As part of our small business, 'Ufilms', we each had to project manage a production. The production which I managed was a promo video for Page2Stage Parties, a party/entertainment company for children. My management of this production started when I was yet to be in charge of a project and decided I had good ideas to contribute to this one. I began to joint manage the project with Chloe.
There was already ideas for the promo but I felt like they could be improved upon quite a lot. The original idea followed the Page2Stage parties staff getting ready as different characters and going to a children's party. I suggested that the idea shouldn't follow people pretending to be characters, as it isn't the point of the party company, but should fully commit to the characters and create a story of the actual characters making their way to a party. The promo would follow a story of all the different characters the company had to offer going out of the way of their usual lives to go to a child's party. Using the actual characters going on a journey to the party, I felt, adds a special touch to the promo which makes the customer and the children feel like the real characters are coming to the parties. This idea was the one we went ahead with.
Chloe and I began to write a script for the promo soon after we had decided on the final idea. The promo would have no dialogue so the script was just direction of what the characters would be doing in each scene. It was very important to link the characters as much as possible. We decided we could link the characters together by having Elsa & Anna (the two most popular characters at Page2Stage parties) gathering various characters together to bring them to the party. However, to avoid the promo becoming samey and boring, we also decided some characters could get 'party alerts' to inform them of the party happening.
Once the script and shot lists were ready, the next step was to organise the filming. Kelly, in charge of Page2Stage parties, wanted to use her staff as the actors playing the characters, so the characters being advertised were exactly what customers would get at their own party. As many of the staff are students and others employed at other jobs as well as Page2Stage, it was very difficult to organise many of the shoots as many of the Page2Stage staff were not available at the same time as others. The filming began with small, quick shoots whenever we could manage around others schedules, this usually meant filming after a party when people were already dressed in character costumes.
We eventually got round to organising a full shoot of multiple scenes with various characters. This was later than we'd hoped but we tried to get as much footage as possible. While we did manage to get more people and get the main plot of Elsa and Anna gathering characters, we still weren't able to get everyone we'd asked to be there for the shoot. However, we worked with what we had. Chloe was unable to attend the shoot and so I asked Taylor to assist me. We were able to get the majority of the footage we planned which meant we could start editing. The edit came together very well and we were able to start shaping the story of the promo.
After the main shoot, we were back to getting small amounts of footage whenever we could, which wasn't as productive as we'd hoped but we were still making progress on the promo. Since then we have still been making progress on the promo in small amount due to our own busy schedule and our cast's busy schedule. We have been in contact with Kelly on multiple occasions to negotiate our deadline for the promo and to run by new ideas or idea changes we have had to make.
The promo is still being made as I write this but we are getting closer to finishing it. It's taken us a lot longer than we had planned but this has happened due to difficulties in scheduling we haven't been able to do anything about. We have a small list of specific scenes needed to film and should have them complete very soon, along with the final edited promo video for Page2Stage Parties.
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