Corporate Video Pre-production Research

 

The Brief: 

We are being tasked by the admissions, marketing and engagement manager: Jon Dack to create promotional video material for the college website. It must be completed to a near professional standard and all videos need to limit themselves to 90 seconds.

We have been given the task of showing off the college’s curriculum offer. This video has some flexibility as it is a lot to cover so can stretch to the 2-minute mark and depending on the footage we gather there may be some separate 20 second department videos if possible.

Our contacts for this project are Jill, Chris, Barbara, Gary, Daniel, Lyndsay and Ellie. These are the team leaders for each subject.

The deadline for the rough cut is 27^th of November.

Specific Faculty Requirements: 

Daniel: Wants to show off practical work for engineering and the sciences, also can set up a fun maths lesson for us to come in and film so it looks less ‘boring’

Chris: PE and uniform services, a cross between practical and class work, to show it isn’t just practical football stuff. Maybe go and film in the gym to show facilities.

Social sciences: try and film some group work if possible (covid issues), shots of the teacher explaining at the front.

Ellie: Promote the technology and students using it. Highlight the newer courses (business T-levels and eSports). Media talks and visits. Student opportunities after college? Show off the software the students are using in lesson.

TV/Film

IT

Games

eSports

Computer science

Music tech

Creative enterprise

T levels

Film studies

Media studies

Lyndsay: Visual representation of everything art, definitely facilities like the dark room and textiles, she will clean up the classes for us when we film.

Gary: Earth and Life sciences. T levels in science and healthcare. Emphasis on results and his unusual subjects like geology and environmental sciences. He will arrange practical lessons for us to observe and take videos

Jill: wants to do a VOICEOVER

National Careers Week Task

Linking to our research task, for national careers week, we looked into research jobs into the creative field and wider fields. All information is collected from Find your perfect role in the creative industries - Creative Careers (discovercreative.careers)

Market Researcher:
This position is an interviewer. They interview people to find out what they think about products or services. This position may include:

Going up to people in the street, phoning them or visiting them at home

Persuading people to take part in a survey

Asking people questions and possibly video them

Recording people’s answers

Organizing the results and passing them to your supervisor

This position is entry level and can be obtained through an apprenticeship or after high school.

Market Research Analyst:
This position takes in the data from the researcher or a survey and study the statistics for preferences. The duties for this position are:

speak to clients to understand their needs

write proposals, describing how research will be carried out

manage relationships with clients

advise researchers about survey methods and design

project-manage teams

check the quality of the data collected

analyze the data using statistical software programs and computer models

present results in a useful way, through talks, written reports, graphs and tables

explain findings to market research executives

This usually requires A-Levels in a similar field or a degree.

Media Researcher:
These researchers support producers in looking for people and places to film media products. This position is entry level and can provide you with many entries into the media industry. The media industry is built on contacts the more people you know the more opportunities you have. Usually you would need A-levels or a degree primarily in media related courses to get this job.

The day-to-day duties might include:

discussing programme ideas and researching needs with producers

finding and checking information

searching media libraries and archives

writing briefs for presenters, or briefing scriptwriters checking copyright

finding studio audiences and programme contributors looking for locations

researching and writing content for websites and social media

Research Porfolio

 Primary Research:

This is an example of primary research That I conducted in class for the Corporate Video unit. This was me gathering information from our audience on my own, creating a questionnaire and handing it out to viewers first hand via email. It is primary as it is me conducting it, it being the most up to date feedback I can possibly receive.

Secondary Research:

This was me exploring secondary research for the advertising unit. We were tasked with looking into Unilever's products and how they appealed to their different demographics along with going in depth into existing adverts and see who they appealed to. We also researched other colleges to see how they presented themselves in their videos Jamie Larter Film and TV Blog: Initial Research: EN

Qualitative Research:

These are the detailed results from the questionnaire. Almost little reviews on what we can do better, along with explanations demographics: age, gender and occupation. This is very helpful as we saw what the audience liked and disliked and who was actually watching.

