Making Videos for Preshow

acrouch · Post by **acrouch** » February 21st, 2006, 8:35 pm

The Advertising committee met today and set some recommendations for the preshow video commercials.

In order for us to show as many commercials as possible for as many shows and troupes as possible before each show, commercials should be no longer than 30 seconds.

So if you're working on a video for your troupe or show, try to keep it to 30 seconds.

We'll be making some commercials soon, so keep your eyes peeled.

Evilpandabear · Post by **Evilpandabear** » February 21st, 2006, 11:09 pm

running the videos for a night i would also stongly recommend that all formats be mpeg or avi and NOT quicktime. while we could play quicktime, it makes things more difficult as you need one player to play all formats. the night i ran the videos i used VLC player as it is known to play multiple formats; however, quicktime causes some blips when it's sandwhiched inbetween mpegs, which most of the videos are. i sincerely dont think we need to regiment a strict policy on the 30 second rule, but keep it as a loose margin. i would say that there need to be an adamant line at 60 seconds, but keep it preferable to the 30-45 second length.

arclight · Post by **arclight** » February 22nd, 2006, 8:24 am

If we can translate the formats to something reasonable, we could get some mileage out of the spots at Hinterland Who's Who. All the clips are Quicktime or Windows Media but they probably could convert to something reasonable.

I suggest "Woodchuck", "Muskox", and "American Robin". "Moose", "Caribou", and a few of the seabirds would be good too.

mcnichol · Post by **mcnichol** » February 22nd, 2006, 11:41 am

Evilpandabear wrote:i would say that there need to be an adamant line at 60 seconds, but keep it preferable to the 30-45 second length.

I just want to second Jay on this. The point of these is not to make a music video or some narrative thingy, but just an "In/BANG!/Out" sort of promo. We just want to do something exciting to tease their interest -- Chris has done a great job of this with the Cagematch promo. Aside from losing any audience attention span, once everyone starts having promos to run, we simply won't have the time to run much before each show if they're all breaking the minute barrier.

Additionally, the point of these (as I understood it) is not to run as a film in a darkened theater, but just pre-show filler that people can talk over while the house lights are on (a la the Alamo). So if you are making a film, definitely don't make it dependent on too much sound -- expect that the audience will be chatting it up until the host in on the stage. P-graph did a great job of it with that creepy cat video -- it's simple, quick, and certainly creepy enough that it makes any audience member just turn and stare at the screen until their name appears. Perfect!

Wesley · Post by **Wesley** » February 22nd, 2006, 12:09 pm

I think you mean purr-fect.

See what I did there? Now that's good comedy. Seriously though, you have Roy to thank for that. More Parallelogramophonograph promo trailers on the way soon!

Evilpandabear · Post by **Evilpandabear** » February 22nd, 2006, 12:56 pm

Ideally I would prefer all the videos in DivX format, as it's great quality and small in size. There are plenty of good converters floating around in cyberpsace. Im currently using IMTOO which works fairly well.