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.

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

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

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)

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

Progress - 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.

Creating teaser clips for music release promotion

Today I've been doing some of the most dangerous work I do.

And when I say dangerous, I mean the most susceptible to distraction and doom scrolling.

I've started preparing some of the content for promoting the release of my debut EP which comes out on October 18th.

I'm beginning with some teaser clips sharing little snippets of some of my favourite lyrics. This final song 'My New Meaning' which is completing the EP is based around a mantra which I've started to live by - a statement to trust and believe in the universe and what she has in store for you.

So pretty simple stuff. Just words in time with the music snippets on a plain background.

I was considering trying to do something more complicated with text animation however that would've used up a couple hours of research and playing - and normally I enjoy that but I've got lots to get on with so made the trade off to keep it simple to make the most of my time.

I did learn something on Final Cut Pro. They have 'generators' which are just standard backgrounds - some still and some animated. I ended up only using the plain ones but it did give me some ideas I could do with things in the future.

Final Cut Pro 'generators' selection screen

I ended up with 3 separate lyrics clips to share.

Here's one of them

Time to schedule them on instagram - the most dangerous part. This is because I have to schedule it using the instagram app, and if a reel pulls my attention and I don't have the willpower to stop myself I can end up in a multiple hour scrolling session. I got a little distracted, but nothing serious.

And successfully managed to schedule the first few days of promo.

TikTok doesn't allow you to schedule so I got the posts ready and just left them in drafts.

This just means I'm going to have to go on TikTok everyday manually to actually post the videos - more chances to end up doom scrolling.

After today this is the status of my promo schedule progress

Gantt chart progress

EP Promotional Planning

Today I have been completely focused on planning the promotional schedule for my EP release.

I have now finished all of the actual music that is being released, so everything else is going to be related to promotional content.

I have tried lots of different styles for promoting the songs that I have been releasing on the last few months. However, for the EP and the final song I really wanted to focus on what the song means to me, and the mantra that is part of its lyrics.

As with everyone else is doing now, I used ChatGPT to help me sort this plan out.

I use it in a way where I provide rough ideas and content and it helps me refine them and flesh them out. Then I will take the parts that I like and work on them myself some more.

A few months ago I brain dumped a big block of text of what this song does mean to me, and why I want to share it into the world.

I then put this prompt into ChatGPT

So it used just what I had written, but re-ordered and segmented it into 12 thematically consistent snippets. So this is going to be the basis for some of my promo material.

Then I wanted to create some ideas based on the mantra that forms some of the lyrics in the song, so I gave ChatGPT this prompt.

And this gave me a large selection of ideas, some which were quite interesting, some which I'm definitely not going to use.

Then one last prompt to see what the order it best thought I should post these.

With every response it gave I always end up editing it and changing things around. I find for me personally it can just help speed up the process for some parts.

I then added everything in to my Gantt chart and re-arranged it until it made sense for me and wha tI wanted to achieve.

So this is basically a summary of everything I'm going to be working on for the next month or so.

Re-purposing content

I also have all the footage from when I wrote the song because I did it almost completely live on twitch stream.

So I want to take the highlights of these streams and create some material that shows the process live in action.

This is quite laborious as there are about 7 3-hour long videos of me writing and producing the song.

Today I made it through 1 of them just highlighting some clips that I think would work well.

This is what that list looks like.

So I've got a lot more time to dedicate to doing that.

While I was going through this first video I thought it might be a good idea to actually create a huge post documenting the entire process for this song as well. I don't know if I will end up doing that because it will be an extreme amonut of work but let's see what happens.