Requesting a critique of a band promo video

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Gary BBB

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I am requesting a critique of a classic rock cover band promo video that I put together from recent gigs. I am not a professional at this, and the content I have to work with was captured on my phone. I am always updating it as gigs are played, and I have an emphasis of including video that includes the audience. Following is a YouTube link to the 2-minute video. Thank you!!

 
TSJMajesty,

Thank you for viewing the video and offering your assessment of it. I am pleased to know that the look and sound are good. I had never taken notice of the music stands before, and now I see how intrusive they appear to be. I am not in the band, but my wife is, and I recently set her up with all her music in a 12' electronic tablet in place of the two binders that held the nearly 100 songs in the bands collection. She loves it and uses it by placing it on a music stand...of course. I am going to present your suggestion to the band, and also purchase a tablet stand for my wife's tablet to start the trend. I really appreciate your input. :)
 
A couple of the music transitions were a bit abrupt. I would look a little closer at the fade out/in on them a bit. Maybe a 2 second transition between songs where while one is fading out, the other is fading in, same thing with the video footage. If you did that on any of them, I did not notice it so maybe make it a bit longer than it is. Just a suggestion.

With the band members, rather than throwing a pic over the footage, I would at various points throughout, when there are good shots of a member, scroll their name across the screen. Maybe with an arrow pointing to that member or a circle. Less obtrusive than the image overlays. You could also zoom in on a player when a good shot comes up and then display name rather than using arrows or circles to draw attention to them.

Use the logo from the end of the video for the beginning as well. You will still be able to fit the QR code on their considering the size you chose for the QR code. Also, stick a copyright notice on your logo and on the video and I personally would put a disclaimer of the copyrights for the cover songs. I might also put a small logo watermark in one of the corners.

If this is truly a promo video, I would put some contact info at the end. I know, you have a fb QR code in the opening seconds! By not putting it in plain text and also at the end, you could miss out on bookings because not everyone (including a large portion of the demographic of your audience best I can tell) is not into the QR code thing, or FB and they just want a phone number to call, in large letters ;~)) Plus, when they get to the end of the video, if they liked it, that is when they want the contact info. They should not have to go back to the beginning or otherwise search for such info. If you have the following, I would put contact name, a phone number and an email address. But put something at the end, even if it is just a second showing of your FB QR code.

If I think of anything else, I will type back at ya'! Good job on the vid but those are some things I would look at to take it up a notch!
 
Alex Kenevel…Thank you for your feeback on the promo video. I am changing the popup videos to hopefully make them less confusing.

Moondoog Wily…Thank you for your extensive critique of my promo video. Today I am reworking the video to include suggested changes and will present a link to the updated video for review.
 
I don't know what your goal is with the video but IMHO it doesn't show a professional band. If you are looking to get better gigs, I think you will want to make this more purposeful. I used to put promo packets together for one of my bands for county and state fairs where the competition is higher. You have to be on your game for those gigs. Here are some things I noticed that would turn a booking agent off.

These are not meant to be malicious. I am just stating them directly.

As mentioned, dump the music stands. That says you don't know your music. Be very careful with replacing them with tablets. This will have the same effect if everyone has one in front of them. People spend too much time looking at the stand or tablet instead of engaging the audience.

Dress better if you are going to use it as a representation. Some of the folks looked a bit too relaxed in what they were wearing.

Make your photographs more professional. It doesn't take much effort to take a more professional picture of people with their instrument. As mentioned, don't overlay these on band footage. Highlight them with audio behind them. Be proud of them.

As also mentioned, transitions from one audio track to another should fade from one to another. It can be short but you need a transition there to make it feel smoother.

The audio isn't too bad. The good thing with using live audio is the person watching the video knows you didn't polish this in a studio. That tells them what they will get if they hire you. It is also good to show people dancing and having fun watching you. It at least one of the videos there were a lot of people just standing there watching. You may need to ask people to look more excited and plan out the footage a little bit or be more selective of what you using.

Again, none of this is meant to be malicious. I hope you don't take it that way. I am just plainly stating things I see that I know would not be helpful for getting gigs in the arena I used to do this in.
 
JasonE...thank you very much for your critique. All of the ideas presented to me from all who responded to my request are valuable to me and hopefully the band. They have a large playlist where they perform about 75 songs in a longer gig, so for these part-time (though very talented) musicians to memorize all and not need a visual is asking a bit much of them. The base, lead guitarist and drummer are the only members that don't need visuals. Every place they play, everybody is in love with them, but sometimes seems difficult to get them out dancing and all excited. They have a huge gig occurring this weekend in a huge university field house at MSOE for a university event that we expect a huge crowd for, so I am looking forward to getting good video and still shots to update the promo video with. Doing audio/video captures and creating promo packs, business card and videos is new to me and is a great learning experience. The band is fortunate that I do this as they are all less capable of doing this than I am, and some are technically challenged as well. The expectation is there will be a more "cleaned up" look to the members for MSOE gig and going forward, as I know my wife (rhythm guitar) has been advocating for. I plan to share all critique feedback I get with the band, so they know that suggestions I make are coming from a more credible source than me.
 
