Media

One of the things I enjoy most about producing is working on dramatic videos. Last month I had the opportunity to work on a short film for our Starting Point Department. Producing short films is not the norm for us here in North Point Media world, and as you can imagine we had to adapt a lot of what we know about production and transfer that into a new working knowledge on the fly.

As with any big, multi-day production, our crew put in some very long hours. Some of our night location shoots turned into mornings on more than one occasion. During one of those long nights of production I stole away for a few minutes to jot down some of the things that I learned on this production. Maybe some of you will find this helpful or possibly even therapeutic.

Random Things I learned….

In-town location

1-  Permits.

Getting a permit might be a good idea if shooting in a good-size town. Say Atlanta for instance. Especially if you want to control traffic or shut down a street for a while.

2-  Permits-part 2.

Please allow ample time for permit requests to be processed. I would suggest a week. Don’t bother trying to get a permit if you are not a week out from shooting–trust me!

3-  Security.

Security is a must for in-town shoots, especially at night. You can’t compromise on safety.

The crew

4-  Food.

Feeding a crew of 20 can really add up!
I found that $10 a person works for meals. Don’t forget snacks & drinks. Especially in the summer!

5-  Food-part 2.

If you can clear the budget, hire a person to handle food—do it! Better yet if you have a volunteer that is good at that type of thing that would be great.

6-  Parking.

Never forget—parking in town is pricey!

7- Vehicles.

Limit the number of cars your crew is using. This will help with gas $$ and the parking thing too.

Late-night location

8-  Location.  Location.  Location.

Really good locations add big time to believability in your production.

9-  Location-part 2.

The more remote a location the more logistically complicated it usually is to shoot there. Keep in mind the travel time for everyone, how bad cell service may be and then last but not least getting food to your remote spot.

10- Morale.

Never underestimate the power of a late night snack run or a smoothie run on the mood of the crew.

11- Food-part 3.

Special dietary requests should be considered ahead of time.

Mobile home base

12- Home Base.

a. Find out ahead of time how you will communicate from each location.
b. Think power, shade, food, drinks, restrooms, chairs and a table for laptops and hard drives.
c. Network connectivity = Bonus.
d. Rule of thumb… The longer your crew is at each location the more elaborate your home base.

13- Actors.

If your actor can’t deliver his/her lines correctly it can unravel your work—No matter how good the locations and technical aspects of the shoot.

14- Plan.

You must have a plan. Even an ill-conceived plan is better than no plan.

Setting up a shot

15- CASH.

There will ALWAYS be incidental expenses.
The bigger the crew / production the more $$ you should have on you.

16- Credit Card.

Get a work credit card. Enough said.

17- Paperwork.

We all love to hate it but have it with you. Don’t forget to have people sign it. It is maddening to come back to the office with blank paperwork! (Not that I’ve ever done that…)

So what are some of the things you have learned on your shoot locations? We would love your feedback.

(*Photos courtesy of: Mary Caroline Mann. Professional technical services: Whisper Productions.)

http://www.vimeo.com/13127309
It’s actually been a while since I got to stick my toes in AfterFX.  Being on Short Film shoots and other video productions, it’s fun to finally get back into some Motion GFX.  This was our latest Title Pack for this past Sunday.

Few tips I used:
Public Domain, Public Domain, Public Domain, did I mention Public Domain?
Search the World Wide Web (invented by Al Gore) for Public Domain images & video clips.  Presidential Archives/Library of Congress.  Be sure to read the fine print for usage.

3D space + Depth of Field
A simple camera move with small variable depths in Z space adds big impact.  Make sure DOF is enabled on your 3D Camera.

Blending + Feathering Edges
Play with blend modes (Click Layer, keystroke: Shift +) is the AfterFX shortcut to fly through them. You’re bound to find one that is AWESOMENESS.  I wanted seamless montage, Mask and Feather your edges

Effects: Turbulent Displacement
To make a still flag wave from the key art I used Turbulent Displacement. Play with keyframing it.

Effects: Stroke
Mask your Text layer and then use Stroke to draw it on.

Adjustment Layer
I added an overall adjustment layer to BOOST Saturation and give the Key Art colors more pop for video.  Print colors and video usually don’t translate well.

Well, Hope you find some of these tips helpful, they aren’t much but are pretty simple methods to help make simple things more dynamic.
WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR GO TO TRICKS?

Key Art Design- Pat Malone

Let’s step into the way-back machine for a moment and take a look at White Flag, an Andy Stanley series from this past February.  I learned some valuable lessons working on the art for this series– particularly, sometimes the coolest idea and the best idea are not one and the same.

The premise (surrender) and imagery (a white flag) were pretty straightforward.  However, we’re always challenging ourselves to come up with fresh, unique designs rather than just take the easy way out.

Our initial inspiration came from papercraft; we liked the depth and dimensionality in the designs we were finding, as well as the unique symbolism found in the juxtaposition of the cut-out and the model itself.  It also allowed us to steer toward a design that was completely white and yet still interesting and dynamic.  Unfortunately, none of us are papercraft masters, so I needed to try and fake it using a 3D modeling program (Cinema 4D in this case).  Plus, this needed to look like white fabric, not white paper.

(CLICK THUMBNAILS FOR FULL-SIZE IMAGES)

As these compositions were pushed toward better and better execution, the general consensus was this: the idea was cool, the designs looked cool, but something was missing.  Whether it was lacking emotion or some sort of undefinable “it” factor, I wasn’t hitting the mark.  I thought that the flag had the potential to be a very strong symbol, but it was perhaps being overwhelmed by the text.  So I started to steer away from the papercraft idea and toward designs with a more prominent flag.

