Script writing and filming for 'casual' style promotional content

Today I tackled a good chunk of the work for a whole week of promotional content for my upcoming EP.

Review

This is where we left off yesterday. I mostly worked on static posts and reels that didn't involve any filming - just text editing in Final Cut Pro.

Gantt chart showing the progress of work I am doing on promotional content — Progress - start of today

Using ChatGPT to help with outlines and structure

First thing I did today was decide I wanted to flesh out the plans for the mantra breakdown. (There's a mantra in my final song which is going to be the main focus of the promotion).

I used Chat GPT to start me off with this prompt

Message that reads 'please could you expand more on the 'break down the mantra' — Chat GPT prompt

Note: this is within the context of the conversation where I asked it to help me come up with ideas so it already knows what's going on. You can see this more from this blog post

It provided me a basic structure and style for the content

A structure suggested by ChatGPT of how I should lay out the content for my 'breaking down the mantra' promotion — ChatGPT's response

I took this expanded each section of the mantra, adding in my own stories and text, based on the guidance that ChatGPT suggested.

Video script writing and preparation

I wrote out the dialogue of what I wanted to say in the video. But reading from a script in a vdieo always feels wooden. So I then summarised the dialogue into short points. So all I did was read through the dialogue a few times, then set the key points infront of me while I was filming. This results in a video where I am speaking much more naturally (and ends up being quite different to the dialogue I originally wrote).

Then I also prepared the caption for each video.

I plan to get every video edited and ready before shceduling, then I can schedule them all in one go. (Less chances to get distracted on Instagram than if I did it one-by-one)

A document showing the script, script summary, and caption plan for one of the promotional videos — 1 reel script and preparation sheet

During this process I decided I wanted to do both main feed posts and reels for each of these topics. This meant I could use the original dialogue I wrote at as my caption for the main feed posts - they are getting the message across but aren't identical to what I'm saying in the reel videos.

This does mean I have more work to do, but we will see how it turns out.

Filming videos for 'casual' style promotion

I have done a vast array of styles of 'content' during the last few months of experimentation. Today I wanted to play around with something that seemed very casual, think people doing their make-up and getting ready while chatting. It kind of feels like you are on the phone with a friend.

So I recorded each of the video ideas in the context of me doing something relatively mundane (skincare routine, folding my clothes, cooking my lunch).

Editing videos

I only had about 15 minutes to get started on editing (I limit how much work I do in a day - leaving me time to rest and recover so I have enough energy to do the same tomorrow).

Thankfully due to the style of video it is very limited editing. All I did was take the full 1-take of footage and remove any long silences or moments where I stumble over my words and have to repeat myself.

Along with some dynamic control on the audio and minor enhancements with colour and light that is all I did.

I used to manually write all my captions in Final Cut Pro but think it will be more time efficient to use auto-generated captions from the TikTok app.

Summary

This is what the progress looks like at the end of today

Lots of additions due to choice of doing reels and posts, with work began on all of the reels which I needed to film things.