Putting finishing touches on prescreen videos. Any counsel on including some "bonus" content?

College Majors Music Major
1

My D’s prescreen video requirements are pretty specific in some cases and open ended in others.

In the case of the more prescriptive ones, what’s the POV on including some extra content that helps showcase her abilities in ways that the prescribed options don’t?

Obviously this would be:
a) after the mandatory elements are completed in the video
b) not excessive

Our feeling was they can just stop watching if they aren’t interested after the required elements.
And with embedded timecode stamps in the YouTube subscription they can just hop around.

We’ve poked around YouTube looking for other students prescreens from this and past years (only the ones who left them public obviously). And we’ve seen a variety of approaches.

But wanted to get folks take here. This is for pop/jazz instrumental programs FYI.

Thanks for any wisdom. And wish us luck hitting that “submit” button tonight!
And may all your uploads be smooth.

2

I can’t answer your question, but I will recommend you not wait until too close to the deadline to upload. In past years servers have been known to slow to a crawl as the deadline approaches because of heavy loads. Good luck.

3

Curious to see the YouTube reference. Is the particular your son is applying to asking that you only give them YT links? This would make life so much easier than direct upload of multi-gigabyte files to school servers but sadly most schools don’t seem to go this route.

Tough question above. My logic says go with exactly what is asked but heart says include bonus if you’re absolutely sure it will wow the faculty. Safe option would be not to do it but then again safe sometimes only gets you so far…

Good luck with the applications.

4

I think most bonus would be embodied in a higher level of playing presented in the video. S submitted one set of videos to one college and the bass professor contacted S and asked if he wanted to add on another video playing a certain song on the electric bass, so that bonus material was requested and then performed. Mostly YouTube links, so you could have a selection of semi-hidden videos out on YouTube and then only supply the links you want as you finally decide which ones. After S was long done with getting into school, we made his YouTube links open to the public because we were thankful for the ones we saw from other YouTubers.

5

Argh, just noticed I fat-fingered my earlier post… What I wanted to say was…

Is the particular, is the school your son is applying to asking that you only give them YT links?

Sorry about that. Anyways it was a digression.

6

We made some interesting discoveries last night when we finally went to upload my D’s videos to slideroom. And had to change up our plans a bit after making some calls to the schools. Hopefully this info is useful to other folks on deadline day.

So although slideroom is the standard way these schools collect portfolio/prescreen materials, schools use it slightly differently in ways that impact how you prepare these materials.

Frost, for example, uses a form built into slideroom to ask a bunch of questions. Thornton does not.
Frost doesn’t have a dedicated place in slideroom to put reco letters and repertoire lists. Thornton does.
Frost allows you to submit your videos as direct uploads OR as a link to YouTube/Vimeo, Thornton only takes uploads.

Prior to yesterday, we had created one video for each school, that included all required elements in one file.
We’d uploaded those to YT (hidden) with timestamps embedded in description for each song.

But then we learned that Thornton only takes uploads.
And to complicate things more, slideroom limits file size to 500mb.
Our 16 minute “compilation” video was 3gb. Lol!

So we called the office and asked what to do. And got two different answers.
First person said to compress the crap out of it and make it one video.
Second person said to upload each song as a separate video.

Seeing that slideroom had space for up to 8 videos, we took that approach.
Breaking each song into its own video got each one under 500mb and frankly, seemed much easier to navigate within slideroom. You can see what the songs are without having to scrub a long timeline, and you can skip between them easily.

So based on that, despite Frost accepting a YT link, we did the same for Frost.
Broke the files into individual songs and uploaded each one properly captioned and labeled.
Just seems like a much simpler way to process them on the receiving end vs making them bail out to YouTube and keep track of what song is where in the timeline. I had to downsample the videos from 4k to 1080p to upload them to slideroom, but the audio seemed to hold up, which obviously is the more important factor.

The uploads themselves didn’t take too long. Of course that’s 24 hours before the deadline, so your mileage may vary as we get closer to midnight tonight! Start as early as you can and don’t be afraid to call the offices at these schools. They have people standing by right now to help.

7

Congrats, @DrummerDad18 on getting the biggest hurdles behind you and your D. Our kids look to be on the very same path (mine just a couple years ahead of yours), so I’m extra excited to watch her progress!

8

I’ll just toss this out there to make you all feel a little better: my daughter has been sending out applications to Young Artist Programs in Europe and some houses still require everything sent via snail mail with CDs! Deadlines for those are meaningless for US residents since they have to be sent quite early in order to ensure that they actually arrive and go to a real person! Thankfully, she’s always been über-organized but I was glad that I wasn’t at the post office when she was told the cost to mail them!

