Movie -promo making made simple

It's not rocket science really. Short film making is a matter of "stealing licks" to quote Donald who left a message some time ago.

An area of short form making that is a heightened form of visual arts in itself is promo making.

If you've watched Wimbledon or Match of the Day on BBC1, it's the bit that wraps up a programme.

In many cases it stands alone, whilst in others it's used as an arc in feature films and docs.

It's emotional and artistic narrative tells a story without the use of voice clips and with Arts School film makers will often translate to commercial directing.

Ridley Scott - Gladiators, Tarsem, who directed the Fall, and Tony Kaye behind American History X all emerged from an artistic perspective of film making via commercials.


Looking at Promo Making

I'll be cutting a promo pretty soon from shots I took jogging one morning in Chicago.

The promo on Viewmagazine.tv features quite a few of those shots plus a couple I cribbed from Robb's camera at VisualEditors.com. The key to that promo was driving through town with Robb in order to ID shooting locations.

Chicago is a city made from film sets and in fact quite a few have been shot there e.g. Blues Brothers.

I'm told it was also the inspiration for The Matrix - the Wakowskis are originally from Chicago. The Matrix is also a film worth studying for visual promo narrative as is the grunge like Se7en.

Like many a film makers, I started out storyboarding particularly in teams, but if you work alone as I might do, then I have pretty much storyboard with the camera of direct a shot for someone to capture me on, as I did with Robb.

Mike Jones at Digital Basin an insightful article on promo making if you want to read more otherwise I'll post my short pretty soonish

Viscerality, content and burning ice.

Dom Omope was the second shooter on the BBC interview involving a number of super bloggers from around the world.

He's a former student of mine in a manner of speaking who is now doing a masters at Goldsmith in broadcast journalism.

Whilst he has a strong visual eye he wanted to know more about aesthetics and promo making.

He'd shown some previous work to technicians he knew who commented that I'd used Boris FX to make this film Digital Diversity.

I don't use any effects from Boris or pre-made, preferring to create them in FCP and then After Effects.

In my studio we built this promo and it took about 10 minutes or less and then another 5-10 minutes exporting and washing it through Flash.

It's a visceral thing, but yes it can be taught and I think Dom took away a few tips.

One is identify a style and copy that. I trawl through Apple Trailers looking at new editing styles.
Secondly don't be afraid to experiment.

I laid the bare bones of this short promo within a few minutes, influenced by the camera movement, then set about manipulating the film.

An experiment I play with some friends is to show them a match fire, ask them to close their eyes and then place some ice on the back of their hand.

Many swear they have been burnt.

We're so used to matching perceptions with outcomes that it can be difficult to look for new meanings. I'm a fine one to speak myself, but I do like the idea of being taken out of a comfort zone.

Doesn't always mean a shoot will be a huge success. 9/10 times I'll make good of it, but I'm greedy ( sorry) I'd like each one to satisfy an element within me that says, this thing that we do is being moved on, even if its in small steps.

One of my inspirations is the Ronin. I'll post one of his latest promos later today.

Making the promo Reel 2007/8

Promos - the stuff that sits either at the top of a prog, as a break within it, a pop music montage and in many cases a show reel.

Here's one I made for 2006/7 which is in need of an update.

I'll talk in more detail about promo making in a future in areas such as - the emotional and cinematic context, how different music affects the tone, the formula behind making a pop promo, and the big no nos.

But here's a 3 pointer tip

1. What's the purpose
I. What are you selling a company, someones on screen work ???
NB At one of my former jobs, they never looked at showreels that had music and fast cuts
If its for a journalism job, all you need is three items: one presenting, one interviewing and then a report wrapped up in less than 5 minutes

2. The music comes first
I look for music -sound - with an emotional draw
II avoid cliched music or that associated with something e.g. It's the final countdown.
III.Promos are like flares and date badly; the wrong music electro funk won't do you favours unless it's a send up

3. If you're using type - as in typography
I what message are you trying to get across
II Noooo to twirling type - unless you have the 80s in mind

4. Visuals need to be strong, comped in cases and processed for tonality; it's all in the feel.

Brightcove personal Videojournalism films

In one year as I recall I made nearly 500 videojournalism stories. Phew!

At the last conservative estimate at the studio I had some 800 beta tapes, 150 digibetas, 700 dvcam and countless VHS - that's a lot of stories, but I'll spare myself the embarrassement and try and be a bit more critical.

So here are some of the stories that are on viewmagazine.tv which I have now migrated to Brightcove, whose compression codec compared to Youtube is streets ahead.

Eventually the films should provide an interesting time line in videojournalism's many styles, which starts of looking like traditional TV before, something else...

The few uploaded thus far are more promo orientated, (something I enjoy doing from working in Soho) but here's the link, where a number of films I had to split into two for yourtube to get the compression right can now be viewed in their entirety. The Ferrari film for once doesn't come out looking like chewing gum.

At some point, I'll produce the Making of the film in Cairo between Robb Montgomery and me..