Anyone use a Promo Video?

[zac2944]

My band plays a lot of corporate functions and weddings. Many local (boston) bands that do this often have a promo video as part of their promo/press pack. We are considering making one but don't have much experience with making videos.

Any TBers out there have any experience with making and using promo videos? How did you make it? What did it cost? Did you use live sound or studio sound? Has it helped you get gigs?

Thanks for any advice you may have.

[IanStephenson]

I helped shoot a video for a friends band last year. It was a fun day shooting, but a lot of work afterwards editing.

We shot a live gig one night, just doing long shots from the crowd, and went back during the day to shoot close ups, and other "fun" stuff.

Getting the footage is easy, but turning that into something that doesn't look like a home movie is REALLY hard.

Fortunatly I have contacts at the local art college, and we were able to borrow a couple of GOOD cameras, and the guy who teaches editing there spend AGES putting the footage together. I don't think we could have done it without his help. As a result it looked pretty good, but it was a LOT of work.

Costs were really just expenses for the crew, and catering on the day, but if we'd been paying commercial rates for the work it would have been a huge amount.

I'd sugguest putting an ad up in the local college, and see if you get anyone who fancies doing it for the experience.

Ian

[DeadMike]

We shoot a bunch of videos for ourselves. We recently put together a video from the last live show to showcase ourselves to bar/establishment owners. IMO, you'll want to go with a live audio feed from the board, it'll let the people booking hear what you sound like live.

This is what I'd do:

Find someone who can edit a rough video together. You'll need two cameras (Mini DV or commercial grade will be fine). One camera acts as a wide shot of the whole stage and a second camera acts as the roving camera (or the one for the close ups).

Put your audio feed to the steady, wide shot camera. With most consumer grade cameras, you're probably dumping this down to a stereo mini-plug, but it'll work.

Make sure that you get the crowd to move infront of the cameras, it'll make it look like a lot more people are there.

Get a kid from the journalism/media department to help shoot and edit. Give him some food or something.

Boston University has a deep journalism program with broadcast, film and TV departments. You're bound to find someone who can shoot and edit. Plus they can dump it down to a file that you can put on a website or put on DVD.

I'd shoot for 3 songs, just like a demo that cover you range. BU probably also has a studio and you could stage something rather easily.