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Road Trip to Marketing
Video - Part II? By James Martell In part one of this article, From Road Trip to Marketing Video?, I talked about how a leisurely drive unexpectedly turned into a marketing opportunity. Although I had only planned to take a few action shots of my car, 15 minutes worth of video recording turned into something wonderful. My friend Phil Watkins used the footage to create a great video that I later uploaded to YouTube.
Once Justin arrived, we sat at my desk and started throwing ideas at each other. We eventually agreed on a list of shots we wanted to capture and drew a rough sketch of each one on paper. We used Google Maps to talk about location and positioning – a great tool that gave us a bird’s eye view of the roads, overpasses and best places for Justin to catch a great shot. Of course, I designated myself as the driver, leaving Justin no choice but to play photographer. ;-)
I charged my five-year old Sony Handicam, put in a fresh tape, and took my digital camera along for the ride. Justin and I buckled ourselves into the Cobra, fired her up and headed out. Unfortunately, we never gave much thought to the time of day and ended up waiting 20 minutes for the sun to go down. Once the sun dipped below the horizon, I made my first pass in the Cobra – but bad lucked kicked in one more time. I made my way back to Justin, who told me that the video camera had just died. Hmmm, problem with the battery. He switched over to my digital camera and I was on my way. Justin caught a couple of head-on shots of the car, a few shots of it driving off in the distance, and a number of other angles. He recorded lots of short shorts, including a few from the top of an overpass. At the end of the 90-minute shoot, we had about six minutes of video. I decided to tackle the editing myself instead of hiring someone through Elance, so we uploaded the raw video to my computer the next day. Using Microsoft’s standard Windows Movie Maker software, Justin and I worked together to edit the first video.
Within 10 days, the two videos had racked up more than 260 views! Sure, it’s a far cry from the original video but not bad right out of the gate. I uploaded one of the videos to my Carroll Shelby fan page at FaceBook – a group that now has more than 1,500 members. I started the group some time ago, but that’s another story for another day. In just under two hours, I wound up with two videos that will bring visitors to my kit car site. I encourage you to grab your video camera and have some fun finding a few ways to bring attention to your business. It doesn’t get much easier or cheaper than this – just ask a family member or friend to help out and sit back as the traffic starts rolling in. Click to watch videos:
All the best,
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We
were aiming for about five
or six minutes of raw
footage, just enough to
create two one-minute
videos. I wanted to design
something simple that would
appeal to car enthusiasts
and encourage them to visit
my web site; I was more
concerned with creating a
‘quick and dirty’ video than
I was a Hollywood
blockbuster.
