Critique my first "produced" video

What do you want your audience to learn from the video?
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Well...I think initially the idea of taking some video or photos from the air is to provide the wow factor. The purpose is to capture images/video very few if any in the area can do. As mentioned, golf course are terrible at photography. I did buy a 40 boom/pole to get some shots. Photos taken higher really showcase a golf hole better than shooting from ground level.

So your question made me think beyond just getting some good photos. When I make a video, I want the golfer/audience to get excited about their golf round before going. The video is to help sell the experience or get them excited to spend 4 hours on the course. I think they would also learn about the beauty of the course.

As far as simple words to describe my passion for golf.

* I love the beauty of golf holes. No hole is the same.

* I love the challenge of the game, the internal competition.

* The feeling of a well hit golf shot is better than sex..ok martial sex. (LOL)

* Being outdoors with friends enjoying the weather.

To break it down into simple words...hmmm.

* Course Beauty,
* Internal Competition,
* Time spent friends/family time,
* The golf experience

Not sure if that is what you are after...but off the top of my head..there it is.

ALSO - THANKS SO MUCH FOR HELPING ME ANSWER SOME QUESTIONS (in previous posts/emails)!!!! I have not purchased the stuff for FPV. Seems like the technology is moving quickly and hoping by spring/summer some invents a easier plug and play solution. (soldering scares me)...or integration with mobile device. I might be dreaming here. I am praying the gopro 4 is around the corner and it can do it all without cords and acronyms that make my head hurt. (LOL)
 
Ok.. Since I don't seem to be able to get anyone to play along here I'm going to instead subject you to a story. Just remember its your fault!

A good friend and I were sitting in one of our favorite lunch places. We were talking about creating videos. Specifically commercial videos with a message. I asked him to give me the rundown of how he would create a commercial for the restaurant we were having lunch in. He said pretty much what any of us would say - I'll show the sign on the door, come in shoot some people enjoying the food, have a VO about the menu and the fresh ingredients, etc.. Pretty much what we see in adverts every day. Very linear and very obvious. Nothing wrong with that but we can do better.

About that time the waiter came over to take our order. I asked him if he was OK with answering some questions about the restaurant. He agreed so I started asking questions. I asked him to give me a few descriptive words that captured the essence of the restaurant. I asked that he didn't use the obligatory "nice" "tasty" and such. He responded.. FAMILY, HIGH ENERGY, LIVE MUSIC. I asked what his favorite thing about working here. He responded how well everyone gets along and how much they have passion for serving the best food possible.

I thanked him for that and then turned to my friend - Now what would you shoot?

The concept here is to distill your subject of interest down into very simple but very descriptive - and relative - set of words or phrases. Create your concept around those words and phrases. As an example - if one of the phrases for the golf course is "great weather all year" then that should become something that is actively communicated in your shots. Create shots that SAY - GREAT WEATHER ALL YEAR. Have the VO reinforce GREAT WEATHER ALL YEAR.

Once the shoot is done you aren't done with those descriptors. Use those same descriptive words and phrases to guide your edit after the shoot. The more a video clip conveys ideas (hopefully multiple ideas) from your list the more prominently it needs to be presented in the final video. Craft the message. Shape it. Present it. Your audience will get it.

This is how you can create story and interest where there my not be a clear narrative. The story is the place and the story is how the place makes you feel or the enjoyment of the experiences you have when you are there. The story doesn't have to be a novel. It just has to make sense to your audience.
 
brianweis said:
As far as simple words to describe my passion for golf.

* I love the beauty of golf holes. No hole is the same.

* I love the challenge of the game, the internal competition.

* The feeling of a well hit golf shot is better than sex..ok martial sex. (LOL)

* Being outdoors with friends enjoying the weather.

To break it down into simple words...hmmm.

