Key Terms for Units 6 + 32

Language/Points to discuss for Practical Skills Unit

1. Video/Audio Equipment: 

• Cameras; lenses; tripods; lighting; camera controls
• Framing; composition colour balance
• Microphones; noise; interference; recording levels
• Checking equipment; cables; health & safety; risk assessment

      2. Liaising with clients: 

• Meetings; feedback; questioning; note-taking
• Audience demographics; age; gender; genre

      3. Appropriate procedures to complete productions for clients: 

• Roles: editor; cinematographer; producer
• Pre-production: schedules; recce; consent forms; scripts; storyboards
• Production; liaison with client; using appropriate equipment (light/sound)
• Post-production: transitions; effects; inserts; relation to brief; liaison with client
• Teamwork: discussion; safety

Language/Points to discuss for Promotional Video Production Unit

1. Codes & Conventions for promotional video production

• Style: informational; montage; talking heads; Content; form; promo; sales; information
• Current practice: film; video; equipment; editing; effects; formats; files 

2. Planning promo video 

• Client liaison: purpose; content; style; budget; audience needs
• Development: content; style; proposal; scheduling; resources; locations; equipment
• Health & safety: cabling; lifting; risk assessment; electrical equipment
• Legal/ethical issues: copyright; permissions; age; gender; race

     3. Be able to produce promo video 

• Production: techniques; single/multiple camera; sound; location; formats; communicate with client
• Post-production: log material; edit; rough cut; final edit; transitions; graphics; sound; file type

      4. Be able to reflect on own promo video work 

• Finished product: technical quality; suitability for purpose; meeting deadline; client feedback; audience feedback;
• Production skills: technical competence; time management; teamwork
• Format: presentation; written report 

Music Video: Examples/Inspiration

Promotional Video Production: Examples/Tips

Click to visit site

Tips from: promovideo.co.uk

What makes a good online video production

A good online video can be broken into 3 components
1/ Video production values
2/ Content, performance, storytelling
3/ Marketing considerations such as call to action and linking

The first 2 are applicable to all online video including information and training video while the third is more relevant to advertising and promotional videos.

Video production values

Most people are familiar with TV and cinema and can easily differentiate a quality and professional production from an amateur one. Apart from conveying professionalism for a brand, business or product, a well produced video helps to make the viewer more engaged and connected. The main components of production values are lighting, sound and editing and without due care given to these, even the highest quality cameras will look amateur.

For a more detailed look at lighting, microphone placement and editing techniques read my post on video production tips.

Until recently there were some essential differences between online video and traditional video production based on bandwidth limitations and the small screen used to display online video. Web video works best with close-ups as wide shots are harder to see on a small screen. Also, video compression used for internet delivery often made a mess of motion in a video. Now, with increasing broadband speeds, better video compression and the ability to watch video in full screen, I tend to place less importance on these considerations and employ more traditional production techniques.
Video content and performance

Obviously, the content in information and training videos is provided by the matter in hand but it is always worth remembering that video’s big forte is in conveying personality, emotion and motivation. Getting bogged down in too much detail and statistics can adversely affect the viewers’ engagement. Often the detail is best left to supplementary written material although the video can provide the key points and motivation to find out more.

People relate to people not numbers and stories are often best told through the eyes of one or several people rather than a large number or statistics. Usually people come across best on video with a healthy mix of professional, informal, authentic, natural, relaxed and personal. It’s usually best to avoid trying to perform or be funny unless you’re a comic actor. Humour often works best inadvertently or through spontaneous situations. The great thing about video is that you can have as many takes as you wish which hopefully will alleviate nerves and pressure though I often find the first take to be the best and most spontaneous. Client testimonials and vox pops at an event are often more effective at relaying the company message than a member of staff.

The content of advertising and promotional videos needs some attention. A 2-3 minute advert, promo video or product demonstration can be highly effective when the viewer already has some knowledge of the brand, company, product or act. If the goal is to spread the brand more widely through the highly effective video marketing methods now available, then the content is best concentrated on more universal appeal. Probably the most obvious type are ‘how to’ videos. There are 35 million youtube searches each month on ‘how to’ videos and a genuinely useful information video loosely related to the brand can be far more appealing to the online audience than a direct sell. I’m currently working on videos for the launch of a restaurant chain involving ‘how to’ videos for a variety of recipes by a celebrity chef. Action, extreme sports and humour are other popular subjects for online viral videos and these can sometimes be incorporated into corporate videos to create a blend of entertainment and promotion.

