San Diego's Award-Winning Video Production Company for 35 Years
Sometimes sunshine alone isn’t enough. Great pictures don’t just happen. For network quality results, shadows must be filled in when working in direct sunshine. It takes a big light to compete with the sun. In this case, a daylight color balanced “HMI” lighting instrument requires it’s own operator to follow with on-camera talent in a reality TV program for Fox Television.
On location in Las Vegas using a “jib arm” to create compound camera moves incorporating panning, tilting, booming, and lateral movement as well as zoom and focus.
Working in the operating room has some very specific challenges. One is positioning a camera above the surgeon to see his point of view. Sloan Productions has executed many single and multiple camera surgery shoots including oral, open-heart, & plastic surgery.
Whether it’s in a sterile clean room or an oilfield, Sloan Productions prepares for each specific environment. The location may be wet, extremely hot, cold, desolate, or dirty. It’s not the challenge, but creating the solution that we enjoy.
Sloan Productions has a commitment to our clients and the production of quality television and video programs. Our goal is to take make the production process transparent for our clients allowing them to focus on the core content for their footage and shows.
Sloan Productions provided facilities and crew for Hall Media Productions and their client, the Taking Care of Your Diabetes Conference.
TCOYD offers a unique and very personal way to understand diabetes and to educate patients to become the most active members of their health care teams. Through conferences and health fairs held in cities across the nation, TCOYD annually brings thousands of people with diabetes, those at risk and their loved ones into contact with national and local medical professionals and others with expertise related to living with the disease for a day of highly informative and motivational programs. Visit the website: www.tcoyd.org
Sloan Productions orchestrated the movement and technical quality of five Panasonic SDX 900 camcorders between ballrooms, conference rooms, and outdoor areas capturing live switched proceedings for the Taking Care of Your Diabetes website.
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 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.
DVD playability issues predominately stem from dirt, dust, smudges, or foreign matter on the bottom side, (non label), of the DVD.
Upon inspection if you find this to be true, clean the disk with water and some dish soap. Do this repeatedly until it is shiny and clean again. Use a soft cotton cloth or towel for both cleaning and drying it. Do not use a paper towel except for perhaps blotting to make sure it is fully dry. Don’t put the disk back in your drive until it is completely dry.
The next cause can be scratches, big or small. Next time you rent a DVD take a look at the bottom of it and you will most likely see some degree of scratches. Scratches can be played through, although they can also cause issues.
Beyond cleanliness, and when your problem occurs at the same point on the disc, it is almost always a defect within the disc. It is rare that defects of this kind are seen by the naked eye. They are most often a result of poor plating or coating in the manufacturing process and because of the poor reflectivity the decoder in the player gets overloaded with raw data that is full of dropouts and cannot keep up.
There can be problems with compatibility between discs and players but this is rarely the case these days. If it is a compatibility issue, the player won’t be able to read the DVD at all and you never get to the menu screen.
Our advice is to clean the DVD as mentioned above. this normally restores about 95% of playability issues. Then try the disk in a different player and see if you get the same result.
The highest quality DVD stock manufactured today in terms of compatibility and quality for burning DVD’s is Taiyo Yuden. This is what we at Sloan Productions use to help eliminate issues with our products. If you continue to have difficulty contact us and we will rectify the situation.
Many times we have incorporated our client’s PowerPoint slides into their video and DVD productions. Because computer displays and television displays are different, keeping a few things in mind will be of help to both of us.
PowerPoint presentations are optimized for computers. DVDs are optimized for television. There are a number of differences between high-resolution output for computers and low-resolution output for television. Basically, computer resolution is far greater than television’s resolution of 720 x 486 pixels (NTSC). Also, normal televisions at a minimum crop as much as 10% from around the edge (5% from each edge), resulting in a number of consequences when incorporating PowerPoint images into your video production and then to DVD. Keeping the following guidelines in mind when designing your PowerPoint presentation will help insure a good DVD experience as well.
These are as follows:
• Try to use 30 pt fonts or higher as small text may get lost on video.
• Use sans serif (e.g. Arial, Helvetica) bold fonts.
• Use no more than 4 or 5 lines of text per slide.
• Avoid the color red, use darker colors and greens and blues.
• Keep your graphics simple.
• Provide at least a 15% border around the edge.
We realize that these recommendations may seem limiting to you for your live presentation but it helps to be aware of this. In addition, audiences basically prefer simpler graphics. Too much information can cause them to disassociate altogether with the slide.