Quantitative Research:

SurveyMonkey thankfully curates all of the quantitative data into helpful graphs to visualise all of the statistics. These are all of the closed question answers. the graphs help to show trends in our audience.

Market and Audience Research:

This shows consideration for the target audience of my planned advert that sadly never got created, i spoke about the conventions of their original advert and how to appeal to a teenage audience.

Production Research
:

 This is the most put together form of production research we have conducted. This was for our first project which we were required to conduct every part of the pre-production. This is a great example of production research as our video production was very streamlined and we created a very accurate film sticking to the plans.

Qualitative Results

 

Quantitative Results

 

Primary Research Questionnaire

 

Evaluation Corporate Video (no Screencaps yet)

What was the task?


The task set out to us by the college marketing team was to create a selected promotional video to show what is great about the college. Some of the video topics included: ENhance, Why I Chose EN and UEA. We volunteered to undertake the East Norfolk curriculum offer. We were tasked with visually showing off every faculty in the college through filming interesting classes and having the leaders explain. The brief was delivered to us via Jon Dack in a classroom presentation and our clients were certain faculty leaders. I was required to email and schedule appointments with Ellie Buchan, Chris Duffy, Lyndsay Carlyon, Daniel Smith, Gary Hurd and Jill Beckwith.

What was your specific role?

I feel I had a lot on my plate in this project, undertaking multiple roles at a time. I feel mainly I had the role of producer, completing all the organization and research for filming in classes as we had to book in advance with each team leader over email. I conducted a lot of location recces and research into the college's courses to make sure we cover as much as possible. I also booked out most of the equipment for filming and let Jake focus on the audio as that was my weak point. I also primarily used the camera in the project as that was what I knew best. Specifically, I was the connection with the client, asking them what they wanted us to film and where they wanted us to go.

What was your favorite aspect of the task?

My favourite part of the task was filming and editing, putting all our footage into Premier. Our footage looked very professional in certain parts of the video and putting it all together was nice. Relearning how to remove the audio background fuzz was also very refreshing to see that I'm understanding the software we were using again. I just really enjoy finishing up the filming process, it comes with a good sense of relief, sitting down and uploading all your footage and starting to put it together. Adding the interviews and cutaways was also very nice as it just gives the video a sense of professionalism.

What was the most challenging part?

Organizing was one hundred percent, the hardest thing to do, setting up meetings with people I have never spoken to before was a big challenge to overcome too. If I knew before picking this video that I had to meet with 7 new people, I wouldn't have picked it. But it was good practice for life in general. Also just scheduling anything is extremely hard for me to do and I really struggle with it. I found myself missing lots of appointments purely because of email misunderstandings or just forgetting to check them at points. But we managed to overcome these blunders and meet with everyone to get the information we needed.

What did you take from the project?

I definitely generated better communication skills throughout this task, from wording emails formally to walking into offices I've never been into and asking how they want us to portray their department. It helped me realize the value of people's time and that it is super important to manage it and meet deadlines. We ran over deadlines or missed meetings countless times and dealt with the backlash, missing footage and fed-up teachers were all things we had to sort by rescheduling the meetings and employing others in class to help us film as the project was a handful for just 2 people at times.

What would you change next time?

Next time I want to handle pre-production and research very differently. Prioritizing the meetings and getting the information needed to start filming faster. Being pushy isn’t always annoying and is extremely necessary when clients aren't replying to emails and you are on a strict deadline. This would’ve drastically improved our production schedule which wasn’t very strong and hard to follow during the filming. I feel the recces we conducted could also be improved as all we did was take pictures of potential locations. Instead, we could’ve taken a camera and recorded test shots. There were many times we messed up shots which required us to return on different days with the correct lens or the slider to get the shot perfect. This also put a huge strain on the deadline as we had to take up more than one lesson slot to film a single lesson. In conclusion I would just use the time-keeping knowledge I gained and input it into finishing this project and any new projects I undertake.