About the project
The essence of a promotional video is always a simple message. In a commercial product, the message has to increase the value of the product: this is often done indirectly by offering an experience. Drinking a certain soda makes you fresh and cool, driving a certain car shows that you have class, and wearing expensive or popular brands makes you feel like one of the select few with a good taste. Obviously. But instead of thinking about why we drink Coke leaning out of the window of a Mercedes only wearing a pair of Levi’s, let’s look at another option. For projects that are looking for financial support, a great promotional video helps demonstrate the value of a project and subsequently the investor’s status increases by association. So we are still selling, but another kind of experience.
The Window Project has been an art installation on Georgia State University’s campus, at the former Digital Arts and Entertainment Laboratory. It was an open-air art installation that combined six projected screens to form a continuous canvas of modern digital art, which displayed temporary exhibits of up and coming American and international artists. While I also performed maintenance on the projectors to ensure that the exhibiting artists’ vision came to fruition according to their expectations, as part of the marketing project to secure funding for GSU’s new multimillion-dollar film production studio and digital development facility, my task was to create an effective promotional video to demonstrate one of the premier digital art project of the campus.
The process
As the editor, my task was twofold: curate the content recorded by the individual artists of their own installations and edit together a video showcasing the best of The Window Project. One challenge from the start has been to align footage that has been captured and stylized differently by the artists. My typical method of editing, which involves tagging footage and creating sub-clips proved to address this well as I was able to focus on content and common features. Since the video wasn’t supposed to feature narration, I approached it with the mindset of building a music video. To match the contemplative, yet visually fascinating mood of the video, I chose Soundmapping, a track by one of my close compatriots, the electronic musician Yonderboi.
The result
While my video was only a piece of the puzzle that was the fundraising campaign, it has performed well at a faculty presentation for sponsors, and the new facility was funded successfully.
