Thursday 14 May 2020

Promotional video Evaluation

For this unit I was given the task to come up with and plan "A series of videos with an interlinked visual style and narrative focus" for a client- Fruit Bowl Tech, for the launch of their new app.  My target audience was 24-60 years old with a social status of ABC1, therefore higher class, and psychographics group of Explorers, Mainstreamers , and Aspirers, and find ways to interlink their personalities and goals to achieve a high quality videos that focus on the family values. 

Starting off with, with initial idea, my plan was to create 3 separate short 'stories', focusing on the cinematic look, the feeling of nostalgia and the importance of the family, however as I kept changing and modifying my ideas, I realised I wanted the clips to interlink more. My first short story was linking very well with my third story however, the 2nd story in-between wasn’t working for me, especially on top of the fact it was the most expensive one out of the three- after discussing it with the client, we decided to keep only the 1st and the 3rd story and work on them to create the interlinked short video from the 1st story to the 3rd.

After watching similar adverts for inspiration, i didn’t like the heavy adverts, that 'push off' of the products the different companies were advertising, it felt very unnatural and even uncomfortable and 'in your face' at times, an example would be any of the commercial for old spice, macdonalds, victoria secrets etc- that being something i definitely wanted to avoid in my project. An example of an advert that i actually liked and felt inspired by was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWS_N4GbzcI  as it represented ancestors and family history in a storytelling and engaging way.

For my location, I wanted to find a house in the higher to middle class range  to help attract the audience with the use of semiotics- by having a high end house, which the target audience is most likely to already live in compared to  that would be represented by the use of the big backyard, a spacious and bright kitchen, as well well dresses actors, all helping to build the high class family image.

One of the big questions I kept falling on was freelance vs professional? Whether it was about the crew( the editor/ creative job roles)  I had to hire or the actors.
Hiring freelance editors and ctreative designers, would of been positive on the money side as their prices are usually half of what youd expect a professional editor to charge, however hiring a freelance on the internet has its downfalls. "Very often freelancers and short-term remote specialists do not plan to get deep enough in the overall project strategy and in the best case feel responsibility only for their small tasks" (1), this would of been a problem from the start as the project's schedual of 6 weeks requires it things to be planned ahead and to move forward as smoothly as possible, and without the full involvement/critique and work from everyone there would be problems on the way.
Another issue that we face as a high end, big established company is the ethical side of the business. As beneficial hiring a freelance would be for the budget of the project, the issue of paying tax arrises as this is a relatively long term project, and by hiring a freelance we would also be potentially taking the job out of a trained professional.
By hiring a professional, we also would avoid any worry about quality of the work as well as timing, and involvement on the editors side. They would be hands-on from the start, building a better relation with the team, and wouldn’t (necessarily) need training as most freelancers would.

To conclude:
-for the large and complex projects, it is better to work with full-time remote specialists than part-time freelancers.
-Cooperation with part-time freelancers is good only for small and easy tasks.


Some of the challenges we could face would be in working with children. I found there are many  steps to be taken when employing  young actors under the age of 16, such as having to first contact your local council for the specific work terms in the area, then 21 days prior to starting the shooting, I would have to apply for a Child Performance Licence from the government’s page (see Working with child actors for more information). On set they would also need to be accompanied by a legal guardian or a specified preliminary person.

I realised the budget has to be open to changes, and unexpected/unplanned costs happening at any time, especially considering how varied the prices can be on the market/internet. I believe the process shouldn't be set in stone and the budget for each aspect of the production should be set a little higher than expected and be flexible, due to these unexpected/ hidden costs. To further take that into account I made sure to use the highest price out of all of my findings, to get a picture of what's the highest price I could reach in this project
When adding all the prices I also decided to include the animator in a separate column as the prices were the highest/most varied, and it would be easier to see a clear sum for them at all times, also be able to change them if certain issues arise.

Something that we would have to be conscious of is also the weather, as some of our shoots would be happening outdoors- we would have to make sure the shoot falls in the summer so we get long days and natural lighting, as that is a major point in the video (using as much natural lighting as possible and as little artificial/ added lights in the shoot, that being one of the reasons the shedual starting time is 6am so everyone would have enough time to arrive and assemble by 7am/ half 7am, making the most of the day. Timing would also be important were it comes to the children on set- while being schooled, the children can work in the limited hours of 4 hours a day and between the hours of 6am to 9pm and that is as long as it doesnt fall on a school day (for more information go to "Working with child actors") as well as not being allowed to start work less than 12 hours after previously finishing work. Therefore the best time would be in the summer holiday as we not only get longer hours of light, but also better timing and availability for the children, as well as limiting the risk of the children getting overly exhausted doing both school hours and hours on set.

Overall, after completing  this module, I can confidently say it changed  my perspective on video production, the amount of work that goes into every project, as well as the fact it gave me a better understanding and an insight of the industry and the challenges I could face as a producer.



(1) https://blog.soshace.com/top-10-issues-when-hiring-freelancers/


Bibliography 
https://blog.soshace.com/top-10-issues-when-hiring-freelancers/
https://www.heartinternet.uk/blog/hiring-freelancers-vs-permanent-employees-pros-cons/

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