Evaluation of College Promotional Video

Overall, I am quite proud of the first cut of my promotional video for the college's Media TV & Film department, however there are definitely many areas of the video which would be a lot better if some changes were done.

Content/mise en scene:
My main target audiences of the video as a whole were students in Year 11 who are thinking of what college they will moving on to and what subjects, as well as those students' parents. Throughout the video, I feel like I did an okay job at showing a large amount of the media subject we have at our college that would either appeal to the students or the parents, including pieces of equipment and some rooms we have available for the students, and students working and teachers teaching for the parents. I didn't manage to include every little thing we had available to us, for example I could have included more digital resources like Photoshop, but I feel like I still managed to include a good amount.

I decided pretty early on in the pre-production phase of my promotional video that I wanted to frame it in a particular way. Specifically, I decided on the concept of including sketch's at the beginning and end of the video being grayscale, showing a job interview between a previous student from East Norfolk Sixth Form and an interviewer for a position in a media related field, with a montage in full colour showing features of the college's subject accompanied by a voice-over explaining its major positives in between the beginning and end of the sketch. My reasoning for wanting the video to be set out in this way was so it would stand out to the year 11's and parents who watch it, so when they are looking through lots of college promotional videos for the same subject, ours would have something to keep it unique and memorable above all the others so they would find it harder to forget which video was our's. It also suggests by the interview sketches to the potential students and the parents watching that going to our college's media subject specifically will help with getting jobs in the field in the future, which we want them to know as it is true, comedically alluded to by the end of the sketch when the interviewer reasons "you're in" to the young person mentioning he went to our college - this point will appeal to both of the target audiences equally. Also, the concept of the colour's removal in the beginning and end is done so it would be juxtaposed to the colour in the clips of our college, which mirrors the colours in our logo.

An issue with the mise en scene of this video that some may notice is that a large amount of it is filmed in the same area (the media classroom). A lot of the shots during the montage section, as well as both the beginning and end skit, were filmed in this room. As a result, the setting of the first and last sections of the video, which were intended during pre-production to look like an office where a job interview could take place, do not look like that at all, instead making the video as a whole seem more boring and less interesting to watch because of it all seemingly being stuck in one area for a lot of it. If we were to re-film this, I would make sure to spend more time and effort than before looking for a fitting office space and permission to use it for filming so the mise en scene of the project is vastly improved as a result. There were a couple shots that may have benefited the video by not being included though, specifically the shot of the student editing being a shot/reverse shot of him and the computer. The shots themselves were fairly well done, both being low angle close-ups of what they were focused on, even though the shot of the student only featured his face. However, the video only really needed to include the shot of the computer, or if the student shot was included, it should have been of their hands working on the keyboard to actually show them working.

Camerawork:

During the video, there were quite a few pieces of camera work included in the final project that I am proud of in terms of the way they came out. A couple examples would include the travelling shots of the college's 'mini studio', which I shot using a slider (which I had never used before up until that point). The shots used with it ended up looking very smooth and cinematic, shot at a slightly canted, low-angle and work very well with the video as a whole. There was a slight issue with these shots though, being that my camera's shutter speed, which is the length of time a camera will be open to expose light into its sensor, with a low shutter speed allowing more light into it (often used in low-light and darker situations) while a higher speed helps to freeze motion, was not set up completely perfect. My shutter-speed while filming these shots was too low, which lead to some fuzziness moving over the camera during its movement, but it isn't too noticeable to the extent that it ruins the entire shot. As well as these, the canting slow zoom into the door of the first shot worked quite well to give the cheesy over-dramatic tone of the introduction, even being edited in post to be in grayscale, (along with every other shot of the interview skit sections) further portraying that tone. Although, if it was to dissolve into the next shot instead of simply cutting to it, it could've worked better. The intent of shots like this giving off this tone is to, in a way, appeal to the student side of the video's target audience a bit. As this video was made by students from the course and that fact is made clear to those watching it at the end, showing the video in a non-serious, almost fun way will appeal to the students in terms of wanting to choose this subject, as it is shown that it can be an enjoyable one.

There was some pieces of camerawork in the video though that were not too great though. Something that affected the quality negatively of a few of the shots, but most prominently the shots of the studio lights and sofa chairs in the mini-studio, was that the camerawork was a little bit too shaky, leading to the shots seeming a bit blurry in a few of the frames, or simply causing it to look rocky and unprofessional. Admittedly, some of the other shots that fell into this issue, such as the shot of the teacher helping out some of the students with the equipment and the shot of the student holding the camera on the tripod, were recorded by me but not actually planned to be filmed or used in the video before they happened. Instead, I decided to use these in the project at a later point because they seemed to fit the project while editing, such as the shot of the teacher instructing the students, as inclusions like that in promotional videos which include footage of teachers teaching their subjects appeal to the target audience, nut more prominently to the parents side of it. While shots of students having fun while filming for example appeal to the students who want to see if they will enjoy themselves at the place of education they choose, parents often have at least some input into the choice the student makes, and they will want to know if the education and teachers at the college are good among most other factors, so seeing a teacher in action in the video will appeal to them hugely. However, there were also some that were shaky simply due to my bad camerawork at times, like the pan around shot of the lights and chairs in the mini studio.

