For this assignment I reversed the overall idea of an informercial of a fictional product promoted with a real video piece, and focused instead on a real product promoted on a fictional video.
The product is a newly published book titled 'Tango Intoxication' by Batt Johnson and the fictional video is about promoting it as read into a virtual reality platform.
The infomercial aims to reach a tango audience mainly through an artistic approach to tango, with the nature of the product only revealed at the last moment. The character of the piece is intended to be cinematic but ends promotional.
This is the result of a media company that offers clients the possibility of storytelling and written narratives to be experienced in virtual reality.
Outline of storyboard_
A women reading the book in a coffee shop gets inspired and decides to go dance tango. She immediately goes to the bathroom and engage in makeup in front of mirror. The scene changes to a street corner where she approaches a standing man, only their feet and shoes are shown. As their feet meet, music starts and their dance, with camera focusing on their upper bodies. Now the focus is on the moving feet and then to their embrace, with focus on their holding hands. Suddenly, the women is dancing along, by herself, and the camera is panning from left to right, showing only her back. As the close up and zoom focus on her face, the use of virtual reality googles/glasses are shown, evidencing that the whole story has been occurring in virtual reality all along. A text legend then appears promoting the product: 'Tango intoxication by Batt Johnson, now available in virtual reality'.
Length of piece is intended to be less than 4 minutes for the 8 segments in the video story. Location changes from street to studio or real tango event in NYC, and sound changes from ambient noise to tango music at the event itself.
Implementation_
The shooting took place on a single day (yesterday Wed-Oct-4-2017) at two locations: OQ Coffee in Highland Park, NJ and Tango Cafe in NYC, respectively. The first 4 scenes were included in first draft as test for infomercial, and serve as working material for improvement during class. The whole sequence will be recorded again next Wed-Oct-11-2017 in NYC alone. The camera used for recording was Sony Mirrorless a6300 and the recording mode was 24 fps in 4K at 3,840 x 2,160 pixels of image size. Audio was recorded natively with built in microphone in camera and also with Zoom H4n Pro audio field recorder.
Film was shot in 28 mm using a 16-50 mm lens.
Recording was conducted in black & white with an image ratio of 16:9.
Jusleine Daniel and Batt Johnson (author of the book 'Tango Intoxication') interpreted the characters described in the storyboard.
Film was composed using Adobe Premiere CC (2017) and uploaded to Youtube.
Draft Ver_1 (October 5, 2017):
Draft Ver_2 (October 6, 2017):
I shortened scene 1 in coffee shop significantly. Shortened slightly scene 2 in restroom of coffee shop. Added scene 5. Let audio of tango recorded at milonga in NYC to go through the end and tried to match scene 5 to the ending music.