How To produce a Quick-Turn Highlight Video

You’ve got 24 hours to shoot and edit a video to show people what happened at an event. What do you do?

It could happen in any business, but this tight deadline, quick-turn video project pops up in church media quite a bit. There’s an event during the weekend, and you need to show the congregation what happened on Sunday. Or maybe you’re at a conference, and you want to show the highlights from the last few days in the last session? How can you do it, and do it well?

Pre production is the key to success. Just like any video you produce, taking the time to work the pre production process will make your video better. In this case, it’s crucial to your success. You won’t have a lot of time during the event, so you need to do as much as you can before the event starts. Pick music, decide on a style and look for the video. Gather the gear you need, double check your camera settings. Scout the location, find out if you can set up anything early, if needed. Pick an interview location. Gather/build your graphics. Check the schedule, is there anything you have to capture? Try to schedule interviews early in the event. Plan your time. Know what you want the final video to be, and get ready to create that video. This is the time to be creative.

Shoot what you need. Don’t shoot twelve hours of footage. You know what you need to finish the video, shoot those pieces. Make sure you have enough, but don’t shoot 5 minutes of the same repetitive action. Capture the basic wide angles to show the viewer what’s happening, maybe a couple of interesting angles, and then focus on faces. People want to see people. There is a reason people call these “happy face” videos.

Edit during the event. Once you’ve captured the start of the event, and hopefully any main interviews you need for the video, break away and lay down the base for the final project. Take half an hour or more to cut down the basic foundation for the video. If you have footage of someone thanking those who participated, lay that down on the timeline over the music you’ve already selected. Leave space for any special shots. That should give you a rough idea of the length of the video, and what you need to shoot next. You’ve seen the footage you already have, now go back out and shoot the rest of what you need. Depending on how long the event is, you may want to dump footage and sort it a few times.

You do not have time to catalog every clip. Place the clips logically on your timeline, and when you are assembling the final edit, pull from those blocks of clips. I recently shot a quick-turn project that had an interview, a special event, and two locations. I wanted to show the entire process of the event, and let people see the work being done. My time line had chunks of clips from each location, and each event. Plus I had set up a time-lapse to show the start of the event. I didn’t log every clip, I just scanned them to see what I had and dropped them onto the timeline.

Finalize the edit. By the time the event is over you should have a basic outline of the final video. Drop in the rest of the clips. Focus on tight action and faces. Keep things moving quickly. Once the basic edit is down, drop in the graphics and do any color correction. Hopefully, since you double checked your camera settings, you won’t need to adjust much. Do a quick audio mix, and get ready to render and export. Do not try to reinvent the project at this point. Work the original plan.

This will not be your finest work. But the audience will love it. If you need to, later you can go back in and do a more thorough edit, correction and mix.

What if you need to turn something in under an hour? Don’t panic. It can be done, within limitations.

One year for a Christmas production I shot video interviews of attendees waiting for the presentation to start, then edited and showed those clips to the same crowd before the event began. Crazy, but do able. First, you have to build a template. (It’s also a good idea to have a completed video from a previous presentation on stand by, just in case of catastrophe. I captured one of cast members for the first night, and then kept the one from each previous presentation loaded, just in case.) I shot for 30 minutes and then imported footage and cut for 15 minutes. I edited and rendered on the same computer we were using to play the video back. You need to really watch your levels when recording because there’s no time for fixing anything. Drop the clip into the template, render and be ready for playback. I sometimes cheated and kept the funnier or sweeter moments from previous nights in the current video, but I always used some clips of people from that same presentation.

Crazy quick-turns can be done, but you must plan ahead. these will never match the quality of projects you have lots of time on, but occasionally, it’s worth it to show something quickly.

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A Few Video Examples

On the main page of scottlinkmedia.com you can see 3 different sections of videos: short films, church media, and DIY projects and tips. But that’s not every video. I wanted to share a few links to some other projects:

First up is a quick reel of short clips. The logo is now outdated, but you can see variety of projects:

I ended up doing 3 versions of a promo video for an after school program. The spokesmen in the videos kept leaving the organization a few months after the video was completed. Here’s the first Beach Club promo:

One church I worked at needed to fill a 13 minute pre service video to play before an Easter service we were holding at a large arena. On an impulse, I shot this little promo video for an upcoming series:

My family loves to read, and I wanted to experiment with a mini-doc about that:

Anyway, just a few videos from the past I wanted to share.

You Can Do This!

I keep wondering why I don’t run into more people who are actually making shows like mine. Better than mine.

I walked the floor at NRB Convention last year and talked to a lot of people. None of them knew of other series like this. If that sample is to be believed, no one else is making a dramatic comedy series. Stand up comedy, sure. Sketch comedy, even. I have heard of a 30-minute drama. I’ve found a couple of Christian sitcoms out there, but the whole landscape is wide open for both comedy and drama. There’s just not that many being made.

Is it really that hard to make a dramatic series?

Here’s the online version of the September Technologies for Worship Magazine. On page 19 there is an article I wrote about how we created Peculiar for next to nothing. The gear list in the article? Half of that gear was borrowed, not bought. It is possible to do this.

What does it take?

1. Audacity. The simple, unfiltered audacity to believe that you can make something, that you can create it.

2. Perseverance. You will get tired, you will hit roadblocks, you will want to quit sometimes. If you quit, you will never finish. Simple, I know, but most truths are. Want to make a dramatic TV series? Then keep making it until it’s done.

3. Flexibility. Things will not always be ideal, they won’t be the way you want them. You will compromise, you will wish you had something you don’t. Become good at logistics. Figure out how to get it done, and then do it. In the end, it’s more about resourcefulness than resources.

4. Teamwork. You can’t do it alone. Network, go to conferences, join Facebook groups, meet people. Develop of group of friends that have common goals and dreams. Work on each other’s projects. Cast a vision for yours, and lead them to accomplish it.

5. Learning. Read, take classes, help other people with their projects, subscribe to Youtube channels, follow people on twitter. Never stop learning, and never stop practicing. This will come in phases. I am learning right now about better script writing, and in the process I am improving my feature length script. Before this was budgeting.

Don’t believe the lie that you don’t know enough, aren’t good enough to do it. If I had listened to that voice, I wouldn’t have 10 episodes of my show, Peculiar. Is it perfect? Nope. Not even close. But it’s 100% better than what it would be if I was still waiting to be “good enough” to do it.

You can do it! Believe it.