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The Task: So for this video, our undergraduate chapter needed a promotional piece for an upcoming neophyte presentation. For some background, I advise the chapter at UMD. With us being a small chapter, I’ve taken on a lot of the media and communications for us. Given the new members’ line and ship names being music-related, as well as the Founders’ Week theme being MTV-inspired…I knew I had to get creative.
Inspiration: Ideas truly come to you when you’re least expecting it. Walking across campus from my car to my desk one morning, I started to rack my brain about what I could possibly do for this video. It needed to be engaging, brief but detailed, and honestly…just cute.
As I thought about other music-related topics, the scene of T-Pain during the introduction to Kiss, Kiss popped into my head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNII9PDlFJ0 .
Kanye West on Sway in the Morning on SiriusXM in November 2013 responding to Sway Calloway’s question as to why the then budding fashion designer didn’t just invest in himself rather than wait for corporations.
Then my mind was just flooded with clips from beloved (and some not so beloved) talk shows: Wendy Williams, Rickey Smiley, the Breakfast Club, Sway in the Morning.
Planning and Execution: Like I said, the video needed to be snappy and to the point. In any good promotion, you know you’ll need to include the most basic of information that’s relevant to your viewers. In this case that was the show
date,
time,
location
Outside of that, it needed some pizazz. If you’re familiar with Black Greek Letter Organizations, you’ll notice the very intentional and timely promotional and recap videos chapters post around the time of their neophyte presentations. Everything from the outfits, the backing tracks selected, the camera cuts, and to even the color grading has a meaning and thought behind it.
I wrote up the script to reference our Founders’ Week theme, as well as some of our common sorority motifs (“1922”, “SGR”, etc.) I tend to be wordy when it comes to scriptwriting, so I kept the short duration of the clip in the forefront of my mind. With the short turnaround time, the concept needed to be as simple as possible.
Once the script was written, I worked on the storyboard. For a majority of the scripted portion, there wouldn’t be any jump cuts or B-roll, except for maybe a few pans and close-ups. But what did need some planning, was the opening scene. I planned on working out of a One Button Studio on-campus at UMD. I knew it wouldn’t look exactly like a radio station, but with a little finessing, I could make it work. To set the scene, I always love a over the shoulder shot. With two sets of doors for our talent to walk through, I planned to shoot it from a few different angles for continuity’s sake. As for the ambiance, I also captured some shots of the recording sign and equipment.
In terms of preparing our lovely on-air talent to read the script…there wasn’t much LOL. My primary concern was getting the event details right. Creatively, as long as the concept that this is a radio host promoting a hot new music video (a.k.a. the neophyte presentation), then I was happy.
Post-Production:
The work in post was relatively simple. The biggest challenge was color grading between the camera on the tripod and gimbal camera. Not only were the two cameras just different brands, but the lighting in the One Button Studio was terrible. Details were getting lost in the shadows and couldn’t be restored. It was a balancing act setting up my DSLR to create our tight shot without too much grain.
