:30 especially, the voice actor lists the various attractions at this lodge and provide good space between them in your audio, but the clips do not transition when your actor transitions to the next item on the list. This can get confusing for the viewer. E.g. we were still staring at the kiwi while you starting talking about the museum. (It appears you might not have had a shot for the museum/aquatic center, and that can be a difficult challenge to best, so that's when you have to get creative. A shot of someone playing in the lake might have sold us because it's "water," you see?)

Cinematography: Again, I'm not expert, and I'm sure Perrone will give you ten items of constructive criticism, but a few things still stuck out like a sore thumb to me. For one, many of your landscape pans (which are actually pretty smooth, nice job) are way overexposed. In many, the sky is white hot and boring. There was one shot earlier in the video that was of a view overlooking a valley (I think) from a cabin, but the only thing that was visible was the deck three feet in front of the camera and the tree off to the right. I would have recommended stopping the lens down considerably in that shot; we don't care about the tree or the deck, and we will still see enough of them to understand our perspective, but the view is really what should enamor me.

A few indoor shots are blown out by the sun coming through windows. There are others on these boards with experience with covering and dimming windows, but I would have recommended shooting at a different time of day, if possible, setting up your camera somewhere else in that room where the windows don't dominate the shot, stopping down the lens 1 or 2 stops, or not using the shot in your final cut at all.

The shot with the camera looking directly up while in the trees is also overexposed and just not that good to begin with. I would advise removing it from your cut, or rather, keeping shots like that out of your future cuts. The light beaming through the canopy is burning out the edges of the leaves, and since this is shot on not-too-high of a resolution, all of the pixels around the leaves turn into big, white blocks. It's called blowing out your highlights, and it basically destroys information in that section of your footage. Once again, I would advise stopping down your lens.

In up-canopy (yea, I made up a word) shots like that, I never really care about the trees, but the interplay between the rays of sunlight and the forms of the leaves is always cool to look at, so just think about what the subject of your shot really is: Is it the trees or the sun?

There are a lot of overexposed shots, so you really could have brought up the production value of this video by stopping the lens down and/or using a Neutral Density filter.


I think the video is a touch too long, but I don't know if you were asked to keep it a certain length or something. I will say that shorter is almost always better, and the better the content, the more people will be interested in working with your client, whose name is at stake here.

Overall I think it conveys its message well, and since you did it on a zero budget, more or less, it does look pretty good.

Also, no one says you can't do more promos for them in the future, yea? Especially if their business picked up after you did their promo :)


Addendum:

Shots I really liked and are well-exposed and framed:

0:23 - Great "establishing shot" with good exposure. It gives us something for our eyes to follow casually, too - the bikers.
1:15 - It's not uber-super-duper-smooth, but I just think it's a very appealing shot. More of those water/under-the-canopy shots would have really added to this video.
1:55 - Similarly shot, it's very nature-happy, which most people will go for and makes what you're offering (this lodge) more enticing. Just some camera shake in there :(

Your stills are mostly good, but the massive aspect ratio difference between them and the motion picture is distracting with no cute effect, like Polaroid photographs dropping one on top of another. Always keep aspect ratio in consideration when using stills with video. On my 7D (18 megapixel), if I plan to use pictures in my final cut, I frame the subject in the middle, focus, and then take the picture. In post, I just crop out the section I need, since even full HD (1920x1080) is merely 1/9th of the resolution of the stills.

You could also have benefited from a few dissolves between your stills and video, namely at 2:31.
 
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great thanks for all your feedback
i hear what your saying with alot of it

in terms of the voice over we really rushed that cause we only had one opportunity to do it, we recorded it using the camera's internal mic and the battery only had 15 minutes left so it was really quick.

and some of those shakey camera shots were due to me not having my usual tripod and having to use one which wasnt really suitable for that terrrain.

the stills used in the video wernt mine cause i dont have a still camera but im thinking about saving for a dslr at some point for photos and obviously video

the over exposed shots are the things that really irk me though, after having a few months to look back on it i do cringe a little, most of it i can handle but that panning horizon shot near the beginging is awful.

again thanks for what youve written, i will try and impliment it in my next video. i will post here when it happens
 
star striker said:
Hello

Me and a friend of mine made a promotional video a little while ago for the Pirongia Forest Park Lodge in New Zealand, i was just hoping to get some feedback and any tips and tricks anyone might have that we could use for next time. they are a volunteer organisation so we did it for free.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl5xXtnryj8

thanks
Click to expand...

Ok. Here's a list of items that I thought of while watching the video.

1) Sky... need to get a polarizing filter to get some detail, deepen 'blue', and eliminate aerial haze as much as possible. While you can't plan for 'sunning, clear' days every day, the shots that show the sky, need to be dealt with in some way, that doesn't leave them 'blank white'.

2) Some sort of UV filter, to cut aerial haze when shooting towards distant hills...

3) Green saturation... ok, perhaps it was during the 'dry' season, but some of the shots looked like the lawn of the lodge was a bit in need of watering... So, need to deepen the sense of 'green'. For example, during the first few seconds, you have some shots of the lodge and grounds, then a cut to a roadway, and cyclists. The greens don't match.

4) As a note, I don't know if that cutaway to the cyclists works for me at that point. You have a build up of the grounds, etc., the this cutaway to what appears to be a road, perhaps in the area, then back to a 'near lodge' activity... I'd probably think about 'moving out' from the lodge, and put 'regional features', such as cycling on the roadways as part of that, rather than in the middle of what appears to be the lodge grounds.

I watched 'without sound', so I'm just commenting on the visuals.
 
yeh it was late summer and it was a bit of a drought.
im definatly gonna put this stuff to practice, i have few friends who are architects i will see if the firms they work for what anything done
cause that would be great work
 
Cool video.

Just to add on jscottprice's comments about audio. The best voice over mic you can get is a handheld mic. A cheap handheld mic is better than the average lav or shotgun, but remember to also purchase a puff filter that wraps around the mic - like one of those Axel Rose sings with (the red thing):

http://thedaysoflore.com/tag/guns-n-roses/

They cost like 5 bucks or something, and they clear out all the puffs from the p's or whatever. And you are not stuck with tacky colours like yellow or orange or red... the music stores should have them in black.

IMO I would also eliminate most if not all the on location sound, or at least decrease the volume. The sounds from the water streams really exposes the weaknesses of your audio equipment.

I thought maybe some of the pans are a bit fast, but this is just my opinion as I like slow pans.

Other wise cool video mate!
 
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