Video marketing considerations

If the goal is simply to raise brand awareness then a simple ‘how to’ video with a logo or company name at the beginning and end may be sufficient. If the goal is more specific then an effective and quantifiable call to action will be needed. In video sharing sites such as youtube, the call to action needs to be compelling enough to rise above the inherent youtube calls to action such as watch related videos, comment, subscribe, like, share. If you can’t beat the youtube background noise with something like a compelling discount or promotion then simply join them with a call to action such as ‘subscribe to our youtube channel’. This at least gets your foot in the door of your viewers attention and they’ll effectively join your video mailing list and be notified next time you upload a video.

Whatever the call to action, it’s usually most effective when displayed visually and spoken at the same time. URL’s need to be kept simple so people can remember them easily and pass them on in conversation. It may be a good idea to provide a URL specific to the video to be able to track the video’s effectiveness. Eg/ visit www.—– for a %10 discount. The ability to click on part of the video and be taken directly to a given website is provided by some third party companies and will certainly be more so in the coming years.

Finally some thoughts on the optimum length for online videos. For spreading virally, I’d recommend an upper limit of 2 minutes and less if possible. Too short however, and the viewer may be left with no lasting impact.TV news channels often have a maximum lime limit of 90 seconds or so for news stories. For many performance acts and promo videos for businesses I find a length of 3-4 minutes a good balance between watchability and containing a substantial amount of material. For videos with a high entertainment value or compelling story the running time can go much higher and still remain highly engageable. The statistics that youtube has recently included on all videos enable you to see if viewers make it to the end of a video and if not, how far they get before switching off.

Other important considerations include where a video is placed on a web page, whether played directly via an online player or via a link and whether to embed a youtube video or upload it directly on a website. These issues and more are covered in my article ‘how to effectively distribute an online video’.

Jacques Lacan Talks About Psychoanalysis with Panache (1973)

Both psychoanalysis and psychotherapy act only through words. Yet they are in conflict. How so? There we have the question posed to psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and world-famous public intellectual Jacques Lacan in the video above, a clip from a scripted quasi-interview called Television whose answers play like his famous lectures. Watch it, or watch our previously featured video of Lacan giving a talk, and you’ll experience one quality that made him world-famous. Few others could combine such high-flown subject matter with such theatrically emphatic oratorical ability — an ability you can sense even if you don’t understand French. Fortunately, subtitles have been provided, offering Anglophones a chance to understand what connections the man saw between the unconscious, language, Freud, sexual relations, and comedy.

“There are, insofar as the unconscious is implicated, two sides presented by the structure, the structure which is language,” Lacan begins. “The side of meaning, the first side, the side we would identify as that of analysis, which pours out a flood of meaning to float the sexual boat.” These remarks come pre-written in the script of Television, something between a conversation and a play that grew out of Jacques-Alain Miller’s failed attempt to film a traditional interview of the psychoanalytic luminary. “After every cut, when it was time to start up again, Lacan shifted a bit in his discourse,” Miller wrote in Microscopia: An Introduction to the Reading of Television. “Each time he gave an additional twist to his reflections which were unfolding there, under the spotlights, thwarting any chance of bridge-building. We stopped after two hours; I gave him in writing a list of questions; and he wrote [Television] in about two weeks’ time. I saw him every evening and he gave me the day’s manuscript pages; then he read or acted out — with a few improvised variations — the written text. He made a spring-board of this false start.”

Source: openculture.com

'Fight Club': Psychoanalytical Perspectives

This paper (click on image) will outline and describe the main aspects of psychoanalytical film theory as well as provide relevant examples through Fincher's (1998) adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's 'Fight Club'.

Issues of spectatorship and identification will be addressed in accordance with the filmic apparatus theory as well through acknowledging Lacanian psychoanalysis as an extension of Freud's original theories.

Freudian Psychoanalysis

New Wave Timeline 1960’s

1960

• Federico Fellini's La dolce vita, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura, and Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers spearhead the European art cinema's modern turn.
• Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature
• Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, is one of a cycle of British "Kitchen Sink" films dealing with everyday working-class life.
• Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom break new ground for representations of violence and criminal pathology.
• First ruby laser is built by Theodore Maiman.
• First successful hologram is produced.
• EG&G develops an extreme depth underwater camera for U.S. Navy.

1960s

• American drive-in theatre attendance peaks, then begins to decline as a new exhibition trend makes its appearance in the latter half of the decade: the shopping mall multiplex.
• Cinema, youth, and political cultures meet to produce several "new waves" around the world, most notably in Brazil, Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latin America, Poland, and Yugoslavia.
• Commercial colour film is perfected.