9

I know this is a little late for this year since 2018 precreens are all done, but my gut says to not include anything that has not been asked for.

Schools don’t spent too much time on the pre-screens. They get way more pre-screens than they will schedule for auditions. Quality can already be seen in the prescreen videos, and bonus material cannot improve on that. On the other hand, you do not want it to impact something else on a required prescreen video. So, my gut feeling, go with just what is required.

10

Some one told my daughter who did prescreens for theatre schools that they see enough to decide in about the first 15 to 20 seconds. Always put your best track first!

11

Yes, I can’t imagine sitting through all of that content, and as you say, a really experienced player can tell very quickly if somebody has good technique, and a foundation upon which to build in an academic environment.

We took the advice here and stuck to the requested number of videos. And fortunately one of the required styles was more open-ended than we initially thought so she was able to swap in a more difficult piece upon re-reading it before submitting. And yes we front loaded the best material in the #1 and #2 positions within SlideRoom. So far so good in terms of feedback from schools.

12

We did the same. It makes me a little crazy, though, that the prescreen requirements are so specific and complex for many schools when we know they are deciding in the first 60 seconds if they want the student to audition. If it’s so easy to tell quality, why can’t prescreens (and audition requirements) be more consistent? My S has had to perfect 11 different pieces for six total auditions – and ended up dropping two schools simply because their requirements were too complicated.

13

I found it very inteeesting that the hardest school to get into, Curtis, has the most lax pre-screen requirements: “5-10 minutes of anything.”
And yes, those who are listening CAN tell within the first few seconds.

14

I always wonder if some of the requirements are for “weeding” purposes. If there was a standardized audition, there would be a lot more applicants…meaning a lot more work for the colleges…and a lot more talent rejected. As for Curtis (and I am NO expert), I have heard they audition a lot of students…and then make you wait for call backs. My D did audition there for grad school and had to stay two nights as they worked through their process…for one spot…that did not go to my D. That was for VP so it may differ for other instruments. I think Juillard has a similar process. Other schools generally give you your audition time and then you are free to go so it is easier to get in and get out (maybe not what you want for undergrad but sometimes it’s necessary due to your finances etc).

So if part of the process is to weed you out in the early phases due to lots of requirements at a medium-interest school, I do think that kind of crazy is OK…because weeding you out as you are spending big bucks flying to auditions and sitting in hotel rooms…is a whole new level of crazy…that continues after college for many.

15

For us in the end, S (a jazz drummer) ended up preparing 8 total songs for 5 sets of pre-screen videos (plus 5 brief grooves at Thornton’s request), so there was a reasonable amount of re-use potential between the 5 schools. No one else wanted “Airegin” or “Blues for Alice” except for Thornton, but since USC has always been a prime target, preparing those pieces became the priority, and he was able to reuse them for other schools. At the same time, one of the reasons he dropped Northwestern off of his list was because of the extremely meticulous requirements they had for both repertoire and composition of the combo playing the songs.

Anyways, I am highly confident that two of the reasons many/most schools ask for multiple pieces to be included in the video are:

  1. They want the students to prepare pieces that they’ll likely be performing in live auditions, where each student is almost certainly going to be playinging/singing for 10-20 minutes. Yes, even in those live auditions, faculty can usually tell within the first 10-20 seconds whether someone is a “no.” But the real trick is figuring which among a group of talented students will get a “yes,” especially at the most competitive schools were slots are very limited.

  2. Very closely tied to the point above is the fact that the pre-screen video requirements are themselves a filter for less-talented and less-motivated candidates, especially at the competitive schools. If your S/D has a dream of going to School X, chances are extremely high they’ll do whatever that school asks. If, on the other hand, they’re toying with the thought of School Z but they don’t want to have to do a different set of videos, then that’s one fewer set of videos Z has to watch. (e.g. why my S didn’t apply to Northwestern as I describe above)

At the same time, audition requirements and lists give candidates a window into what being at that school is probably going to be like. Not entirely, mind you, but the correlation is non-negligible. A very good analogy to this is with audition lists for professional orchestras. For example, one shouldn’t be shocked that the LA Phil put the 3rd movement solo on John Adams’ “City Noir” on their list for Principal Trumpet back in 2011; I pretty much guarantee that’s not going to be on any other Top 20 orchestra’s list (maybe the SFS, but even they didn’t do it when Mark Inouye’s chair was still open). That’s a CRAZY hard solo for many reasons, and Tom Hooten has probably played it more than other pieces on a typical Principal Trumpet list like Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, Brandenberg 2nd, or Parsifal.