Agents & Cabaret Video

[Mama Lou]

I'm cutting a video of my cabaret and stage acts to send to agents and am looking for feedback.

http://www.strongwomanshow.com/AgentsCabaretVideo.html

The first attempt fell apart because trying to piece all these separate talking acts together into a cohesive 3 min video... was just too much - none of the pieces looked amazing because you couldn't figure out what the shit was going on.

This second attempt, I like more. Its focused on a general Strong Woman "vibe". You can see that she does a lot of things, but you don't get the whole story.

The things I'm not sure about:
1. I love the song, but does it sound like I'm a sadistic man hating performer who is out to shame guys?
2. Is it too confusing? 5 different bits in 2.5 min?
3. The "legend" floating words at the beginning?
4. The interruption of "And the audience loves her."
5. The film footage quality is crap. Does that ruin the video?

Thoughts?!?
What SHOULD be in an agent promo? Places I've performed? Quotes?

My thought was to put this video (general cabaret) and a video of the whole phone book ripping act onto one DVD.

I really would love some feedback before I start putting in transitions and deleting other clips.
Thanks!

[scot]

Don't worry about it being too confusing. It's not. It looks like a bunch of clips from shows.

You gotta get a closeup in there somewhere. Your face is your logo. Even if it's just a photo, get a closeup in there.

All the beginning part doesn't look like much. i can't tell what's happening. All I understood was the phone book bit.

Audience reaction is helpful. That's what people booking shows are concerned about whether they think about it or not. They want to know if you'll please the audience. The easiest way, use the audience cheering audio from the tape.

Why is the intro there? You should think of how things sell you. Every clip, song, sound, color should sell you for your best assets. Plus, people don't want to read during a video. If you decide that an introduction is the most effective way to get money, have someone read it out loud.

[Aaron Gregg]

Hey mama, how are things?

I don't think the video quality is too bad. You've got some nice stages there as well which makes it look much better than a lot of videos.

I agree with Scot that you don't need to worry about it being too confusing - it only shows a tiny bit of your show. However, you should set things up more by including some on-stage dialogue to your bits.

When I'm making videos I try and use music that has no lyrics so that I can dub my voice and audience laughter over the it. This allows me to include a few jokes but keep up the pace by using music. You just fade the music out a bit and then lay some audio over it. It seems to work best if you put a few clips of you talking together and then go back to straight music.

Again I agree with Scot about the intro, but for me it wasn't punchy at all. Having no sound for 30 seconds is too long. Some slo-mo shots with a voice-over might work well.

Definitely throw in some close-ups. You should be exploiting the fact that you're attractive.

Lastly. I did this a lot in my last video and a few people told me it was a bad idea. I used several clips of me doing the same trick on several stages. I felt that it showed I was consistent and reliable but other performers thought it was a waste of valuable time. One or two shots of the same thing is enough.

BTW, Curt had a copy of my first promo video on his hard drive and he showed me that it included a gay blowjob joke. That's were I started from - at least it prevented me from working too many kids' birthday parties.

See you at SJFF. I'll likely be having someone tape my act with my fancy camera so we could likely get your as well.

-Aaron

[Mama Lou]

Cool, thanks.
I fixed it up. I think all the sugestions were right on.
There are more tricks, more close-ups, less reading, more cheering.

http://www.strongwomanshow.com/AgentsCabaretVideo.html

The one thing I didn't do was put in the audio for the jokes. A lot of my humor is situational - and if I'm going to include a video of the full phone book ripping act alongside it, I think it'll be covered without the headache of splicing more audio bits into the montage video.

One more headache I could use some advice on -

The footage I want to use of my act I have to rip from a DVD. I'm a Mac user, which seems to make some previous advice on this fourm obsolete.
The rip is done. I used Mac the Ripper.
I'm using Rachel's tips on changing the file name to something useable - VOB to dv or mov
But still not working.
Any Mac users solved this problem before?

[Evan Young]

download a program called DVDxDV . You will have to pay for it, like $25 or something if you don't want their water mark on the video.
the program works for me, I've used it a few times.

[scot]

Search for and download "handbrake"

It's free.

Then you can put the files in imovie

[Mama Lou]

Thanks. I used the link that Evan suggested and it was really easy.
I even figured out how to do the rip and file transfer without instruction manuals... which comes with its own sense of pride.

For any other mac users - thats a great tool to have on your computer.

[jayrodin]

Hey. I've been wanting to get an agent too but where do I find one who would be good at pushing a one man band show???