Well, one assignment of the POB online class is the production and spreading a video for social media. The following, I’d like to tell you something about the what, who, why and how of the video – from the first idea until the realized “piece of art”.
Idea and first concept within 15 minutes
When I first get the assignment of making and sharing a video, I was like OMG – but more in the negative way. The crucial question was “What will this video be about??” and for some days I had no idea. There was just no topic which inspired me and that will be interesting for my viewers. But like so often – when you are not really focusing on the assignment – an idea suddenly popped out of nowhere and within seconds I was completely convinced about it.
It was Friday evening and I was searching for some amusement on the Internet. As I had school all day, I was not able to watch one of my favorite TV shows. Fortunately, there is the opportunity to watch it online. So, I did exactly that. Of course, there are some commercials in-between the program. And even though I tend to ignore them, tada there was the answer to all my questions: an insurance company asks the viewers to participate in a contest to become a fan ambassador at the 24h-race of the Nürburgring (famous motor sport event). Hmm, interesting – so I visited the website to see what you have to do for winning that priceless prize. The contest was: posting a video or picture of yourself telling the audience and an expert jury why are you the perfect fan ambassador. First I was like “urgh, another video to do”, but then “actually, I could combine these two assignments”. And then, within ten minutes, I just wrote down a small script for the scenes of the video.
The concept
I have to confess that I am passionate about cars and motor sports. I have no idea where it comes from, but I remember playing with toy cars when I was little and watching Formula1 when I was younger. I still watch the Formula1 championship every time and some when I like to watch one live from the race track. As a consequence, I would like to express my love for motor sports in the video to convince the audience that I am a perfect fan ambassador.
From that, my idea derived of presenting a car like a love of life/love at first sight: in a first sequence I like to present a conservation between two girls in which one is so excited about the fact that she has fallen in love so that her friend has the imagination that she found the love of her life. In the second sequence it will be revealed that she is not talking about someone human, but the most amazing car ever(or in English). And she describes every characteristics which a boy might have referring to the features of the R8 – for example the headlights as beautiful eyes, the powerful engine as a pure heart and the nice sound as his voice.
[Just for the record, you can donate some money that I will be able to purchase the Audi R8. As a special incentive you have the opportunity to decide which colors the side blades will get 😉 ].
The target group
I guess my video is not really interesting for a majority of the viewers. But I like to see it as my application for the contest. Therefore, I have a certain audience for the video – other car and motor sports lovers as well as a expert jury consisting of a German racing driver, the head of the organization team at the 24h-race as well as the CEO, the marketing and the event/sponsoring manager of the insurance company.
Editing for dummies
The real difficult part was producing and editing the video. Even though I exactly know what to show in my video, it took me hours to produce and edit it. Luckily, Windows Live Movie Maker is not difficult tool to work with, but I spend hours on searching for high quality pictures of the car – in the end I decided to take official photos from Audi.
I actually really struggled with the issue of presenting myself in the video. Due to the concept I had, there has to be scene with me in it telling a friend about the love of my life. I was thinking of shooting a phone call situation, so that nobody is forced to appear in the video. But still I did not really like the idea of appearing in the video myself – it would have been no problem, if the video would be only shown to the lecturer and the class; but posting it on Facebook and YouTube is another caliber.
As you can see – in the end I shot a small sequence with me “acting”. To maintain a bit of privacy, the viewer could only see me from sloping behind and you hear my voice.
The final difficulties occurred, when I cut the video with the voice over in different pieces to put them in-between the pictures.
Post-it
As I want it to be more interesting, I will post the first scene of the video and asking my friends to like and maybe share it. After a few days I will then post the second part. Therefore, I hope the first scene will act like a teaser, introducing the concept and raise the question of “Who is he?”, the second sequence will thus give the answer and reveal my passion about cars.
sonlineg 