The Greatest Promo of All Part 2: Limited Gear, Limited Funds, Unlimited Ingenuity

Today I am going to be discussing how to film a great promotional video with limited gear, limited funds and unlimited ingenuity.

First things first:

Limited gear and limited funds. 

Most of us find that we just don't have enough gear when shooting a promotional video. We discover that our camera is too old and crusty, or that our camera is amazing but our computer is too old to edit HD video, or our sound is atrocious etc
Here is reality. We never seem to have enough stuff to get the job done. The best plan of attack is to assess what you have and develop a plan that will maximise the potential of all of your current gear. You may only have to purchase, borrow, or hire a few items to get your promo video up and away.

Lets get some basics out of the way:

• A great camera cannot disguise a horrible dress or suit. BBOS (Beg, borrow or Scream) to get whatever clothing you need if you don't already have something or splash out on something. If you buy a great dress or suit you can use it from the day you buy it. You can rent clothes too.
• Don't buy or rent a great camera if you don't have access to a computer that can edit the footage. Even a decent computer can struggle with editing HD footage. Believe it or not SD is still perfectly ok. Our most recent promo was filmed on a 6 year old Sony Cybershot camera (not even a dedicated video camera!) in SD. It has landed us 2 contracts, and we turned down 6 others.
• Understand that usually finding a camera these days isn't too hard especially considering how many phones have wicked cameras built-in. The inhibiting factor is sound.
• Always look at what is around you and if it has any value for you in your filming. Check what gear or skills your friends and family have.
• Only spend money if you really have to. 
• Your trusty old PC, Mac or laptop may do the job. Check first before parting with those $
• Everywhere you walk or see could be a potential location and possibly free too
• Consider doing stuff for others to cut costs
• Renting or hiring stuff is an option so is outsourcing tasks to others

Unlimited Ingenuity.

Here is a step-by-step process and gear list of how we filmed our latest promo using unlimited ingenuity:

Gear:

• Sony Cybershot (6 years old)
• Alesis IO dock (new)
• iPad 2 (18 months old)
• iRig microphone (new)
• LG Xnote Z1advanced laptop (7 years old)
• 2 guitars and 1 jack-to-jack cable
• 1/8 to 1/4 jack-to-jack adapter

Software:

• Sony Soundforge v10.0.01
• Garageband
• Vocal live app for iPad
• Windows Movie Maker

Props:

• Guitars, ukelele, jembe
• Table with ice bucket, 2 wine glasses, water, one red chair (borrowed)
• Two microphone stands with wireless microphones (borrowed)

Miscellaneous:

• The backing tracks in the video were all downloaded (legally) from: karaoke-version.com
• Lighting was provided by two lamps that were already in our room. You can see the reflection of one in the window behind us. It was sitting on the bed....hahahaha. The other lamp was placed on the floor near our feet.

Location:

• All sound recording and filming took place in the hotel room I was staying in in Dubai.

Here is our promo video:

How did we do it?

Firstly, a lot of agents have seen this video and loved it. Why? Because it does exactly what it is supposed to do. It's simple. We look pretty good. We tailored it to suit the kind of gig that we wanted.

 So here is how we did it on a very low budget, using what we had on-hand, and employing a generous helping of ingenuity.

• We filmed it in our hotel room! It was tiny. We moved all of our stuff to the opposite side of the room. Put a chair on the bed, placed an empty protein bucket on the chair, and sat the camera on top of that! If you look carefully in the reflection you can just see the chair and protein bucket in the window. We spent at least 20 minutes moving the chair and the bucket around so we could get the right angle.
• We borrowed the microphones and microphone stands from downstairs at our gig. The table was already in our room. We borrowed the ice bucket and glasses from downstairs and filled our glasses with water, we placed  just to make it look like we were at a gig. 
• We filmed at night time to add to the effect that we were playing at a live gig. We enhanced that by opening the curtains to our windows so you could see it was night time. This really improved the overall effect that we were trying to capture.
• We chose our costumes very carefully to match the type of gig that we wanted.
• We pre-recorded everything and only learnt and recorded the parts of the songs that you hear in the video. I am completely honest in saying the we could not play one of those songs from beginning to end as a duo when we filmed this video. Fake it till you make it!*
• We touched up the sound using Soundforge
• We recorded everything in our little hotel room- everything.
• We edited all of the video using only Windows Movie Maker. All the panning, zooming etc was done using that software. We imported the sound to Movie Maker from the edited tracks in Soundforge.

* Fake it till you make it. This is not for the inexperienced or faint-hearted. We chose to do this because we were fully confident that we could do those songs in their entirety at a latter date. When we filmed this we had the clear plan that we would not begin any contract until May as that would give us time to build our repertoire and perfect any songs that were in the video.

We bought only a few things to do this video.

• iRig mic and adaptor
• Vocal live application for iPad
• Alesis IO dock

The total cost for the 3 items above was approx US$360 and we can use those items for future recordings too.

The video took one night to film. However preparing the sound took about 10 days because we had some issues updating the IOS software to ensure compatibility between Garageband, the IO dock, and our iPad. We also had to download and customize the backing tracks and record vocals, keyboard, and guitar parts. And then we had to run that through Soundforge to make it all sound nice.

We are confident that this video will be viable for at least another 2 years. So far it has earned us over US$18,000 (tax-free) for the past 4 months and will earn us a little more for the remainder of our present contract over the same period. We had many offers from clients not long after it was uploaded to our website and to Youtube and it continues to bring us offers to the present day.

Summary:

All things are possible. Always try to think of ways to utilize resources in unique and interesting ways. Have a plan for your video and know what kind of gig you are tailoring it for. 

Happy filming!