For our corporate video we chose to do the weatherspoons branch of pubs and one local to the college and me so we chose the flying boat rather than the paper moon. In the production team it was me and Benn so we had to split it between us which were easy. We didn’t need audio equipment because we didn’t need any audio other than a soundtrack from the internet so we had a camera and both took shots around the pub grounds. When it came to editing in the group we did one edit but both did work on the edit and colour correction.
The originally plan was to go in and talk to the manager about doing a video for the pub as a ‘Non-profitable’ video for them meaning there was no exchange of money for our services and it won’t be used as the official video for the pub but the manager gave us a number for the head office and I had to speak to Eddie from advertisement and he gave us permission to do the video as long as it wasn’t being paid for as they already have a production team. Me and Benn looked through a couple of pub promotional videos to get an idea of what we will have to be doing and had a clear understanding of what style of shots were going to be needed for this sort of video.
The paperwork side of this project went well for me and Benn, We divided it equally and got on with it, I was put in charge of things like contacting the company to find out if we can film, the proposal, treatment and storyboards. Benn managed the rest of the paperwork. We ran into a few changes when it came to music and certain shots we had to go and re-take more than once. Our target audience is people who are old enough to drink in pubs, maybe families for things like meals and dinners. The way we planned to film our video was to have it cover the basics, alcohol they sell, the décor inside the pub, certain members of staff and other things available inside the pub other than alcohol. At the end of our planning and creating our storyboards we realized that our filming would not be the exact same as the storyboards so we had to go with what we originally had and with other cover shots we captured whilst filming the planned shots. When we had to meet our client we went down to the pub several days before the original filming date and got permission from the manager on duty at the time but I cannot remember the name of him. While filming we had to re-take certain shots from our original plans but some of the shots used where just cover shots gather while filming. The way we managed our filming was very sloppy and was only organised when a flaw in our shots was found, this could have been avoided if we had not of rushed it and just took out time but this made us have to re-shot 4 times over. The way we crafted our proposal was the usual layout, we had a very basic idea for our video so it looked basic on paper.
During the filming process we had members of the general public tell us that they did not feel comfortable enough being on camera and in shot due to them not knowing what we going to use the footage for, I did state that this is being used to a college project only and the footage would only be on youtube and tumblr. Most people were fine with this but due to certain people we had to angle shots so that certain members of public weren’t in shot. This made it a lot harder to get wide angle shots on certain filming days but we managed to get more shots on later dates. While filming on the first day they didn’t have their Christmas decorations up and on the second or third filming day they did, so in some of our shots it changes which didn’t matter too much. I think our corporate video was alright in some point but in others it wasn’t amazing, some of the shots had to be over expose to be light enough and the timing went out when played on youtube.
With our filming dates I can’t remember the exact dates but we had to go back more than once to film because of not having the correct lighting in the shot or the shot wasn’t in focus so we actually went back 4 times in total. The equipment me and Benn used wasn’t a very big list in total, it consisted of one Nikon camera, fig-rig when needed, tri-pod and a 50m lens. We had several problems with the tripods due to them always going in and out of balance so this was another issues we both ran into because we had the shots needed but they was not straight or looked out of shot due to the balance. I think we could have tackled this issue by making sure our equipment was at a standard that we needed before going out and not rushing to get our video finish as soon as we possibly could to focus on other projects and work.
For our equipment we used on set, we only had to change the setting on the camera for the lighting as the lighting within the pub itself was at a decent enough standard that we didn’t have to take out lights, we did the first time round but after seeing the footage played back after upping the white balance and exposure. We did have some small issues while editing some of the footage that was either too soft and/or over exposed which meant again we had to go back to the pub and re-shoot those shots. I remember clearly on our second shooting date that our camera’s batteries died within seconds of loading the camera up which again meant, back to college to get new ones which took us back within our shooting times. When we watched the video at the end this appeared in some of the shots, it had a lot of noise on it as we just used the iso to brighten the shots. If I could of done these shots again and not rushed my work then I would have found a different way of getting it with the lighting we had. I doubt the pub would want us setting up lights near the bar while serving people during the day. Other than not having lighting for certain shots and the filming dates everything went rather well. The reason we chose to the use the cameras we chose was we felt comfortable using the Nikons. We wanted a 50m lens to see if it could get a better wide angle shot of the pub from the top of the stairs and for the garden shots but used it within other aspects of the video.
For the location scouting part of our project I and Benn both know the pub as we have both been their, Andrea actually gave us the idea to contact the pub and ask them so we did and they said yes, even before we had been their to film we had a rough idea of where things were and what to do. In our video we chose not to have any interviews. The reason we chose not to have any was because it’s a franchise pub so unless we could get the owner from weatherspoons to come to the Dartford then we would be interviewing a manger and for a pub promo video a majority are cover shots with music and text. Not many had owners in, only smaller, local town pubs.
When to editing me and Benn both decided that we’d both put a fair amount of effort each into it. We used final cut pro to edit our video and used Magic Bullet, Vignette and Looks for the colour correction, during our editing and colour correction we over exposed some darker shots abit too much and it gave it a lot of noise and some of the shots changed colour from the other shots. Some shots had blue lighting and some had orange lighting. During the editing process is when we noticed most of our original errors, we saw that shots were soft or out of focus. We also saw that our camera setting had been different during the first filming so during the second one we made sure that our white balance and iso’s were both set to the same. With the colour correction we could have been abit softer on some shots with the Vignette and with some of the ‘Colourista 3-way’ tool in Looks. We also used another editing software, I cannot remember the same of it right now, it consisted of going into every shot and using different ‘nodes’ and using the colour balance wheels, making the tint harder or softer on the shot and this was a lot easier than using other software so we scraped the original edit and used this. Benn did some of the colour correction as well so I don’t know what he done on that side of it. We chose to style our video like other videos we had seen, to have it at a fast paced but relaxed vibe. So the shots were calm and warm but fast at the same time, no-one wants to see a corporate video for a pub full of drunk people causing hassle so having it shot during the lunch hours on weekdays shows the normal relaxing vibe within that pub.
For an all round evaluation of my video I think that I could of put a lot more effort into this rather than rushing it as usual to try and get it out of the way. We rushed our shots and it only messed things up for us in the end but I think the outcome was a decent video which with a lot more post-production could have been maybe a little bit better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L3DorZ83H4
