Promotional Video

Turning my hand to a new media for self promotion.


As part of one of my modules I was asked to create a 1 min promotional video.
There were no limitations to the video other than the time frame, we were asked to produce a video that captures who we are as individuals and photographers which could be in any shape or form.

To start out with it was essential to create a story board with time frames which would not only help us focus the video but give us a simple workflow with which to follow.

My initial idea was to film myself getting up out of bed, chucking on some clothes walking to the fridge to grab an energy drink and walk out the front door, The final scenes would be a flow of my portfolio work.
Once I started filming it soon became apparent that the time frame for this would be impossible so I started cutting the sections into individual selections, very short bursts of video that I could tie in with a piece of music with a relevant beat to it.

This is where the video started to take its own form. Once I had the initial first few sections filmed and aligned with the music I realised it wasn't giving a great sense of me, although it gives the impression of who I am as an individual it lacked a sense of me as a photographer.
I decided to get hold of some professional editing software and go out of the house and do some filming, the idea was to carry a pictureframe with me a capture images of the world within that frame.
Unfortunately there were no tutorials anywhere online or otherwise to show me how to create this effect so it came down to hours upon hours of trial and error.... I think my longest stretch was 17 hours sat in an armchair trying to create this effect but once I managed it I went out to capture some scenes that showed who I am, and as I first started out with street photographer I thought this would be a good thing to focus on.

The final outcome of the video was a pretty good standard considering I have never done anything of this kind, ever!
My biggest letdown is that it wasn't until after my first piece of bulk editing that I found a way of producing the desired effect without drawing the picture frame over the face of the camera and that it was possible to do it by simply holding the frame infront of the lens but I managed to get a couple versions of this technique at the end of the final edit before the deadline date.
On the plus side, now I know how to create this video then it is now possible to re-shoot this video if I wished.

Unfortunatly I havn't mastered adding videos to blog posts so here is the link to my promotional video....enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNvaAb_Wc5w