Thursday, November 22, 2012

Mighty W.O.R.R.M. advertisement

This is a video I created, as an afterthought, from an assignment in my Oral Communications class at New England Institute of Technology.

The assignment was a 4-5 minute commercial, of an imaginary product or service, following two sets of rules which make up an effective advertisement:  Monroe's Motivated Sequence (attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, action); and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (physical, safety, belonging, esteem, self-actualization).

We were to deliver this fake ad in front of the classroom.  The original lasted a full 5 minutes, but for the sake of the short-attention-span folks who typically roam the internet, I've reduced it to 4 minutes.

The script, the placards with the images of the people, the sock puppet, and the flashing pen were all used in the live presentation. The music is public domain from Muse Open.



[Please view this video larger by clicking Play, then pointing to the upper, left corner of the video, where the title appears; Click on that title, and it'll take you to the YouTube site on which it was uploaded. There you can also enlarge it even more]

Thursday, November 15, 2012

My First Live Studio Production


Please forgive the scripts on table and lap.  The guest was not able to make it for the interview, so my instructor Mark Foley sat in for her and called himself "Jerry".  Basically he and the host (Mario Lima) had to learn everything on the spot.

But like the title says, this is my first attempt at a live studio production.  It's an assignment in my Studio Production class at New England Institute of Technology (NEIT).  For this one we tried to get ahold of a lady named Cheryl Vargas, a missionary and co-founder (with husband Carlos Vargas) of Hope Of Life International, for the sake of orphans in Guatemala.

I wrote the script -- both questions and answers, I was the director and technical director, and I created the lower third graphic.  The rest of the credits are listed at the end of the short.  All of the action is live.  The only thing I did in post was to add the lower third (there was a problem in the control room and we couldn't get it to work that day) and I made a little trim on the commercial break, so that everything fit into precisely 5 minutes.

The idea was that all four (there are only four of us left!) of us would have a 5 minute segment in a 30 minute show.  The five minutes includes time for one full minute of commercial break, which is substituted for some HD footage.

I can definitely see where I lingered too long on a shot or two.  But I hope to learn from that mistake.  There were also some color differences in the cameras, which we tried to get corrected in the control room but, like the lower third, it just wasn't happening that day.

The music is an excerpt from the track "Heard Them Stirring" by Fleet Foxes.
The footage taking place of a commercial ad is from Mammoth HD.


[Please view this video larger by clicking Play, then pointing to the upper, left corner of the video, where the title appears; Click on that title, and it'll take you to the YouTube site on which it was uploaded. There you can also enlarge it even more]