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40th Anniversary Corporate Video
i have been givin the task of putting together an Anniversary video for a community college. What should Be the proceedure for putting this type video project together, from the start to finish? i know this is a lot to ask, with no specifics. But would like to hear your opinions on what all you require from a potential client. From the initial concept to completion. And what procedures you would follow to get from start to finish on a project of this sort. 15-20 minutes in length.
Thanks in advance
paul
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27 Replies
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What exactly is your role in this project? Are you the overall manager on the client side? The producer? Writer? Production Company?
What experience do you have in video creation?
Why were you given this assignment?
What are the goals of the video? Is it merely a feel-good piece for a one-time showing at a live event? Is it to be re purposed as a recruiting tool? Something else? Multiple uses?
Perhaps you should hire a company with experience in doing this work and try to learn about the process along the way.
Best regards,
Leo
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A couple of years ago, I did a 125th anniversary video for us. Send me an email, mrolph@utc.msstate.edu, and I can help you out on this. It’s quite an undertaking, because the college/university system has such a broad scope. You have to be careful to not leave anybody out.
Marc Rolph
Producer/Director
Mississippi State University“If you chase two rabbits, both will get away.”
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They want interviews from 4 current instructors, that have been there for a long period of time, 3 past presidents/chancellors. show the growth from tech school to community college. Showcase as much of what we offer as possible. And the future growth/ ambitions of the college.
This is for 40th anniversary to be displayed during 2 events and also to be used for promotional purposes after the fact. any outsourcing is imposible. I am a videographer/editor. i am taking input from a committee. I really need the proper sequence of events from inception to editing phase, of a project of this nature, from someone in the field professionally, to show the powers that be the way this project should have been handled, instead of the way it was handled. As well as an appropriate timeline or timeframe for such a project. Which I know for a fact is not 2 weeks. There has been no storyboarding, no scripts, no prepared staments, no advance preperation, even in setting up the interviews, not shotlist. But yet the powers that be want to control what the final product will look like. i am an employee of the institution, and this is one of those all other duties as assigned portions of my job description. My job title is telecommunications technician. i do a broad variety of things. -
Read my post above for some of you answers. I was given this task 1 1/2 weeks ago with an initial deadline of mar 1. this has been extended to mar 8. I really need information as to the proper proceedures for this type of production from someone other than myself to show what all has been done wrong up to this point, to try and prevent it from happening again. i don’t need a whole lot of unnesecary questions as to who, what, and why ect. dealing with irellavant information.
paul
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I hope you’ve not waited a week and a half to get moving on this project.
It’s not difficult, nor does it require long lead time, and certainly not scripts or storyboards since it’s interview based. You, as the Producer, are responsible for the shot list.
All you need to do is schedule the interviews; I typically allow two to four hours per location to light and prep the area and conduct the interview.
You do need to be knowledgable about the subject so you can ask the appropriate questions, then let the subject just tell their stories. I believe there are excellent interview techniques tips in the archives here at the Cow. Prepared statements tend to suck; they sound stilted and forced. Real people rarely have acting skills; they are best when they speak extemporaneously.
Schedule some time for B-roll; the campus, student life, etc., and some studio time to shoot old photographs, etc.
Good luck,
Leo
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1.no, i have not waited, 2. I am not responsible for setting up interview just shooting them and editing. And the number of people to be interviewed keeps changing. the people responsible for the initial concept knew of this production 2 months ago. I am shooting B-roll stuff as fast as I can. the interviewees have been totally unprepared, the interviewer has not preped them as to what they are looking for, so I am getting repetative statements from each interviewee, each individual saying the same thing 3 or 4 times. it is supposed to be 15 minutes in length total I already have 46 minutes of interviews. and still have 3 inteviews to do. each interview should have been less than 3 minutes not 12 to 14. One does not even live in this area, they are trying to get him to find someplace he can get to shoot his statement and mail it to us. Also this is not the only thing I am required to do in the course of my workday, so time is even more limited. Someone disposed of stills from when it was a tech school so finding someone that has the past pictures may be nonexistant. and why would it not be story boarded before hand, so that you know what is expected in the finished product, this would seem to lend to a whole lot of my concept versus what they actually want. and unnecessary editing which is time, I don’t have, which is already happening. You can’t pull footage out of thin air. you also need time to see if you have usable archival footage, and very little of what we have is already digital. what i currently have in interview footage is very boring, so I have to figure a way to make this more interesting and showcase the campus at the same time, both past, present and future. The interviewer questions cannot be used as he was so thick tongued a questions sometimes took 2-3 minutes, for him to even get out of his mouth.
No prep at all on the front end is what I hear from you is required to do a professional commemorative promotional video.
paul
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I did not say no prep was required; I said you don’t need scripts or a storyboard. You need an overall concept, but this is not breaking new ground; it’s a standard format.