Editing and use of post-production effects:

There are many sections of this video where the editing flows quite well and is done in a way that I am very proud of, as it intrigues the target audience well into what is being shown and what will be next. Sections I am specifically happy with include the transitions revolving around the green eye in the grayscale environment (including the zooms and the sound effects that went with them) and the monitor at the end showing student videos made in the subject edited onto it in post-production. Parts of the video like this which are harder to do in post-production or involve taking advantage of skills learned further on fit really well into this promotional videos' purpose. If a student is interested in going into media revolved jobs in the future, seeing edits in the promos for this college's subject that look harder to do will entice them to consider joining, as they will of course connect the dots and believe that joining will lead them to be taught skills similar to the ones seen in the promotional content (this same thing could potentially appeal slightly to the parents watching as well). Also, specifically for the monitor shot, the student seeing examples of work they will be able to understand has been done by students will intrigue them a lot, especially with the examples used here, as they may think it looks fun or interesting and lean more into deciding to join the college because of them wanting to do that themselves.

A part of the editing which could be improved which would increase the quality of the overall video by quite a bit involves the voice-over; more specifically, its correlation with what is being shown on screen while it is being played. There are a few places during the montage section of the video where the content being talked about in the voice-over does not match the pieces of footage which are playing along with it. If the stuff on screen was to match what was being talked about by the teacher audibly, for example if while the professional editing programs were mentioned, the shot of a student editing on Premiere Pro was on screen, the video would flow a lot better and the montage would seem to have a lot more of a purpose, instead of it risking seeming like simply random pieces of footage thrown together. More importantly, if the student's watching were to see the great parts of our course that were being mentioned, they would get a lot better of a picture of what they would be expecting if they were to join and it would be easier for them to understand what is being talked about specifically. In therms of the parent side of this issue, it is plausible that they may not be as educated on what the things are that are being talked about in the voice-over, so being shown what they are could help them have a much better understanding of the college's quality,

Sound:

A big part that a lot of my peers when watching agreed was an aspect of the video which needed some improvement was the audio throughout. For the beginning and ending 'skit' parts of it, the audio used was not recorded using any professional equipment like a boom microphone or handy audio recorder, and instead used the camera's audio. This was not intentional, but that does not make it not still an issue. When we recorded those pieces of footage, we did have a boom microphone setup, but for some reason the audio came out extremely quiet and it ended up essentially being unusable. As for the audio of the narration done by the teacher, it sounded quite 'washed-out' in the final product, likely due to the amount of editing and filters that had been done and applied to it while trying to remove the peaks and pops in the original raw audio. Some of the filters will likely need to be removed in any future edits, as to make the narration sound better and more easy on the ears for the audience watching it. At the very least though, every piece of audio is understandable, with none of the parts being so bad that they are unintelligible to the audience. Even though what is seen during the video is arguably most important, the audio of the video should really be good quality as well, as it is something students are taught to do well at the college, and we wouldn't want to give off the opposite impression to those students wondering if they will be taught how to do audio well or to parents wondering a similar thing while watching.

As for the actual content of the voice-over used though, a lot of important and useful information for people thinking about joining the college's subject is said and explained. Everything is explained briefly but well, touching on the college's resources (digital and physical), as well as why what is taught is useful for the students and other details that are worthy of noting relevant to the subject matter. The fact that it is all explained by a teacher of the subject is also a positive, as it adds more believability to what is being said, however the video never actually states who this person speaking is, so adding that in at one moment (maybe through the use of a lower-third graphic explaining it) would benefit the video's credibility largely.

Graphics:

One of the most noticeable features of the video which definitely needs to be improved is a part of the credits of the video. Right at the end, text of the music and editing credits slowly fade up and into each other before the entire video fades to black. For the very last credit, (the one for the piece of music taken from the creative commons sound site Incompetech.com) an editing mistake can be seen. Specifically, another layer of the text "ch" is underneath the credit, which is of course not supposed to be there and needs to be removed in any future edits of this project. Mistakes like these are important not to have, due to the fact that the audience this video is targeting are people who want to get into video editing and things similar, so if in the video advertising our college's subject we have any obvious mistake in that area, it will seem to the audience to be a red flag, as if evidence that the college is not as great at the subject as they claim or that not enough effort is put into it. Also, the ending graphic is not very professional looking overall, which it should be, again considering the purpose of this video.

A visual effect I added onto the video in post-production was a 'lens flare' effect on the first shot of the montage section of the video. I only used this effect once in the entire thing, but the graphical effect does a good job of easily giving a shot a bit more style and a professional feel to it, in some cases even making what is being shown on screen seem a lot more flashy or luxurious than they might actually be in person. It might have been a better idea to use this effect on a different shot though, or maybe more that just this singular one looking back, as it does seem slightly out of place with it being the only one used and being in a shot where not a lot of great stuff is being shown off in it, compared to what it could be placed over.

In conclusion, I believe that my promotional video does a good job of attracting both of its target audiences to the college's subject. It appeals to both of them often at different points, but could definitely benefit from general improvements like clearer audio and better. more solid or fluid camerawork at times.