Professional & Critical Practice (Commission): Changes & Planning

My original plan of filming a promotional video for the company of Gorillas has changed slightly. While I will still be filming in the location of Gorillas, I will be creating a promotional video for an academy that's been started up by one of the Gorillas trainers, the academy is called Alpha Weapons Academy.

The academy currently consists of two classes, one beginner class that is considered as traditional weapons training, where Dave (the trainer) teaches the students the techniques of using martial arts weapons with specially designed sticks - for health and safety reasons. The other class is a controlled fighting club for more advanced students, who 'spar' with more realistic sword-styled weapons while wearing full armour.

The company is currently looking to expand and begin a grading system, so they are looking to promote themselves through film to explain who they are and what they do through visuals, with the end result being to gain more attendees interested in martial arts weapon training.

On Sunday 31st of January I attended Gorillas to witness both classes in action and have a meeting with Dave about the promotional video. It was extremely helpful to witness both classes for myself to take notes on how to approach the film, the type of shots I can get, certain features to focus on and what can be discussed by staff and students in the video.

Traditional class

After discussions with Dave, with my 'artistic' input, we concluded that he would like the video to consist of approximately the following...

• A 2-3 minute video in a documentary style
• An upbeat and friendly tone to the film, while remaining professional
• Interviews with the staff
• Brief interviews with students while out of breath from classes
• Interviews with students before attending classes
• A large variety of shots of both classes to show exactly what goes on in both

Beneficially for me, this company knows what kind of promotional video they want, but are allowing me to take control of shots etc. and approach, so this allows for me to have guidelines to follow as they know what they want, while still having creative control. I'm looking forward to creating the promotional video for them and will be moving forward with creating a documentary style script, shot list and story board before meeting with them again.

Sparring class

Current dates:

13th of March - Meeting with Dave to go over script etc.

20th of March - Filming

23rd of March - Filming if required

Another meeting will be held during post-production for editing input from the company.