Harvey King

Enterprise LAC+D.

Being assigned the brief of developing a promotional video to advertise a professional

earphone manufacturing company meant I had to utilize many different types of skills
and methods in order to produce a product based from the brief that is both high
enough in quality and to a relative matching standard to the ‘King Earphones’ company
name.

The most notable skills in which I had to consistently use were Time management skills,
effective planning and consistently communicating between different assets that i was
multi managing. Before even beginning to formulize how I would create this promotional
video I went through a series of stages in which I planned and documented all my
processes leading up to the final conceptualization of my idea. You can read my
individual steps taken during this phase in my Production Log - featured in the LAB
section of my weebly portfolio.

The production log encaptures all the stages and processes I went through in my
pre-production phase. I had theorised, evaluated and re-evaluated my ideas and
concepts over and over again trying to make sure that my ideas not only made sense
logically, but additionally in the environment of ‘King Earphones’ brief. A lot of my
analytical skills came into play here, being able to theorise different ideas and problem
solve if they would fit into the production scenario that I was trying to create, something
that gets my message across and promotes the product the light im trying to project it
as. Different shot types and filming techniques would all play roles in the final decisions
that would shape my final production, rule of thirds, distance from the lens, angles and
shot choices, speed of traversal and many more different factors all played parts in the
final outcome of my production. It was great that I able to effectively manage time in
such a manner that my production was all finished and usable, however I had to begin
developing onto the further stages of my production. I started to write up about the
equipment I would need, the actors and times ect. preparing to put my pre production
materials into effect.

Whilst I understood this would be something I had to troubleshoot whilst I was my

theorizing and conceptualizing my idea, it is worth noting that I didn’t actually own a pair
of wireless earphones, or solar powered wireless earphones for that matter, and thus I
had to find a way to ‘develop’ a pair. Improvisational and adaptation skills came into
play here which resulted in me brainstorming how I could pull this together, would I have
to commision a company to develop me a mockup design or create a realistic concept
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of the earphones? No, I didn’t have the time nor money to be spending on the
experimental development for a prototype product for my advertisement. I had to cave
in and use a pair of earphones that I had. I cut the wires from them, trying to make them
look as wireless as possible and then using sand belt machines and sawblades in my
Schools graphics department to create a design that is both unknown and could be
passed off as something akin to the visual functionality of a solar implemented piece of
technology (these rivets and deep cuts that I sanded and cut into the shell of the
earphone). Obviously If I had more time I could have potentially developed a better
looking mockup, however I think I performed exceptionally well in terms of using my
enterprise skills to develop a product that looks very much like a premium product, for
instance, the one I was promoting!

As I wrote in my pre-production log, I had encountered many issues during the filming
phase, disregarding the immense planning I carried out - showing that regardless of
how much planning you do, sometimes there are simply some factors that are
uncontrollable and you must be able to adapt to your situation, no matter what happens.
This ability to adapt and improvise under stressful conditions is an excellent skill to be
able to have and I was definitely able to stay under control within the production phase,
even under the chaos and discord of not having equipment, actors etc. etc.

Whilst filming on my second rescheduled time slot after experiencing the catastrophe
that was the first instance, I knew exactly what I was looking for, how I would achieve it
and my production was finally forming together as I had envisioned. I was making
significant progress and I was happy with this yet I still wanted to improve on what im
creating. I knew that my final filming slot would be enough to gain all the footage I
needed to finish my filming phase and allow me to proceed into the post production
phase and begin editing / compiling the footage. The third time slot for filming rolled
around and allowed me to finalize all the shots I needed to get, all footage was
accounted for and I could finally proceed onto Post production editing to finally see my
production come to life. Even though I had extensive issues during the filming phase, I
was physically setback but mentally I was still strong, ready to continue and compile the
edit that I knew would come out as envisioned, this was what kept me going; the
understanding and knowledge that what I was creating was going to come out just as
envisioned and meet not only me personal expectations but the briefs as well.

Editing my video together is where I really got to shape this into what I wanted. I played
around with a multitude of different effects and most importantly, music. The close up
shots that I so heavily made the focus of my video was so flexible with allowing me to
decide what music I wanted to pair with it that I tried multiple different soundtracks,
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whilst from the same genre of instrumental pieces, I was able to explore different
emotional backtracks that were underlying within them. For instance, an emotional
track: worked great, more of an unbeat triumphant track paired well too, however, I
settled with a somewhat mix of the two - I feel it works best as it has parts of detectable
upbeat and joyous segments as well as slower and calmer, relaxed segments that not
only contrast so heavily in a positive manner, but provides the best of both worlds with
its audible duality.

