Unit 5 - Task 2b) Client meeting: 1 Negotiate & respond to the brief

Responding to the brief:

When I was given this brief offer by my manager I was immediately keen on taking it up. My main reasons behind why I chose to respond to this brief is because the brief itself is my category of expertise, I am a very confident with my filming and editing styles which I felt would come in very handy for a brief such as this one.

I responded to my manager within the day of receiving the brief telling him I would take up the brief offer and complete it for the given deadline. I also sent him a questionnaire for him to fill in. The reason for the questionnaire was to get as much detail out of my manager as possible about how he wanted the final video to be like. Below is a copy of the questionnaire table that he filled in and emailed back to me.

Approximately how long do you wish the advertising video to be?	Roughly around three minutes long seconds but no longer than minute. Time of the video does not matter too much because we won’t be putting this video forwards for TV promotion. YouTube is a much more likely location for the video you are going to make.
Should I include music? If so what music should I include? Any sound effects?	You may use copyright free music, as long as it is upbeat and has no swearing in it. Sound effect can be inserted in the video, but don’t insert them into unnecessary parts of the video. We are very keen for you to keep the sound in from your footage so that people listening can audibly capture the experience. Make sure you cut out any areas that include swearwords or other offensive language.
Shall I include important information in the video such as pricing or the logo? If so then when should I include it?	No, We only want the video to show people who are new to Skirmish paintball what it is all about. We will insert pricing and other vital information in text underneath the video.
Are there any rules or health and safety modulations I should know about if I’m about to film people playing paintball?  If so please list them.	The usual rules as if you were marshalling a game. Wear body suit and helmet. We might suggest a protective or paint proof cover for your camera. Just to warn you, we will not cover the costs for any of your equipment if it is damaged when filming.
What is the final deadline?	I don’t see the need for a deadline, but If you require one I would like the video done before late May.
What features of Skirmish Paintball would you like me to video? Paintball, Laser tag or Airsoft? Should I film gameplay, special events, or any other features?	I would like it if you featured game play of airsoft games only. We already have a large amount of past footage advertising paintball. However we have hardly any footage of airsoft.

Budget

There is no budget for my given brief because I am doing this brief for free. The camera and recording equipment is owned by me. I use editing software at home and on College site. The health and safety equipment was handed to me on the days of filming without any requirement of payment.

Project management and developing my final video from feedback

Now that I had all the information I needed to start filming I had to start managing how I was going to make the video. In other words I did pre-production for my promotional video.

Research into similar video ads:

I needed to do research into similar promotional videos to see what video capturing and editing styles they used to make their videos.  At first I found it difficult finding promotional videos along the same category, but a work colleague told that there was a skirmish paintball channel on YouTube.  The channel was very helpful to my research; I found the most common video capturing technique was filming the footage in a first person view using a head strap with the camera. I think this was good way of way of capturing footage because the audience could relate to it as what it would look and feel like if they were playing right then.

The majority of the videos I saw used montage editing techniques keeping the all the airsoft action on screen flowing at a constant rate. This is a technique I decided I would be using because it would help keep the audience interested and fixed on the video.

Below is the link to the Skirmish paintball YouTube channel that I used to research into similar video ads.

http://www.youtube.com/user/skirmishpaintballtv?feature=results_main