Typically, you shoot the interviews first and then write supporting copy for any voice over required to tie things together. The interviews will themselves suggest the B-roll and you should insure that the subjects discuss material for B-roll you know you want to show. It’s quite normal to have some VO copy written beforehand, but it’s best to wait to record it after the interviews in case you need to change it.
Sounds like you’re not in control of the project; there must be one, and only one, Producer. It may be too late, but you need to go to the very top, the single decision maker, and explain that the job must be controlled. If you have the skills, it should be you; if you don’t, you need someone who knows what they are doing.
I sympathize with you for not being the one doing the interviewing; this job calls for a considerable amount of skill and an ability to get a moving story from the subjects. If your interviewer was incompetent, you may have little to work with.
By the way, it’s not usual to use the interviewer’s questions at all, but if the questions were so poorly constructed that the answers depend on them for clarity, you can use voice over questions or lead-ins.
I’m mystified about your comment that the interviews should have been two or three minutes instead of much longer. That’s what editing is for. The more raw material the better. If you don’t have time to edit the project, then you simply have no way to turn it around. Hire a fast Editor, work overtime, or throw your hands over your head and exit the building screaming.
Good luck,
Leo
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This could be a beautiful work, or a steaming pile. Most likely the latter due to the way they handed you the situation.
The keys are lead time to develop all the assets, and a strong narrative spine to hang the program on. Sounds like you’re not being given either, which is too bad, but typical. Civilians don’t understand what we do: TV is magic; you push a button and there it is, fully-formed. I’ve been given projects like this and usually I get between four days and two weeks to put it together, but the expectations are usually low, I’m given autonomy, and there is no other brief for the material as there is in your case.
There are some producers who would take a year to make such a piece. Others, particularly those with a news background, would feel comfortable with a week. The approaches lead to very different looking and feeling results. Ken Burns vs. 60 Minutes.
To do this “right”, it should have started at least six months earlier or more, if only because it would be nice to not shoot the campus in winter!
It (properly) starts with a needs-analysis that describes the job(s) the video has to do. A common mistake clients make is that they think one video can do many differnet jobs: typically, be a training video for internal staff as well as some kind of sales tool. Client figures he’s saving money by getting two programs for the price of one, but what they DO get are two half-good programs for the price of one good one.
These extra jobs they add are usually very opposite tasks, and a program trying to be too many things to too many audiences winds up pleasing no one. The way I describe it to clients is: the message is an arrow, and the more tasks you put on the message, the wider and more blunt the arrow’s head gets, until it cannot penetrate any target. So tell them they can have a recruitment-flavored piece, or a warm and fuzzy nostalgia piece, or whatever, but to keep it to one theme ONLY, and plan instead to make separate targeted videos for other purposes out of some of the footage later, when deadline pressure is not looming.
After the needs analysis, a writer researches the topic and comes up with a creative treatment. This is not the script: this is the blueprint for the script. The Treatment lays out the creative approach to the material, and any “gimmicks” that will be used in communicating the story. That means here is where you say if and how you’re using humor, or dramatization, or other methods. It describes without actual dialog what the characters will do and say, where and how, and it explains why it must be thus. It charts the entire flow of the narrative. Once written, it also enables one to plan the production schedule and budget, because now you have some concept of the sets, locations, effects, and other elements that will be needed.
Irrelevant to your project you say? Not really: though you would probably truncate the process a bit for this panic production, the discipline of creating the treatment outline is very useful for organizing your material. It also allows your overseers to know, approve, and understand what you’re going to do before you move ahead and spend money. If they don’t like the directon chosen in the treatment, you can stop before any damage was done and try another approach. If they approve the treatment, they don’t have much right to protest soemthing later in the process, which speeds things up for you and protects you from the dreaded:
“it’s just what we asked you for, but not what we wanted”.
After Treatment stage, THEN a script is written based on that treatment. Then you start shooting.
In your case, you are going to have to start a little out of sequence getting the interviews first. But consider them part of the needs analysis and research steps. Go thru the transcribed material and pick out the narrative threads that support the overall theme. Use those to guide your b-roll and visual device choices. Write the treatment up using these. From that you can show the bosses an outline they can approve.
Your hand has been forced by the poor vision of the clients. You can use that as your excuse to refuse any “inputs” of theirs that don’t make sense at this point. It’s too late for a lot of arguments. The rule of the “iron triangle” is that you can have a production done inexpensively, with high quality, and rapidly, but you only get TWO of those three choices: any two, but ONLY two. They took away your time, so they have to expect that quality may suffer and expenses are going to go up. It’s like a law of thermodynamics.
So, we crack open a fresh can of Jolt, sit ourselves down and map the battle plan. They gave you a list of interviews. You will want to shoot these first, as they may give you good ideas for the b-roll and narrative structure. If you can find some common threads in their narratives, this can become the spine of the story. And you *have* to find a “story” here; it’s not enough to just give a chronology, that is as fun as reading out loud all the “begats” in the old testament. It also will not meet any of their future goals in using this footage for recruitment or fundraising purposes. When they balk, you just have to tell tham that there is no time for argument, you have found the best and only way to make the deadline, and you’re going for it.