* Course Beauty,
* Internal Competition,
* Time spent friends/family time,
* The golf experience

Not sure if that is what you are after...but off the top of my head..there it is.
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YES!! That is exactly what I'm talking about. Thanks for answering those. We were both submitting messages at the same time. :)

Here is a followup - If you were to use your imagination to create the image or series of images in your mind how would you communicate "internal competition"?

Also - What is the golf experience?
 
FYI, this isn't MY idea here to use keywords and phrases to craft a presentation. This is a well worn marketing technique. I do put my own personal spin on it in practice but the concept itself isn't new nor does it originate from me. I do use it all the time though. It is EXTREMELY effective.
 
LandYachtMedia said:
Ok.. Since I don't seem to be able to get anyone to play along here I'm going to instead subject you to a story. Just remember its your fault!

A good friend and I were sitting in one of our favorite lunch places. We were talking about creating videos. Specifically commercial videos with a message. I asked him to give me the rundown of how he would create a commercial for the restaurant we were having lunch in. He said pretty much what any of us would say - I'll show the sign on the door, come in shoot some people enjoying the food, have a VO about the menu and the fresh ingredients, etc.. Pretty much what we see in adverts every day. Very linear and very obvious. Nothing wrong with that but we can do better.

About that time the waiter came over to take our order. I asked him if he was OK with answering some questions about the restaurant. He agreed so I started asking questions. I asked him to give me a few descriptive words that captured the essence of the restaurant. I asked that he didn't use the obligatory "nice" "tasty" and such. He responded.. FAMILY, HIGH ENERGY, LIVE MUSIC. I asked what his favorite thing about working here. He responded how well everyone gets along and how much they have passion for serving the best food possible.

I thanked him for that and then turned to my friend - Now what would you shoot?

The concept here is to distill your subject of interest down into very simple but very descriptive - and relative - set of words or phrases. Create your concept around those words and phrases. As an example - if one of the phrases for the golf course is "great weather all year" then that should become something that is actively communicated in your shots. Create shots that SAY - GREAT WEATHER ALL YEAR. Have the VO reinforce GREAT WEATHER ALL YEAR.

Once the shoot is done you aren't done with those descriptors. Use those same descriptive words and phrases to guide your edit after the shoot. The more a video clip conveys ideas (hopefully multiple ideas) from your list the more prominently it needs to be presented in the final video. Craft the message. Shape it. Present it. Your audience will get it.

This is how you can create story and interest where there my not be a clear narrative. The story is the place and the story is how the place makes you feel or the enjoyment of the experiences you have when you are there. The story doesn't have to be a novel. It just has to make sense to your audience.
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Fascinating stuff ! and what a brilliant way to start a new project.
 
Being a fly on the wall is great right now. Love where this thread is going.

The golf world is especially one which the management we will be dealing with will have little or no creative input. I'd bet the initial input we get from them would be "make us look good" or "do a tour of the course." Many pros and golf organizations are not technically savvy and are downright old fashioned. They also have limited budgets, but who doesn't I guess. These will be hurdles to deal with.

We will have to help those we are working with to get those keywords, phrases, and concepts they want to convey. It will be up to us to suggest ways of doing that and also input new ideas and supplementary concepts.
 
mediaguru said:
Being a fly on the wall is great right now. Love where this thread is going.

We will have to help those we are working with to get those keywords, phrases, and concepts they want to convey. It will be up to us to suggest ways of doing that and also input new ideas and supplementary concepts.
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Yes indeed. It is for sure the creators job to coax out the info from the client. Using the keyword technique is a great way to get the process started. You can also ask the question multiple ways such as - how is this property/product different from others? Distill that answer into a short phrase or keyword.

Once you have those concepts down you get to put on your creative hat and come up with shots that speak to as many of them as you can. If you can hit multiple concepts in one video clip that will make that clip very important.

To close the loop you need to present this info to the client and get them to buy off on it before you shoot. Explain the keywords to them and see how they react to them. If they are favorable then move forward. If they don't understand or question the keywords then you may want to do some followup and find more relative words. Filter any out that are too obvious like - FUN. Have at least one keyword be anchored in an emotion. Feeling is important.

