Review Several Existing Video Clips

Creating video

Practice Model Assignment Scenario

THIS IS A GUIDED TRIAL ASSIGNMENT THAT WILL HELP YOU PREPARE FOR THE REAL THING

The Golden Clapper Board Award

You have read about an exciting video competition for young filmmakers aged 14 to 21 and have decided to enter. The Golden Clapperboard Award aims to inspire and reward young talent in the field of video making. It is awarded to the best newcomer every year.

The rules state that video clips should be at least thirty seconds long and include title and credits. Your entry should be exported in a suitable file format such as AVI, MPEG or WMV. Your storyboard should also be submitted with your entry, but your drawing ability is NOT being tested here!

There are five categories to choose from:

Best music video clip Best documentary clip Best TV commercial Best promotional video Best movie trailer clip (for an imaginary movie)

Finally, your competition entry must include an evaluation of your video.

Competition judges will be looking above all for the video’s suitability for its stated purpose and intended audience. Factors that may help you achieve this are: entertainment or educational value, originality and ability to tell a story or get a message across, audio and video editing that enhance the storyline and are appropriate for the choice of video genre.

* A ‘treatment’ is a written outline of a movie that is often used as a selling point.

Task 1 The Golden Clapper Board Award practice assignment Review several existing video clips

What you must do

Read through the assignment scenario carefully. For the practice assignment, decide which category of video you want to create. It will help the design and make stages of your own video if one of your reviews is for the genre of movie you intend to make yourself.

You may have already written some reviews of different types of video clip as you worked through section AO1. For higher grades, you should select your two best reviews and check that you have explained their good and not so good features with reference to their intended audience and purpose. Make sure that you have also suggested valid improvements in both cases with your reasons and identified features that you hope to use or avoid in your own movie. Proofread and spell-check the reviews for errors. Save your final versions as evidence.

A exemplar music video called “Waking up again and again”, directed and edited by two Year 11 students using Serif Movie Plus, is available on CD from Serif. Contact them on 0800 376 6868 or email [email protected]

Task 2 The Golden Clapper Board Award practice assignment Design a video clip

What you must do Read the Best Newcomer Video Award scenario through again.

1. Complete the Video concept map to focus your ideas.

2. Write a brief proposal and treatment for your planned video:  Give its title and identify the competition category you have chosen.  Describe the purpose of the video (What’s the key question it aims to answer? What’s its message?)  Identify your target audience  Explain how your design will try to achieve the purpose and reach your intended audience (outlining the storyline, concept and style may help you with this)  Compose a tagline to help you keep focussed on the main message or theme You can use the ‘Video proposal’ template to help you structure your proposal. Save it as evidence 3. Create a storyboard for your video to visualise all the scenes. Save it as evidence Print copies of your storyboard to share with your production team if you are shooting any original footage so that they know exactly what you expect of them. The storyboard will also help you when editing, particularly when sequencing clips on the timeline. In Task 3 you will add appropriate frame information about titles (e.g. the movie title or end credits, subtitles or any other text you want to use), any transitions you plan to use between frames, or special effects you might apply to a scene.

Task 3 The Golden Clapper Board Award practice assignment Create a video clip

What you must do

This task will take several lessons, so be sure to leave enough time to do it well. 1. Before you start to create your movie clip, update your storyboard to show how you plan to edit the video. Save the storyboard again as evidence. 2. Transfer the footage for your video and all the other assets you will need like still images and audio to your Assets folders (images, audio and video_sources) . 3. Open MoviePlus and choose to start a new project. Name your project with the working title of your movie e.g. leaving_home and save it as evidence. It will be saved as an editable MoviePlus document (.mpp). Be careful not to move any of the clips and other assets that you use because the links that MoviePlus creates automatically to your sources will be broken if you do. Use the help sheet to guide you. 4. Make a rough cut - Edit the clip sequence and add other assets you need, such as still images or cutaway footage, to the Timeline. Use the help sheet to guide you. 5. Trim and split your clips -Preview the raw clips you have sequenced on the Timeline and trim and split where necessary to discard unwanted footage and to tighten up the action. Save and preview your work frequently. Use the help sheet to guide you. Keep an eye on the total running time: will you need to add more footage or radically edit out to meet the 30-second minimum specification? 6. Add transitions and effects - Preview the footage you have already sequenced and trimmed. Identify at least one point where it would be appropriate to add a transition between clips other than a simple cut and select and add a suitable preset transition. Finally, select one effect that would fit the style and message of your movie. Apply it to an appropriate sequence. Use the help sheet to guide you. Save your work. 7. Add titles and credits - Preview the footage you have already edited. Add a title sequence and end credits if appropriate to your movie. Use the help sheet to guide you. If you have chosen to create an advert or promotional video, you could add a slogan or tagline, major sales features and product information as text. A music video could have some key phrases from the lyrics overlaid onto the images, as well as the album or track title and artist(s). Save your work. 8. Add audio - Preview the footage you have already edited. Insert additional Audio Tracks if needed for music, sound effects, or voiceover and drag the new audio files to the Timeline. Preview audio tracks simultaneously and then adjust the volume, and fade in and fade out the mix to match your purpose and the final effect. Use the help sheet to guide you. Save your work. 9. Export your movie - Read the assignment specification before previewing your movie, making sure that you have done everything you were asked to do. Check that your clip is at least 30 seconds long. Export your movie in the format that best suits your purpose. Use the help sheet to guide you. 10. Preview your video on different computers to make sure it works! You could try exporting it in several different formats or at different compression rates to compare results. Use the video formats guide to help you. Save all versions of your exported video to the export_files subfolder of your video_clip folder.

Task 4 The Golden Clapper Board Award practice assignment Evaluate your video clip

What you must do

Read the assignment scenario through carefully again to make a final check that you have included everything asked for and followed the specifications in the brief exactly. Review your video clip, making notes about the effectiveness of the following features:

 How suitable is the content for its purpose and audience?  How do you rate the technical quality of the edit? How smoothly do the different assets like video footage, stills and audio synchronise and fit together?  How effective and suitable are any titles and other text you used?  Do you get the message across clearly and appropriately?  Are the timings suitable? Is the pace appropriate and is the clip at least 30 seconds long?  What improvements would you like to make for the final director’s cut and why?

Your evaluation will be more credible and objective if you support your statements with evidence if possible. Feedback from others, especially members of your target audience, will be valuable in backing up what you say. If you have time, you may want to action some of the improvements you identify. You could take stills where you have made improvements or even screenshots of the action. Label these with a commentary explaining what you changed and why and save the document as evidence.

Using your notes and audience feedback write a detailed evaluation of your video and save it as evidence.

Congratulations! You have completed your assignment.