Advice, Opinions and Feedback. Club Promo

[Mark Suszko]

I’m not sure what you are promoting in the “promo”. Assuming it’s just the Club itself. To me, it could use a few more wide shots to break up the many similar tight and medium shots. Consider doing some PIP and multiple-box shots or wipes to add visual variety, using products like Rampant or Motion VFX M-Frame or similar products from FCP Effects. Or skip the plug-ins and make those FX in FCPX or Motion yourself. Some lateral camera motion thru a crowd would be nice. Everything is about at eye level in what you’ve shot, so consider adding some high and low-angle shots, cut-aways to hands and feet, or crane-type moves, even if only hand-held.

If it promotes the club, there needs to be more signage/logo shots, because right now, it seems more like nice but generic stock club footage. That’s not a knock, and in fact, you can probably make some money selling this as stock footage.

You’ll think this next part is crazy, but the thing that bothered me most was that there was no “story” in the sequencing of your shots. They look pretty good, but they don’t convey anything like a narrative undercurrent except that people dance and maybe drink a little. I don’t mean it has to have scripted dialogue or anything like that, but maybe, you could isolate on one group of friends as they come into the club, (your “characters”) and montage around them enjoying themselves in various areas of the club over stages of time. Because what you have now is a random mob of faces having a good time, and that’s great, but it’s kind of impersonal, do you take my meaning? The viewer may not be engaged enough, just with what you have here. Go check out the Zion Rave Party sequence in the I think it’s the second) Matrix movie, with the sound off, and see how that editor mixed a wide variety of establishing shots with very close detail shots, slowly ramping up the cutting rhythm to the big “drop”.

The competitor’s sample, I did not care for: The harsh, blown-out lighting looked kind of amateurish, and again, the shots all looked too similar, which gets boring quickly.