Project Summary and Creative Brief
As a Video Production major and a professional Santa Claus performer -yes, I am licensed and insured- as well as someone who has a passion for teaching, I decided to develop my own brand “The Jr. Claus Workshop” early last year and provided YouTube videos for those wanting to increase their professionalism and skills as a Santa Claus representative.
A few weeks after my final YouTube episode, I decided to take the brand a step further and create a website. The focus of my senior project was the creation of 30+ episodic instructional videos to be hosted on the website. I set out learning new tricks and finding new resources to help me along the way. I already had the gear I needed, now I had to develop the needed skills.
Development started back in January, before the semester began, because I knew I would need more than a semester to get this all done (and the fact that my wife and I were expecting our second child come the end of May so editing/filming then with a newborn crying in the background was a task I was unwilling to tackle). I would film on the weekends after we put our toddler to sleep and spend the previous days writing the scripts when I had time to.
The goal was to produce episodes that could follow a template outline (an intro, outro, and other previously created elements) that would teach different principles and inform the audience of different resources and aspects of portraying Santa Claus that they weren’t all too familiar with. With the interest in the site, I was prepared and able to open the website more than two months ahead of schedule for membership.
Time Accounting
Pre-Production
Creative Brief Formulation: 1 hour
Scripting: 20 hours (most scripts took 45 minutes to completely write)
Shotlist/Storyboard: 2 hours (the format was the same, I just had to tweak it for each episode)
Music and Template Licensing: 4 hours (over several weeks searching for the assets that would add to the series)
Pre-Production Total: 27 hours
Production
Video Recording: 10 hours (15 minutes per episode)
Set Construction: 13 hours (20 minutes per episode)
Animation and Graphics: 15 hours (My computer about overheated for the intro. Once the graphics and animation had been locked in for other assets, it was easy to insert other names and export new versions of lower thirds for others participating in the episodes.}
Production Total: 38
Post Production
Editing: 75 hours (about 2 hours per episode on average)
Audio Mixing: 10 hours (about 15 minutes per episode)
Color Correction and Grading: 5 hours (It was rough in the beginning because my monitor isn’t calibrated)
Post Production Total: 90
TOTAL TIME: 155 hours
*The website itself was not part of the senior project as first outlined, that came in addition to the video series. As such, the time and assets developed for the Jr. Claus Workshop website have been omitted from this report.
Pre-Visualization
I took the creative brief and began my sketches and finding assets to help along the way. It wasn’t hard to find what I needed, but it was a bit difficult to develop assets myself. As such, I enlisted the help of my trusty notebooks. A few sketches and many pages with lists and ideas jotted down are included here to provide insight on the development process.
Work Developed
Below I have included examples of graphics I created as well as some before and after comparisons that were part of the project. The only asset I had some assistance on was the intro (in which I bought and licensed a template and tweaked it HEAVILY for my uses) the rest were created in After Effects by myself.
Evaluation
As expected, the traffic to the site and those purchasing plans has been quite low. Out of the 70 members who have subscribed to the website, only 7 of them have purchased a membership plan (ranging from $55-65 for an annual subscription). Below is a screenshot of the different analytics overview of different life spans (3 months, 4 weeks, and 7 days). As they tell, visits were very popular in the beginning and now have begun to dwindle. No doubt Christmas being 6 months or so away as well as COVID-19 and other external factors have contributed to this.
With only 7 patrons, the views of the videos accessible for them are quite low. Many viewers drift off and don’t finish the video. This perhaps could be attributed to them merely browsing about as Christmas is still a ways away and these patrons have 12 months to enjoy them.
However, the “Welcome” and “Site Navigation” videos (which are viewable to everyone who comes to the site) have well over 300 views per video.
To view the site, please log in with the following credentials:
Email: SPJRCLAUS@gmail.com
Password: BYU-1d4h0
*To protect the content on the site, the plan assigned to this login is only active through the end of July 2020. Should you need this extended, please contact Stuart Deacon Jr. at santastuart.northpole@gmail.com
