A Halloween Themed

announcement

There are many things on the horizon for MrcMedia. Some of which has already been reported, some is on-going. Some more immediate projects and some more long term. First on the agenda though, is our next major announcement. I thought the best way to introduce this would be through the medium of a fun video.

I left myself a little short of time to shoot and edit this one. In the nick of time, I managed to make this seasonal offering for Halloween.

The idea

The premise of this little video was meant to suggest a trailer for a monster movie. By only showing small areas and not the whole subject in the early shots, an air of mystery would be maintained until the end of the piece.

We dressed our son Casper up in his Halloween spider monster costume and I recorded him scampering around, playing in our living room. I also recording him making a monster like growl/roar noise which we have taught him recently.

never work with kids

Its been said by video professionals and directors alike “Never work with kids”

From my experience, although they produce incredible moments of magic, children (well, babies) have a unique instinct to not do as they are told. Casper was no exception to this.

We had left ourselves a whole day to record the footage we needed. The idea was that we would be able to record all sorts of activities and angles. We figured we would have plenty of footage to extract clips from. Casper, it seems, had other ideas. He was only content to be wearing the costume for about an hour and was much more interested in grabbing the camera than playing in front of it and he definitely did not want to roar on demand. Typical.

Recording footage from interesting angles was a challenge. I started recording with a newly acquired 50mm lens (which I am still getting to grips with). I was thinking that this would offer me some great close-up shots and interesting depth of field effects.

Casper repeatedly crawled too close to me, too often to allow me to focus on hip effectively. I quickly switched to my 18-135 lens to offer a wider angle so I could be further away and zoom in if required. Even that was troublesome at times so I then opted for my Sony Handycam. This allowed me to concentrate more on capturing footage then having to deal with focusing and exposure issues.

Casper had clearly had enough shortly after so I opted to assess how much footage I needed to complete the video. I headed to the computer to get cracking on the editing process.

The edit

I specifically wanted to make the video look like a trailer, I decided to use dip to and dip from black transactions for the start and end of each scene.

I had already decided which music I was going to use for the first part of the video (Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain) I put that into the timeline and assembled the clips around the audio bed.

I found a suitable typeface to introduce the “This Halloween” title, but felt that just a plan background with a title would look a little dull. I sourced a video background from an online stock source.

This Halloween

During the most dramatic part of the music, I chose the most revealing clip which featured a low down angle of Casper standing beside a stair gate. The low angle tilting upwards adds a sense of perceived height and suspense.

Dramatic angle monster reveal

There in an obvious break in the music which I would use to introduce the twist in the video. The idea behind the film was to suggest it was a trailer. In actual fact, the final reveal in the piece was to show the title change from Little Monster to Little Monsters. At this point the twist is revealed, the image of a baby ultrasound appears and the title grows slightly. At the same time, a gentle music box lullaby plays.

Monster Tilting Shot

Much like a film trailer, I wanted to add a coming soon, but as this was announcing the arrival of a baby, I decided to add a “Coming May 2018”.

As some video trailers show a dramatic clip at the end once the film title is revealed, for a final bit of fun, I added a close up of Casper roaring to the camera. (We did manage to get a roar recorded so we used the best one we had)

Once the clips were assembled, I wanted to add a further spooky element. I wanted to put an overall darker/gloomier look to the film. With the use of an additional adjustment layer, I applied several adjustments to exposure, a faded film effect and a vignette to darken the edges and encourage the viewer to focus on the centre of the picture.

I have not experimented with overall ‘looks’ of my films before but I really wanted to get it right for this video. In a relatively short time, I was able to achieve something close to what I had envisioned beforehand.

Critique

I perhaps should have allowed more time for filming, though were weren’t helped with Casper not being entirely cooperative with this project. Whilst we did record enough footage to create the video in the style that I was hoping, I would have liked to have had a bit more choice to select clips from.

The dark look of the film was more or less as I had hoped and the overall message in was clear. I’d created the video as intended in the style I was looking for. I perhaps would have liked to experiment more with the colours. I looked at Lumetri colour corrections and some of the creative looks. None of which achieved what I had planned so I’ll come back to this at another point and teach myself in a bit more detail.

In the time-frame, I’m happy with what has been made for this reveal, but there are a few things I would like to have had more time to play with.

The roar at the end, I didn’t want to adjust the sound too much because I wanted to ensure Casper’s voice was clear. I’d like to be able to work on audio more. I’d be curious to see how much editing can be done to make this more monstrous.

The video background and title typeface were good, but perhaps I could have applied more to the “This Halloween” and “Coming soon” titles to make them look slicker.

I’d have liked to include a door opening along with a creaking sound at the beginning to suggest more of a horror theme.

A few of these points I can maybe include in a revised version but ultimately, for the purposes of the video and intended audience, the film was sufficient.

The meaning

The purpose of this video was to proudly announce that Rachel and I are expecting our second baby in May next year!

We are delighted to be able to share this news and will make our family complete. Early days of course, but we are so excited to think little Casper is going to have a brother or sister to play with. It’s going to be just lovely to watch the two of them growing up together. We already can’t wait to meet him/her (though we have not broached the subject of names yet.)

Back in 2015, when we discovered we were having our first baby, we made a festive announcement video so we felt it was a good idea to make another film for this time around.

We have been inundated with well wishes and congratulations from our closest friends and family, but now we are able to share with you.

No doubt there will be more baby filled musings to come, but for now, we have some baby shopping to do.

YAY.