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I want to talk about an ineffable quality found in successful trade show videos. This quality characterizes videos which acheive effective communicate with the listener. It is inculcated into the video when the videographer recognizes that he is communicating with people like himself; reasonable human beings with human needs, human desires, human thoughts and human feelings. This quality is introduced into the video when the videographer dares to bare his own heart and acknowledge via the screen presentation that he or he as proxy for his client is a person like the people in his audience.
How is this ineffable quality expressed? To answer that question, I wish to compare the Dr. 2 shoes video found on the portfolio page of emotionpicturestudios.com http://www.emotionpicturestudios.com/portfolio with a sampling of trade show video clips presented by a video production company in California, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1839990747070661993#docid=-7483874065862199317 .
In the first video a full view narrator describes a diabetic shoe. The video addresses people who need diabetic shoes or people who sell them. It presents important facts about the shoe. Yet it also presents the facts in a way that is not pure documentary, but also imagistic and branding. Information about the shoe is alternated with motion graphics of the shoe or shoe parts, rotating on and off the screen. One important impression comes through, which is that the video knows exactly who it is targeting and it communicates directly to them.
Now look at the sampling of trade show videos clips by a California video production company. The visual quality of each video appears high. The splicing job is superb. But the film has not focus, no message, no narrator, no captions, no words in the background music, which only consists of repetitive synthesizer music. In this video, it is not clear who the target audience is and more importantly who is the communicator and what is being communicated.
The videographer who made the first video has perspective when it comes to balancing video effects and video essence. In his video, the video effects are an accoutrement to the essential human to human communication. In the second video, the video effects become the all, and the communication becomes the type of communication that takes place on a night club dance floor. There is communication on a night club dance floor, don’t get me wrong. When the room fills with music and the strobe lights and lasers and fibre optics are creating a wild light show, there are feelings communicated. But if two people in love spend lots of time at discotheques, they still have to spend other dates at the dinner table or on a quiet patio, communicating in order to make romance evolve to a decision to create a partnership.
The same principle is true with trade show videos. Before a viewer will make a decision about making a financial agreement, he needs to experience real human to human communication, which addresses his full thought, and not merely his temporary entrancement with visual or sound effects. We see that information being presented in the first video, but not in the second video.
If I had to name that special ineffable quality I would call it focus. A video needs a focal point which represents the point of human contact between videographer and viewer, which makes the viewer believe there is a real person communicating with him through the video; and therefore, the video i9s worthy of his time and attention.
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The Respower trade show video had a hard challenge to meet. According to information contained in the captions of their video, Respower is the largest 3D film laboratory, serving Hollywood and the film and video industry.. Their list of clients, including such television and film greats as Star Trek, is impressive. At the same time, the company, which services predominantly professional videographers and filmmakers, is almost unknown to the public.
In an industry, such as 3D production, it is not enough to produce a trade show video which describes what the company does, it has to show what the company does. As is apparent from the video, this company also felt the need to describe its accomplishments in words, so parts of the video were full of captions.
How does a trade show video accomplish all these goals? Respower opted for a collage style video. The two minute video presents segments of the company’s most successful 3D imagery coming on and off the screen in a temporal and artistic collage. In the second half of the video, captions present names of famous clients the company has worked for, as well as other pertinent facts about the company, such as their computer set-up, which is the largest in the industry.
If I was asked to judge this video, I would have to opt out, as I have different opinions about different segments. Certain scenes are very effective, others are, in my opinion, a bit busy, especially when you have a list of famous clients competing with as many as four simultaneous segments of famous 3D effects the company has produced for television, video and the theatre.
Impressive scenes, include the start, a traditional 10, 9, 8, second countdown, scene frequently seen in the theatre. This style tells us immediately that the company is active in big Hollywood style movie productions. Other impressive scenes include a rocket taking off from a boat, a dinosaur peddling a bicycle, a plane stuck in a storm. In the middle of the video the company presents a rapid sequence of multi-video collage, which in my opinion was too short and too busy to follow. Subsequently, the video presented a captivating 3D scene of a fantasy stairway entrance to a magical wizard’s palace. However, the powerful scene was now competing with a wealth of captions as the company attempted to present names of its famous clients.
There is another effective scene at the end. The caption tells us that the company employs 100 computers simultaneously the largest technical setup in the industry. And we see a motion graphic depicting a 100 computers linking together in a formation that appears to be floating on water. The scene gives a sense of the power of the company’s technological capabilities.
I can feel for the frustration of this company, which while one of the greats in the 3D industry, is virtually unknown to the public. It wants, therefore, to present a comprehensive albeit abbreviated display of its great accomplishments and famous clients. The result, in my opinion does injustice to the individual 3D segments within the video.
I do not in any way mean to be critical of this video, it is certainly not a bad video. The overall effect, amplified by action style background music is impressive. But I believe, that other viewers, like myself are a bit frustrated by some of the interesting scenes that came and went too quickly, or else we were distracted a bit by competing scenes.
On a spectrum between documentary and branding, this is certainly a branding video. It’s goal, which it accomplishes, is to leave the viewer with images of the impressive powerful ability of this company to create 3D imagery. However, branding videos have no need to present all the information or all the imagery about the company. In fact, by leaving out some images and lingering longer on others a branding video is bound to make an even greater impression.
I also concluded that it might have been more effective to vary the pace of the video. Both the music and the pace run from start to finish. But life isn’t like that. Having a slower segment in the middle might have added temporal texture to the video, and made it more believable.
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A successful company is challenged when it is confronted with a new project, which requires them to meet a new challenge and new level of excellence. And when they meet that challenge, then their company grows and expands.
Diginovations, home of creative video solutions, was challenged to create a trade show video for Microwave Radio Communications for the 2007 NAB trade show. Microwave had rented prime space booth, and so their trade show video would be the first video seen by visitors to the 2007 NAB convention convention floor. By 2006, HD video was the accepted standard at NAD, so this added yet one more requirement to the exacting challenge.
Diginovations accepted the challenge, and created an exciting video, which drew myriads of spectators to the Microwave Booth.Their video was imagistic, it was a branding video, and it succeeded in capturing and conveying the excitement, which wireless radio communication has brought to broadcasting.
What is most spectacular about the Diginovations video is that is succeeds in the space of 4 compact minutes in presenting most of the exciting types of imagery that one would expect to be associated with the radio communications industry.We watch as television crews travel by helicopter to cover on the minute spots news events, accidents, sporting events, rescues, fires. We watch broadcasting crews setting up their equipment and dismantling it. We see several fast motion segments which transform the routine actions of the broadcast crew into rapid action scenes that serve to convey the sense of urgency and haste which we associate with on the spot broadcasting.
Spliced in with scenes depicting the news events being covered and the means of transmission, are shots of the front line cameraman capturing the raw news footage. Shots of skiing, and other winter sports are emphasized, in the video by the Boston video company.These scenes reflect strong editing inclusion choices because these are sports which connote speed, accuracy, action, all elements that enhance the image the video is creating about Microwave Radio Communications.
The visual story line is backed up by exciting synthesizer music, which presents an enlarged theme not unlike the short music spots we are used to hearing before live televised broadcasts. While the video presents occasional captions, which enhance the branding, they present some of the written material in a very creative way. The company name is blazoned on the inside of their large concave disc microwave broadcasting antennae, which appear in the video from time to time.
The Microwave Radio Communications %KLINK3% presents exciting ways in which branding can be conveyed through good choices of video footage, which convey the imagery that people expect and want to see, in the companies field of endeavor.