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Promo Briefing Room

This page is basically a forum to discuss anything and everything. Add "Comments" for general questions or use the "Edit page" function to add more important notes or announcements. I will start out by placing a copy of my initial email notification about this project. MikeBevington

There will be several people involved with this project by the time it is completed. As I have previously communicated to each of you, the task is to produce a series of promo videos for VATSIM. I will serve in the coordinator until such time as someone volunteers to take it over. You will see Ruth McTighe copied on many of these memos because she is VATSIM?s VP for communications.

The purpose for creating a VATSIM promo video is both advertising and education. While it is clear we need to get our name in front of virtual pilots to grow our network membership, it is also necessary to educate people as to exactly what we are. During the trip to this year?s AVSIM convention, I was really amazed at the number of serious flight simulation buffs that had no idea how cool VATSIM is. You could watch their eyes light up as they watched the local VATSIM ATC crews control the airspace over southern California. Those are the people we are trying to reach out to.

Key messages we want to convey

• Real people flying the aircraft and controlling, not computer guided or controlled
• Ease of use, from the pilot point of view
• Technologically advanced global network, voice, weather, etc.
• Exciting interactions in a very realistic setting
• Friendly people who do this because it is fun

What will it look like
The basic videos will be like 30-120 second commercials and we should target the 3 to 10 meg file size range. These will be packed with bursts of short clips that hold viewer attention. Here is a video for AvA ? http://mbev.net/images/video/AVA.mpg∞. As you view it, notice how quickly it presents a combination of real world video with that of Flight Simulator recordings. It holds you interest and the music in the background is a big part of that. I don?t know where or how we get sound background but since it is for VATSIM it will have to be something we can reproduce without violating copywrite rules.

Here is another video, much longer (51 Meg) that Tero Partanen did for the LDS product. Tero uses music and Fraps screen recordings to create a promotion video that tells a story of how realistic the product is and conveys that in an attractive way. We are looking to do a similar thing, while much shorter, by using multiple perspectives with voice narration and clips of pilot and controller voices.

After the first generic video is produced, we will look at using it as the template for providing more specialized regional versions, North American, European, Australian.

I don?t have any experience with directing and I will not pretend that I do. But I do know what looks good when it?s done and know that there is a real need to put this project together. This is a collaborative effort so please lets work together to complete the best product possible.

Individual roles:

Bill Van Caulart
Hopefully Bill will be able to provide some great original banners and other slides that merge various images together to form artful slides to use in both the videos as well as the advertisement messages pointing to the videos. I will also ask Bill to help provide screenshots and video clips.

Daryl Shuttleworth
Daryl is a professional actor and will be the main voice behind the video. Knowing him for many years, I can?t think of anyone in the world, short of John Travolta, that we could find better. (just kidding Daryl, we know you are better than Travolta ;)

Keith Hall
Keith has professional multimedia experience and has volunteered to put the video together. I have no idea which format will work best, although I suspect we want to use either MPEG OR WMV. If we can provide Keith with the video clips, screen shots, and sound bytes, he can focus on the editing aspects and perhaps start the hunt for an uplifting background music clip.

Melissa Bevington
This is our ?sexy voice? element. Hey, I said we had to hold viewer interest. She is about to begin a broadcasting carrier and has access to broadcasting tools since she does a couple stints a week on radio. Since I first thought about this video, I had Melissa in mind for a clearance-departure voice and a video ending statement just after Daryl closes out.

• DARYL - We are VATSIM
• MELISSA - We?ve got YOUR flight plan

Tero Partanen
Actually Tero is my inspiration for doing this after watching a few presentations he put together for other products. Tero has a very busy travel schedule right now but will hopefully be able to contribute screen capture video and help with the final production. Tero is an accomplished pilot and is very good at formatting video angles and blending perspectives.

New Team Members will be added to the web page version of this message.

Where do we start?
Getting started is half the battle. I thought of setting up a forum for this purpose but have gained much experience with using Wikka websites to allow for collaborative efforts of all sorts of things. I already have a Wiki server which serves as host for VATSIM pilot training lesson development.











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