Director's Commentary (Module 2)

Making a video/film certainly evokes a lot of feelings and involves a great deal of preparation. Now granted there was one part of this process that was fairly easy. I realized that I couldn’t write my Director’s Commentary until I had a finished product to reflect upon. That was the only easy part of working on this assignment. The rest was a real adventure but I followed our professor’s advice to keep it fun and try not to be too serious. So that is what I tried to do and here is my perspective on the entire process:

The Inspiration

The inspiration for my video was based on an experience my  husband and I went through a couple of years ago. We were still living in California and very interested in opening our own business.  We realized from the beginning that our venture would be a bistro, deli, or yogurt shop. Because we lived in an area where summertime temperatures normally hover above 100 degrees daily, the choice eventually became obvious. We decided to research opening a yogurt shop. With the growing popularity of shops like Pinkberry, it seemed like a sound decision.

After doing our due diligence, which took several months of consulting and research, there was only one other thing we had to consider. I had been thinking about pursuing a graduate degree and with all of the time, effort, and financial investment required to open a business, going back to school would have to be put on hold for an indefinite period. Ultimately my husband decided it was more important to support my dreams than a new business. Looking back I am glad that we did because this year I will be finishing up my Master’s in Education through MSU. As for the prospect of starting a business in the future, perhaps we will explore that idea again in a few years.  

The Idea

The work that goes into starting a business is daunting. It’s very time consuming and requires a lot of emotional and financial commitment. Even under the best economic conditions, it is still a big gamble. Of course if you have very deep pockets and money is not a factor it may not be as big of a deal. Many celebrities fall into this category and that is where the idea for this project came from. I decided to create a parody based on that concept. And the finished project is the fictional ad for “Rocky Balboa’s House of Yogurt.”

The Process

Since I didn’t have time to hire actors and book a location to film a real commerical, I knew it wasn’t going to be a live action production. So I decided to use the next best thing – a video produced with “Slideroll.” It is shareware software that is available for free on the Internet. To create the video, I hand sketched a story board, then transferred the idea onto PowerPoint slides and imported the slides into Slideroll. The best thing about Slideroll is that the editing software is included. Since I wanted to mimic a local ad I decided to keep the length below sixty seconds. I also wanted to add a sense of suspense by not giving away what the video was about right away. Deciding what audio to use was a no brainer. The theme music to the motion picture Rocky was a perfect fit and supported the video concept all the way.