Hey!
My name is Tessel and I’m a team member of 4481 Team Rembrandts. I have been the media lead for two years now and we often make videos for which we need to write scripts.
In this reply, I will talk about the different kinds of videos we make and how we plan and write the scripts, but also a little bit about editing and the structure of specific videos.
Besides that, I definitely agree with the comment above, the media from 6328 is amazing!
Really check them out if you have the time!
Anyway, in this reply I will talk about our recap videos/vlogs (shotlist and editing), the reveal video (shotlist and editing), review videos (scriptwriting) and video series (scriptwriting).
Recap videos/vlogs - shotlist
For recap videos we don’t really plan anything, we just talk beforehand about who has a camera and who makes the videos and/ or photos. During events we have a small shortlist written down that can be used as a reference point. This normally includes stuff like team members working on the robot in the pit, the robot playing on the field, talking to other people in the pit and the reaction of our team after a match. If you’re not sure what kind of shots you would want to use, then I advise you to watch recap/travel videos of other teams and take inspiration for shots from them.
Recap videos/vlogs - editing
Take this recap video of our regionals trip last March:
In the video, you can see our team outside the venue, then they are working on the robot in the pit. We see them moving the robot towards the field, then the robot plays autonomous, then it plays tele-op and end-game, and after we “return” to the pit in the video and we see our team talking to other teams and/ or judges. We also see the video starting in light day and ending into more of a night-time.
We normally use such a format as a base to create a clear structure for the video. Having such a flow/ chronological structure will make it easier to watch and easier for the viewer to understand what is going on. Since they can see our day step by step. If you jump from shot to shot, the video would be a bit more chaotic and harder to follow the video.
Reveal videos - shotlist
For a reveal video, we often plan out a bit more. To begin with, we watch other reveal videos to find inspiration for the shots. After this, we write down a list of things we need to film. I wrote a few down below:
- Shot of the robot
- Shots of the subsystems still and moving
- Shots of the robot driving
- Shot of the robot scoring
- Shot of the robot climbing
- Etc.
We normally film every shot from different distances, so a wide, medium and close-up for every shot. In the end we make sure to have captured all of the features that our robot has.
Besides this, we also choose our reveal video music before we start filming, based on the music you can sometimes create some more custom shots. For example the slow-motion shot in the reveal video of Coda, our 2024 robot.
Reveal video can be found here (00:29) :
Reveal videos - Editing
For reveal videos, we always start with a small sneak peek of the robot, mostly consisting of close-ups. Then we see the subsystems working apart from each other and when the beat drops we see the full robot and all of the subsystems working together. You can see this clearly in our 2023 reveal video of our robot TR-X.
Reveal video can be found here:
Review videos - Scriptwriting
For the past two years, our team attended the #TeamREV Challenge. For this challenge, we had to make a review video once a month to get points. We as a media team did not write the scripts ourselves. We asked other team members, who know the products, to write the script. Also make sure to keep your script or shotlist nice and clean. We almost always use the same way of writing down as we do here. You can find the script for the REV Review video on the REV Radio Power Module here:
And the final review video here:
Video series - Scriptwriting
When it comes to making videos or writing scripts it is very important to think about who you are making/ writing this for. For example, we can write out Chief Delphi posts a bit more in-depth since the audience knows what FRC is. But when writing a post for our socials, we try to make it more accessible towards our viewers there, such as our friends, family and partners who might not have that much FIRST Experience.
What is also important is knowing that scripts often don’t get written by a single person, it can be really valuable to ask for feedback, ideas and inspiration from other team members! And that scripts don’t have to be written in a single day, for our new video series we had to write 9 scripts of about ~45 seconds, in our planning we gave ourselves six weeks with 3 team members working on them.
In the case of a video series, it is best to keep the videos aligned with each other. For this, we decided on one basic format. This goes along the lines of:
_
[Intro] - Catchphrase
[Problem] - What is the problem we are dealing with?
[Solution] - What is our solution to the problem?
[Outro] - Closing off
_
For each video, writing the script was filling in these blank spaces with the information on the 9 topics. After the scripts were finished we took them through a feedback round with our media team. And then, we made the shotlists. These contain the shots next to the script. For example, the script and shotlist for a video about the robot would look like this:
_
[Shot of a team member standing next to the robot on the field]
“In this video, we are going to talk about the robot”
_
I hope this information helps you. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!
We’d love to help.