I listed the suggestions I was so generously provided with in the above critiques of my band promo video, and applied those that I understood how I could in order to come up with the updated video in the following link. I would appreciate it if TSJMajesty, Alex Kenivel, Moondog Wily, Jive Turkey and Jason E would check this out again for me. As I mentioned in a previous message, this weekend's big gig should provide some great content to include. Going to see if I can get one of the members to get the crowd into a frenzy so I can get some great shots of that. Thank you all again for helping me with this project.

 
JasonE said:
As mentioned, dump the music stands. That says you don't know your music. Be very careful with replacing them with tablets. This will have the same effect if everyone has one in front of them. People spend too much time looking at the stand or tablet instead of engaging the audience.
Click to expand...
Of course I agree about the stands, but I also agree with the rest.
 
Gary BBB said:
They have a large playlist where they perform about 75 songs in a longer gig, so for these part-time (though very talented) musicians to memorize all and not need a visual is asking a bit much of them.
Click to expand...
Fair point.
Solution: Use cues, and put them on the floor.

I used to print out the first word/words of each verse to a few songs I sang that I just couldn't seem to commit to memory. You can do it yourself in a word processor, so you can make the font readable from the floor.

If you think about it, most every song really isn't that complicated. It usually comes down to, "We do the chorus 4x's at the end only, and twice everywhere else, and the bridge comes right after..., whatever."

So you just show the cues that you need.
 
TSJMajesty said:
Fair point.
Solution: Use cues, and put them on the floor.

I used to print out the first word/words of each verse to a few songs I sang that I just couldn't seem to commit to memory. You can do it yourself in a word processor, so you can make the font readable from the floor.

If you think about it, most every song really isn't that complicated. It usually comes down to, "We do the chorus 4x's at the end only, and twice everywhere else, and the bridge comes right after..., whatever."

So you just show the cues that you need.
Click to expand...
I was in a band with a female singer that had some trouble remembering a few songs. We did the same thing for her. It was just the beginning few words for the verses that she needed. It worked great and nobody knows it is there.

All of this really boils down to how professional you want the band to look and sound. We put our time in at home getting our repetitions in with the songs so we could play them without the crutches. It makes it so much easier to get the entertainment part in there with the music. It brought a lot of better stages with better pay as well. We all had full time jobs as well.
 
And tagging onto what @JasonE said, the longer a band plays together, the more the individual members will take the most subtle cues from others.

Just a certain, well-placed flam from the drummer in such-and-such song always means...., or opening up the hi-hat a bit...
Or it could be a hand motion someone tends to make at the same spot in a song. Lotsa stuff like that happens in a band that's "playing off each other."

Which turns into less need for written cues on the floor!
 
Still plenty that could be done, but the only one I am going to mention is, in the closing credit, don't move to a new logo! You have the band logo, and then follow it on the contact info page with a rectangular black and white text only logo. Don't do that! Logo's are meant to bring brand recognition and cement in peoples heads, a vision that they can associate with the product (in this case the band). When you start throwing multiple different images at folk, they are less likely to solidify and recognize that one logo that should be representing you. So for that final page, get rid of the black and white one and put a scaled down version of the round colored one. Impressive how quickly you made the updates ;~))

I assume the upcoming gig at MSOE is Milwaukee School of Engineering. Is that correct? If so, be sure to notify WMSE about the upcoming event if they are not aware already. As you probably know, that radio station (the schools very own radio station) is a gold mine for local talent. I'd be interested to hear about what other venues y'all play at! We may have some mutual friends (though I have not lived there in decades but still have friends there).
 
Tx for getting back to me again with your critique, which is very valuable to me. I saw what you meant about the black-n-white in the end...added that because the band leader likes it and it's on the band tee shirts, though I don't like it. I updated that and the intro screen as well. I plan to add captured content from the MSOE gig (yes...is Milwaukee School of Engineering). My mechanical engineer son graduated from there a couple years ago. This will be the first gig played in Milwaukee with most being more local to the Oconomowoc area were most of the group lives. This is the 2nd year for the band and is a fun hobby for the group with no intent on going out far from home base for gigs. It is a challenge to get noticed by even the local venues, of which there are many. I full well expect this event is on WMSE and on social media...is a big deal for the school. You can check out the changes I made, and I likely am going to go with it pending approval from the band.

 
It is definitely getting better. I think you are going to need to plan the video, meaning those in the band need to be dressed more professionally and sell the song. A good example is the guy singing Tush. He bobbed his head a little but other than that, he was pretty much standing still. This is something that I have coached a number of singers on. They need to interact with the band and sell what they are singing.

I was part of a band that played for a competition that was kind of like The Voice. It was a singing competition. We had to learn the songs that the contestants were going to sing and play on stage with them. When it got down to the top 3 contestants there was a guy that sang great and we nailed his song but he completely ignored the fact that there was a live band up there with him. They gave that feedback to him. The girl that was up after him got to hear that before she came up. She came over to me during the solo in the song and leaned up against me and really sold what I was doing. She won. She was much more entertaining than the others before her and she sang great. They were all good singers at that level but she had that extra factor the others didn't because she made a show out of it.
 
Thank you for your assessment. I agree the band is rather stoic when performing. Lukas, the singer for Tush, is really quite the showman with no fear of being on stage, and I can see him controlling the stage with microphone in hand and knowing the words to the songs. I know the crowd would love it. I sent your post to my wife, who plays rhythm guitar in the band. She may be and influence in that direction.
 
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