Today’s Plan:
- LAF Thanks
- Review
- Pitch Presentation
- Creative Brainstorming Session with Storyboards
Review
As I mentioned last class, the final Just One Thing videos are intended to be an opportunity for you to demonstrate/incorporate all the elements of video production we’ve worked on this year. Those include:
- USING A TRIPOD
- Basic shots (wide/establishing, mid, close-up)
- Basic sequences (including rotating the camera 15-20 degrees as you zoom in shots and executing an in-and-out)
- Paying attention to shot-length (3-5 seconds)
- Lining up shots with head room
- Lining up shots according to the Rule of Thirds
- Paying attention to leading lines and backgrounds
- Arranging a montage
- Using B-Roll to execute an L or J cut
- Attention to lighting (keeping the brightest light behind you as you shoot)
- Avoiding hot spots (excessively intense lighting)
- Recording clean audio with a Lavalier mic
- Recording “wild effects”
- Inserting / fading / balancing background music
- Editing audio
- Animating Intro credits
- Incorporating text
- Color grading and correction (modifying brightness, hue, saturation)
When I assess your final videos, I’ll be looking to see how well you execute/consider/incorporate all of elements.
Pitch Presentations
As I mentioned last Friday, this Friday will be dedicated to your pitch presentations. I want you to have experience preparing and presenting a potential creative project. Let’s take a quick look at what I’m talking about.
Highlights:
- A strong creative pitch both details creative choices (what to shoot, what content to include, choice of music) and provides justifications for those choices (why shoot, include, choose that?). It offers an overall rhetorical foundation for a project.
- Pitch Deck (industry lingo for presentation): hero/villain/how
- Developing the feel of a presentation: how images create a mood (a mood board) and having specific references to help identify the tone/feel of your work
- Present a storyboard (snapshots that show the planned sequences for your work)
Storyboarding
I’d like to conclude today with a storyboarding exercise–one that should help you identify what you can do for homework to start preparing the Pitch Presentation for Friday.
We are working on an obviously tight production schedule. You have a week to plan these videos, and then a week to revise and shoot them. I’ve cancelled class next Monday so you have time to shoot as much as possible. Wednesday is a work day in the lab.
In terms of creating your pitch presentation, I recommend starting with a google slide template from slide carnival, one that has a slide that will work well for storyboard shots (a Big Image slide). Alternative Journaling template. Potential meditation template.
How can you frame your pitch using the hero/villain/how structure?
What is your tone going to be? Can you compare it to an existing advertisement campaign, television show/film, or social media presence? What do you want it to feel like?
Think about what scenes you want to shoot and mix. Do you need shots of folks meditating? What kinds of meditation? From what angles?
Note: by the end of class today you should have a Google Slides presentation that you can share with everyone in the group.
Homework
Get to work on your pitch presentations. My hope is that you can each focus on developing a particular part of the pitch, including taking some photographs to include in the presentation.
