If a cameraman will have to spend a lot of time at his camera position and be elevated above the action, specialized platforms are available allowing much more flexibility and comfort, plus the ability to relocate with flexibility.
Corporate Video Production
To produce effective corporate video it’s important to understand all facets of a company or organization; it’s products, clients, business model, strengths & weaknesses, and most importantly it’s mission. By understanding a client company in depth, it is then possible to craft each project from an accurate and supportive perspective.
Respecting the Time of Your Client’s Employees
An important aspect during production of videos for biotech clients is maximizing our time in the lab with minimal interruptions to the scientist’s work while complying with health & safety procedures. In addition to this skill and experience, we have engineered specialized lighting systems for lab work.
Handheld Camera
Proper handheld camera technique is different from simply “hand holding” the camera. In this example, Bob is filming former San Diego Charger Junior Seau being interviewed by Marcus Allen for CBS Sports. The handheld camera allows Bob to float with the interview, changing perspective and shot size as the situation changes.
Working with Children
Capturing intended responses from children has a unique set of challenges. For one thing, children are much smarter than most adults give them credit for. Acting silly or stupid is a dead giveaway to most kids that the production is lacking authenticity. In this photo, a Swift Media producer asks questions of children for an internal communications video.
Canon 5D Mark II Production
Chris La Palm directs while Bob Sloan shoots with the Canon 5D Mark II. One of the Canon 5D‘s advantage for a DP is that it has a full frame sensor which allows for very shallow depth of field to help isolate your subject from the background. You also have the entire line of Canon lenses to choose from, from 14mm to 600mm.
Sloan Productions at Comic-Con for HBO
Sloan Productions provides high definition San Diego production crew for HBO at Comic-Con 2009. HBO Creative Services producer Chris Denniston interviews Alan Ball, creator of HBO’s hit series True Blood. Director of Photography Bob Sloan focuses one of his Panasonic Varicams on Ball during the four day pop culture convention. Sloan Productions has serviced thousands of clients for over 30 years with professional video production in San Diego. For this shoot we employed a ring light that provides the most flattering light when the subject is close to the camera as it fills in facial shadows at the same axis as the lens. Sloan Productions is available for similar assignments in San Diego and elsewhere when professional television production crews are required.
Breaking into the Business
It’s actually not that difficult to break into the business. But you first must have genuine passion for the industry and the craft, you have to have it in your blood. Then it’s just a matter of applying yourself. It all starts with desire, a desire to get into the business. With strong enough desire, and dedication to the effort, you can get into and find your place in the business. You may have heard, “Who you know gets you into the business and what you know keeps you there.” But there’s more. It’s how well you do the job that keeps you employed in the industry. So making contacts and learning craft skills are essential elements for successful entry but you must create your unique place and continue to add value in addition.
All this takes preparation. A top-rated film/video school is a good start. Working on student films and videos in any capacity is important. Seeing, analyzing and discussing films, reading books on production, observing film and video productions, visiting equipment rental houses and befriending camera assistants who are prepping camera equipment for an upcoming production, and attending professional exhibitions, seminars and workshops are all means of learning by living the craft.
There is no substitute for experience. There is no substitute for hands-on opportunities. Working on independent productions in any capacity is a way of acquiring that experience. It is well to keep track of any and all production experience by starting and regularly updating a resume which can be presented to prospective employers in order to gain more work opportunities and more experience.
Then you have to create a break for yourself. How do you get yourself in front of people who will see you as a valuable commodity to their staff or organization. This takes some ingenuity and patience. It can be about putting yourself in particular places at particular times that will increase our odds of a chance to be involved with an ongoing production or group of people. You have a choice between laying on the beach or literally walking the streets of Hollywood observing. Find out where productions are going on in public, where to people go to lunch, what do they do after work. You may even recognize someone you know. You have to be genuine though.
In addition, people like to work with their friends. This is one of the fundamental structures of any business, the relationships that you create, maintain, and nurture. This can’t be done by force, it must be organic. You want to build relationships with the initial people who are willing to share their time and knowledge with you. Be interested in them as individuals as well as members of the industry. If done well, these people will begin to care about you as a person as well and want you to succeed. People by nature want to help others.
What is a Blue-ray DVD
Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, JVC, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience.
While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible with CDs and DVDs through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit. The benefit of using a blue-violet laser (405nm) is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm), which makes it possible to focus the laser spot with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly and stored in less space, so it’s possible to fit more data on the disc even though it’s the same size as a CD/DVD. This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 is what enables Blu-ray Discs to hold 25GB/50GB.
To Drop or Not to Drop – Drop Frame vs. Non-Drop Frame Timecode
First of all this discussion only matters if you are producing something that needs to be time accurate in NTSC, (standard definition) video. Examples are TV commercials & programs.
Drop Frame and Non-Drop Frame write address positions for specific points on video clips, tapes, and programs differently.
Non-Drop Frame is “frame accurate”, a specific number or address corresponding to each frame of visual media. But in NTSC video, 30 non-drop frames do not equal one second of time. Drop-frame IS time accurate. This can be confusing. Why would you “drop something out” to make something called “timecode” time accurate? For this article I’m not going to go into why this is and instead talk about knowing which to use.
Drop-Frame refers to what I’ll call “time distance” on your video clip, tape, or program. Reading the drop-frame timecode tells you where you are in terms of actual chronological clock time as opposed to how many frames have gone by.
Drop Frame tells time while Non-Drop Frame counts frames.
A good rule of thumb is that if it’s for broadcast television, use drop-frame. Otherwise it doesn’t really matter.
You can shoot in either really but edit your program in drop frame to make it time accurate, but it’s better to be consistent.
Also, there is no difference in quality or content between drop and non-drop timecode. Timecode numbers are dropped not video frames.
Additional resources for this article are;
Pam Malouf-Cundy, who has a very detailed explanation at http://csif.org/html/dropframe.html
And Larry Jordan, Bob Sloan endorsed guru of video production, http://larryjordan.biz/