Getting the client to buy off on the the descriptors is important. If you shoot video that SAYS (insert descriptor here) then you will be creating a video that the client has already agreed with. That doesn't mean they will like every edit or every shot but if you communicate the approved concepts in the video back to them they will have few objections to the final product. This can save you LOTS of time in having to fix something later.

I hope that the concept of PreProduction Planning is starting to become obvious here. You have to plan ahead to make a good video. I hope this info can come in handy for others reading along as to how to improve their own videos. This process even works for kids birthday videos. :lol:
 
LandYachtMedia said:
Have at least one keyword be anchored in an emotion. Feeling is important.
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This struck a chord with me. There is nothing I like better in my home videos of trips etc than seeing my wife or relatives shed a tear because I have created that emotion, often out of non emotional scenes. Its when the image, the pacing and the music collide that sets it off. I often feel it myself and when I get that gut feeling I know that its right. Using the phantom just gives us even more opportunities for moments like that.

Brilliant.
 
I will echo that most golf courses are not marketing minded. For my purposes once again, I think the bulk of what I am going to do is get photos since they are needed for my sites. (easier and faster than video editing)

I am sure I will have some test flights recorded and cool footage of flights over courses. But if I put any on my site I will do a 30 second-1:00 promotional video. Storyboard a few ideas/keywords and go from there.

I will share this as an example of what a video looks like when the scope/purpose is not clearly defined or thought out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2nC1I51jjA

I have a golf course client who does a lot of golf outings. When the outing starts a long string of carts go out and he shot a photo from the ground that looked cool. He wanted to take it from the air and in video. By luck, the owner knew some guys that had a quad. In their defense, they are not golf video guys. They use the quad to take photos for farmers. The aerial shots can help farmers determine how the crops are doing and weather they need water, fertilizer, etc. (how cool is that)

So the client wanted to capture the carts going out...the process got botched. I guess they have another video of it where a huge line appeared. The guys put together the video...after watching it just felt weird. Cool shots at time...but I remember thinking..how and why are you going to use this video.

The client after the fact says..I wish we could have done the video to showcase our outing business instead of just capturing a cool scene. He now wants a video to help sell an outing coordinator on why have an outing at our facility. He showed me a photo collage of one of the outings. There were photos of people having fun, partying, the banquet hall setup, some people selling raffle tickets making money for the nonprofit outing, great course photos. He said that collage embodied the experience.

Wow..I think I witnessed the process a few days ago.
 
Got to agree there is a lot of good, sensible stuff here about the crafting of a video and telling a story rather than just creating a succession of phantom shots one after another.

Sorry if I am taking this off the topic of golf; And I don't mean to pimp an edit I have just completed but coming up with a storyline is rarely easy. I was faced with hours of endless GoPro footage from two people that had never used a GoPro before. There is not a lot to shoot on a boat out at sea and what they did shoot was pretty repetitive. It took a few weeks of head scrathcing and two false starts before I came up with a theme that seemed to link it all together. Morale of this story don't rush into editing.

http://youtu.be/sRch2Uf8Bcw

I gather the vidoe is blocked in Canada because of copyright on the music used so sorry again to anyone there.
 
Fair Game said:
coming up with a storyline is rarely easy. I was faced with hours of endless GoPro footage from two people that had never used a GoPro before. There is not a lot to shoot on a boat out at sea and what they did shoot was pretty repetitive. It took a few weeks of head scrathcing and two false starts before I came up with a theme that seemed to link it all together. Morale of this story don't rush into editing.
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Well I just watched your video and I had to do so in silence as I didn't want to wake anybody here. I will watch it again tomorrow but just wanted to say thats the first time I have watched any video on Youtube in silence and watched it to the very end. Why, because your story was compelling and even works in silence. It will be interesting to see how adding in the sound effects how I feel about it.
 