1961

• Eastman Kodak introduces faster Kodachrome II colour film.
• Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad, is a touchstone of reflexive, cerebral art cinema.
• Chronicle of a Summer by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, an experiment in collaborative ethnography and cinéma verité techniques.
• New York premiere of John Cassavetes's Shadows, a gritty, improvisational film exploring the theme of "passing for white" against the backdrop of white racism.
• In Hong Kong, the Shaw Brothers (Shaoshi) builds Movietown, a 46-acre complex of studios, sets, laboratory facilities, and dormitories.
• Notable films include Blake Edwards's Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’s West Side Story.
• Also in History: First manned space flight.

1962

• Terence Young's Dr. No, stars Sean Connery as Cold War superspy James Bond.
• Glauber Rocha's Barravento, is a foundation work for Brazil's Cinema Nôvo movement.
• New York Filmmaker's Co-op is organized by Jonas Mekas to support the production, distribution, and exhibition of experimental and avant-garde film.
• After a decade as Hollywood's reigning starlet, Marilyn Monroe dies of a drug overdose.
• David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia stars Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif.

1962-64

• Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man, emblematic of a cycle of lyric films aiming to record the act of seeing, the flow of imagination, and the sensation of emotion.

1962-69

• The major Hollywood studios are bought by and become subsidiaries of American conglomerates.

1963

• The film director as superstar: Federico Fellini's 8½
•  Senegalese writer/director Ousmane Sembene's Borom Sarret is the first indigenous black African film.
• William Asher's Beach Party, is the first in a series of teen-oriented beach films starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.
• Foundation of the Swedish Film Institute, revolutionary in its system of awards to quality films.
• Alfred Hitchock’s The Birds
• President Kennedy is shot to death in Dallas by a sniper, Lee Harvey Oswald.
• Also in History: Racial clashes, civil rights demonstrations, mass march in Washington
• Civil Right Demonstration, Birmingham by Charles Moore
• 126 Cartridge / Instamatic Cameras are introduced.
• Polaroid introduces instant color film.

1964

• Police arrest theatre owners on obscenity charges in Los Angeles and New York City for screening Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures and Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising, two scandalous works of the American underground.
• Popular films: Robert Stevenson’s Mary Poppins, George Cukor’s My Fair Lady, Blake Edwards’s The Pink Panther.

1965

• Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, is a stylised science-fiction adventure set in the future and shot entirely on location in Paris.
• Introduction of Super 8, a new amateur format.
• David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago
• Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music. 

1965-73

•  Also in History: Vietnam War. 

1966

• Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, emblematic of pop art cinema and of "Swinging London". 
• Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers relocates neorealism in Third World struggles.
• Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls, a two-screen film with random reel order, is the first mainstream success of the American underground.
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the first American film released with a rating ("SM"–Suggested for Mature Audience).

1967

• Mike Nichols's The Graduate and Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde garner huge ticket sales by appealing to young anti-establishment audiences.
• Wavelength, a famous Structural film by Canadian Michael Snow.
• Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn star in the last of nine films they made together in Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
• Also in History: Protests over Vietnam reach climax when 35,000 demonstrate outside the Pentagon.

1967-73

• European art films link social with sexual revolutions: Vilgot Sjöman's I Am Curious–Yellow, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema, Dušan Makavejev's WR: Mysteries of the Organism.

1968

• Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, is a science fiction film of great technical accomplishment and a visionary quality without precedent.
• Argentinean filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino's Hour of the Furnaces and Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment, key works of the New Latin American cinema.
• The Motion Picture Producers of America (MPPA, formerly MPPDA) introduces a new four-point ratings system ranging from "G" to "X" to replace the now defunct Production Code.
• Student demonstrations in Czechoslovakia, France, Japan, Spain, the United States, and West Germany generate a wave of politically engaged collective filmmaking.
• Launching of the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage, an important festival for Arab cinema held biennially in Tunis.
• Also in History: Assassination of Martin Luther King.
• Also in History: Tet offensive staggers Vietnam.
• Vietnam Execution by Eddie Adams (Viet Cong officer killed).
• Robert Kennedy Moments After He Was Shot by Bill Eppridge.
• Photograph of Earth from the moon. 

1969

• Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider criticise the American myth of individual freedom and appeal to a growing anti-Vietnam War protest movement; John Schlesinger's X-rated Midnight Cowboy wins the Academy Award for Best Picture.
• Launching of the Pan-African Film and Television Festival (FESPACO) in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso.
• Also in History: Woodstock Festival.
• Man’s First Moon Walk by Neil Armstrong.