Those interviews should be shot in different settings. Put each speaker in a nicely-lit sit-down situation first, then shoot them again on a walk-around of the campus and also get footage of them in their classrooms. For the walk-around, hang a wireless on them and walk ahead of them with the camera while they free-associate a narrative off the top of their heads, stopping every once in a while to let the shot be static and let them walk thru it as a natural transition. Set up establishing shots of well-known campus landmarks and have them walk in and talk about one particular thing. You will want some variety in takes, so if they get to a good bit, let them finish it, then have them do it again while you change from close-up to wide or whatever, so you can cut better. For the sit-down, it might be good to hand them a coupl of the yearbooks to look at and talk about some of the pictures and the stories they spark. Don;t ask yes-or-no questions, as leading queions, “How” and “why” questions. Ask them to try and put the question into their answer, so you cna edit your questions out and have a narrative without non-sequiters. Example: “Tell me about how they chose the team mascot name, I understand there was an argument about it?” “There WAS a big argument over the naming of the team, originally, one faction wanted it to be…” -and now you don’t just have a chronology, you have a STORY. One people will care to watch.
While you work on all THAT…
…Hopefully, the library at the school has a good archive of the yearbooks and publicity pictures from public events and newspaper articles. Deputize a brace of students to get in there and scan all the best pictures, or have them take a camera, softlight and tripod to the library and tape 15-second shots of the pictures with a couple pans and slow zooms on each. This could be a huge time saver for your edit, saving render times for moves you’d otherwise have to animate. They have to know how to do this right, so be on hand to train them for the first hour or so. Have them use the camera mic to slate each take for date and location and other pertinent info as they shoot it. Have them log each shot and TC number as they get it. One kid from the helpers gets a job to research cultural references for the significant years of the school: the pop music the day it opened, major historical events in the timeline and what the reaction was at the school, that sort of thing. You don’t have time/money to get legal clearances for any stock images or pop music recordings, maybe if they’d given you a year… but you CAN have interview subjects or narrators REFER to the song titles and things like that, to help set the mood in time period. Musi Bakery has some great pop music sound-alikes for several decades/eras, all on one CD, might be worth a few bucks to use it, it’s all cleared legally, and will give you flavors of the motown era, beatle-era, surf era, do-wop era, hippie era, disco era, New Wave era, metal era, grunge era, etc. Don’t underestimate the power such tracks give a presentation, even if they are not actual songs of the time.
Find a graduate from the earliest possible class, go to their home or work and get ten minutes with them, maybe bring a freshman with you and do a compare/contrast on how they felt their first day at the school.
In the edit, I’d concentrate on getting a flow to the narratives first, then I’d go back in and add the b-roll, music, graphic art and montages to cover holes and establish time periods. Some purchased, canned jump-back type background motion video can be used as a visual “glue” between elements. Depending on the time left, you’ll cover more and more of the interviews with visuals if you have the time for it. When you run short of time, you stick to the faces on camera and just get it done.
You really need a team to help you make this deadline, doing it all by yourself, something is going to crack. Your snippy response to Leo’s useful questions indicates the stress is already beginning to tell. Demand helpers, especially for the b-roll elements. Tell the boss it’s the only way to get it done on time and budget, while keeping your sanity. We’ve all been where you are, you have our sympathy. Hopefully, soem of these suggestions will help. With a rational plan and outline and a team to help you, you can do it.
Best of luck with it, let us know how it comes out.
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can’t hire outside source. I can see having extra footage to work with but not what I am getting. As far as overtime I work fro the state. you supposedly recieve comp time that if you work comp time you are supposed to take off Immediately after working it, which is impossible. YOU DO NOT GET PAID. I have found that top level person only yesterday. failure or throwing up my hands is not an option. You take 8 people and divide that by 10 minutes which was the initial length of the finished product, you only have approx 1min 15 sec. per individual. They have put people in charge that have no concept of what needed to be done and in what order, consequently I dont have all the interviews yet and probably wont have for several days if not longer, at least a week on 1, which will put me past the deadline for completion. They were supposed to setup a perso for intro, voiceover for a period of time that they cannot get their original interviewee and for closing. I talked to this individual last night and he knew nothing about it. They just know that it we can produce video. i am shooting bluescreen, for interviews, to use changing sceenery for background.
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thanks for the reponse this is more of what I needed to try and fix/salvege this production. The budget is $0. Others are calling the shots and want creative control, I sent out a closing piece for review, and they want half of that piece changed. i have already voiced my opinion of the time I need to work on this, to no avail. The weather has not cooperated for anything outdoors. Am trying to get any and all indoors/class stuff, hoping weather will break, so I can get exterior footage. The interviewee list changed thursday, with 3 additional. read my last response for more info
And I apologise to Leo if I was sharp, I have never failed at anything I have done, but feel this time through incompetence of others I am being setup for this to fail.thanks
paul
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