Thanks for positive words. There is no intention to take 'Mediagurus' posting off topic but story telling and taking your audience on a journey is crucial to any film.

Like others on this thread I felt it would have been nice to see some ground based shots intercut with the Phantom footage.

Think about taking your GoPro off the copter from time to time. If you want silky shots to match gimbal footage buy a Steadicam Smoothe
 
Fair Game said:
Got to agree there is a lot of good, sensible stuff here about the crafting of a video and telling a story rather than just creating a succession of phantom shots one after another.

Sorry if I am taking this off the topic of golf; And I don't mean to pimp an edit I have just completed but coming up with a storyline is rarely easy. I was faced with hours of endless GoPro footage from two people that had never used a GoPro before. There is not a lot to shoot on a boat out at sea and what they did shoot was pretty repetitive. It took a few weeks of head scrathcing and two false starts before I came up with a theme that seemed to link it all together. Morale of this story don't rush into editing.

http://youtu.be/sRch2Uf8Bcw

I gather the vidoe is blocked in Canada because of copyright on the music used so sorry again to anyone there.
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That certainly wasn't OT.

Here are my thoughts. If you leave the video as is you need to change the music between segments. That was a bit long to carry a single musical theme. Overall the video is pleasant to watch. It could use some VO to tell us more about what they are doing and why. Also the one part where the guy is talking at the helm you need to duck the music so we can understand him clearly or take the voice out all together. It is distracting to "almost" hear it.

If you still have access to those guys I would setup and interview and have them tell the stories of the trip. Tell why they are making the trip. Then use all the gopro footage as b-roll to support what they are saying. You could end up with a pretty intimate story about them and their trip.
 
[/quote]Here are my thoughts. If you leave the video as is you need to change the music between segments. That was a bit long to carry a single musical theme. Overall the video is pleasant to watch. It could use some VO to tell us more about what they are doing and why. Also the one part where the guy is talking at the helm you need to duck the music so we can understand him clearly or take the voice out all together. It is distracting to "almost" hear it.

If you still have access to those guys I would setup and interview and have them tell the stories of the trip. Tell why they are making the trip. Then use all the gopro footage as b-roll to support what they are saying. You could end up with a pretty intimate story about them and their trip.[/quote]
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Can't argue with you comments. There are three edits that I personally don't like but sometimes you can only go with the material you have and this was one of those times.
Regarding sound. The guy on the helm was barely audible at the start and I pushed that track to the limit. Dipping the music further to bring him forward was an assault on the ears and didn't work either (nature of the music). I was tempted to miss his opening sentence out but as the cameraman had started to walk closer the movement made for an ugly cut. Lesser of two evils.
Thought about putting subtitles on but decided against it in the end.

Regarding music. The more tracks you use the greater the risk of your video being blocked by YouTube in one or more countries. Always do a test submission before you edit to music and make sure that it is not blocked before you commit to the edit.

One of the guys in the video also has problems gaining access beacuse it is blocked by his ISP!
 
Fair Game said:
Regarding music. The more tracks you use the greater the risk of your video being blocked by YouTube in one or more countries. Always do a test submission before you edit to music and make sure that it is not blocked before you commit to the edit.

One of the guys in the video also has problems gaining access beacuse it is blocked by his ISP!
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This is a problem. You may want to tell people to try the app called Youplayer available via the app store for IOS. It will play those videos that refuse to play on iPhone/ipad because of a track you may of used.
 
You may want to look into a royalty free music library. I use tracks from both SmartSound and Digital Juice. You can find free royalty free music as well.

That doesn't guarantee that the music police won't tag you (as has happened with several of my videos). However in every case I have been able to provide them with my license info and the block has been lifted without it going against my account.

My advice is to only use music that you been granted license to use. Some are free and some are paid. Either way it makes you legal and able to push back when your videos are wrongly blocked.
 

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