Due to my only audio inclusion being music, no dialogue or ambience, the scene on
screen transforms from an event into a journey, something to watch, follow, experience.
I chose this approach as I believe that a journey is something much more spiritual,
something that can impact someone, leave a dent, allow itself to be understood as
something to remember - perfect for an advertisement. I think this epiphany of
understanding formats came from my study on industry pioneers who took a similar
approach here as I have.

The visuals on screen were something I tried my hardest to get right, filming the shots I
filmed, trying to get the perfect framing for a seamless, continuous graphic match of the
silhouette of my subject traversing through multiple different locations via a moving shot
of the camera, through left to right and right to left on each consecutive, reflective cut.
This turned out relatively well and as anticipated, works exceptionally well with my audio
choice - as noted above. This concept that I tried definitely paid off in the way I hoped it
would, providing a sense of individuality wherever you may go (the subject traversing
throughout many different locations and environments), the choice to keep the subject
and emotional state the same throughout the different locations worked great as it
allowed me to not only adjust any emotional perception with my music choice (similar to
the kuleshov effect) but also allowed me to present the subject as oneself moving
through environments with no disturbance from the outside world - blocking any
negativity like loud noises from the outside world (direct cause of the product)- the
subject was in their zone. The graphic matching silhouette matching proved a little
harder than expected.
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I of course anticipated the issues with matching the distance from the lens and actor but
I tried my best to measure it on the day and whilst most clips came out with success,
there were a few that were either a little too far out, or too far in. I remedied these issues
by either selecting clips of higher quality of by rendering the clips with a higher zoom
ratio to the other clips, trying to see how well I could match the transitional clips without
getting to a point where pixels started to be visible and compromise the integrity of the
upcoming or prior clips.I used a mixture of these two previously discussed remedies in
the final outcome of my production and believe that they both worked perfectly well in
terms of keeping my production at the quality of which that I desired - and the brief
desired. I understood what effect I was going for in the pre-conception of my idea and
upon editing and compiling all of the content together in one, I can conclude that my
prior selves intuition and understanding was stop on - concluding this production as a
success in any respect of the term. There was a lot of self assessment and self criticism
that went into the refinement of my product that helped me understand exactly what was
working, where and why.

Rounding out to the end of the production, I implemented my title card - an animated
logo with text overhead, left, right and below of the logo, providing a little micro-slogan
and information on the product below to round off the video.

After I received feedback from my teachers, and some peers, specifically to re-edit a
few clips after watching all my drafts, change the font typeface from the above
screenshot (above screenshot is the final typeface change) and re-evaluate how well
the shots work together, I headed off to do just that. My ability to effectively
Harvey King

communicate over a timeframe with the multiple different people that I received
feedback from, allowed me to manifest a vision of the newest draft of my edit that I
could develop. Nearing the end of the deadline for the production, I went to plot out
what I would change within the production, a rough time frame in order to complete it
and how it should end up as a final product, following this little plan I developed, I set on
to tweak my edit to what would now be on its final rendition. I absorbed the feedback
from my peers and developed a more rounded out, whole and fleshed out edit. Upon
presentation to my peers and teacher, it was greeted with good reception. The music
paired great with the visuals, setting a good level of pacing that matched the visual
aspects, good use of framing and shot types whilst utilizing a good concept with the
equipment available and providing a unique take on the format with no ambience or
dialogue to a good degree of success.

As a conclusive statement, I believe that this production was a success. I’ve managed
to successfully promote the product in which was pitched in such a manner that I
achieve what I set out to do, from start to finish. A huge portion of the success from this
production is credited towards the effective usage of my enterprise skills -
understanding scenarios, troubleshooting problems from planning or by adapting on the
fly and improvising, making the best out of any situation I’m in, communicative skills,
time management, teamwork and extensive planning. All of these qualities and skills
helped tremendously during this production process and has allowed it to turn out the
way it did. If I had to change of reshape any of the aspects of my production it would
most likely be tweaking some of the quality of film footage. I think the idea of the
production and the concept is very nice and given the chance to make changes I would
simply remain with the idea, just fix up some of the areas where the camera was a little
shaky or the framing was a little too high (allowing me to not need to increase the scale
ratio in post to match the silhouette in the following or previous frames). Additionally,
increasing the range of locations or weather scenarios could also add an interesting
dynamic of more time passing or events that you may experience, as a person and as a
viewer. This would just increase the overall quality of the production, giving it a more
professional and aesthetically pleasing perception.