At this point I started asking myself some tough questions.  Did this design really need to be 3D?  3D modeling adds a lot of potential for visual interest and can allow you to do some unique and even mind-bending things; however, it’s not necessarily always the answer.  I hadn’t to this point allowed myself to explore other options.

I decided to strip the design down even further, and relied on negative space, contrast, spacing, and scale to pull the necessary emotion and meaning out of this design, rather then trying to be overly complicated.  The white flag was a strong symbol, and I wanted to maximize that potential.

This design, by a longshot, generated the most positive response.  It may be the simplest design we’ve ever done– honestly, I spent about 15 minutes on the composition itself– but in this case, simple was the way to go.

The season of Summer blockbusters is upon us, and while it could be argued that many of these big budget movies may lack a little depth in story, they sure donʼt lack for amazing visual effects.  A great example of cutting edge visual effects is the newest Marvel Comics movie Iron Man 2.  When I saw this movie a few weeks ago I was taken back by the cool 3-D holographic computer displays that Mr. Tony Stark  (Robert Downey, Jr.) interacted with.  Here is a great video that Prologue released showing some of their amazing work on this project.  Enjoy:

http://www.vimeo.com/12007928

[Motionographer article about their process here.]

Not too long ago, I don’t think I would have said that I value collaboration. It used to bother me. I wanted to edit videos on my own and not let anyone see it before I was finished. After all, how could someone else’s thoughts on my half-finished project be constructive if they don’t know even know what I still plan to do with it? But then I started realizing that other people actually have a pretty good sense of where I’m going with a project, and their concerns are usually pretty legit. Here are some reasons I love getting other people in on my works-in-progress:

· I waste less time. Left unchecked, I have a tendency to put a lot of energy into trying to make a bad idea work, rather than throwing it out and looking for something better. If I can’t sell anyone else on my idea early on, then I know I need to move on to something else.

· Better solutions come along. As hard as it is to change direction mid-project because of someone else’s idea, I have to admit all my best work is a result of giving heed to others’ concerns and ideas. I once completely trashed what I thought was a good script because someone convinced me it was missing the target. While the video would have been fun, it wouldn’t have served its purpose. We ended up with something much better.

· More confidence, less anxiety. A wonderful benefit of letting others in on your work is that there’s less panic when you start to doubt yourself. And I always doubt myself. Just think of the encouragement you get when someone else sees your work and they actually like it. My main fear for letting others in what I’m working on is that they won’t like it. But I’d rather a few people not like it and then fix it than an entire audience not like it.

We’ve benefitted so much from team collaboration through feedback that it’s become a regular part of our schedule. Several days a week at 2pm is a video review meeting. This is where we grab anyone who’s available and gather around a computer to see what everyone’s working on. Sometimes it’s quick, but great stuff always comes out in those meetings.

What are the ways you keep others in the loop for your projects?

Here is an amazing timelapse video of the Iceland volcano using Canon 5d mkII.  Video by Sean Stiegemeier

http://www.vimeo.com/11673745 

Here’s how he created this video using a motorized dolly by www.dynamicperception.com (not available yet).  Incredible shots with this thing. 

http://www.vimeo.com/11835819

http://www.vimeo.com/12204568

Here’s a video our team did to promote our COLLEGE MINISTRY’S summer meetings called “SUMMER GATHERING.”  The first thing we think about for a promotion like this is “College Humor.” Creatively, that usually means getting to right people in the room who think in that mindset.  Plus our Producer Dave Blakeslee found an amazing professional V.O. guy TOM LIST whose wife is actually on staff here.  Adam Dukes (contractor) rewrote this original concept that Career Builder created a year ago.  This video had run through our office many times and it has just the right humor that some may find dumb but is perfect for College kids.  The repetition in the original commercial is BRILLIANT!!!  You know a commercial is good when you quote lines from it like “HEY DUMMY!”

One of our main goal for title packages is to set up tension for the speaker. Drive was one of the first and only times where that wasn’t our intention.

I wanted to take you through our process with this blog post, but there is a lot here so I broke it up into sections so you can skip around easy if you aren’t interested in reading the whole thing. Some of it can get pretty technical.

http://www.vimeo.com/11501538

::Concept::
Drive presents media with an interesting challenge. The conference itself has a theme. And we want our title packages to reflect that theme, but they immediately precede Andy (our senior pastors) message. Which may more may not have to do with the conference theme, but rarely have a very close tie.

And, on top of that, during the planning stages, what we had limited knowledge of what Andy would be sharing, but we did know the messages would have very different tones. Session 1’s video would follow worship and precede a message about the cross and then communion. Session 2 would be after a half hour of pure fun and games and be followed by a leadership talk about engaging your audience. And Session 3 would be after worship and be followed by a leadership talk.

With this in mind our intention was basically to create a “vibe” piece that set the stage for Andy and “celebrated” the idea of “Going Off Road”. We didn’t want to lean to hard into trying to say something with our title package because we know that would set up unnecessary tension for Andy, but we did want to emphasize that everything we were talking about was in line with “Taking it Off Road.”

Here is a link to the creative brief we created going into the shoot.

http://www.vimeo.com/11501582

::The Shoot::
Our DP for this shoot was Josh McKague at Whisper Productions. We couldn’t have asked for a more thorough and involved DP. On top of his preparedness, he had some family land that had the perfect mudding spots, and a great JEEP for us to use. Location was originally going to be the biggest challenge for this shoot, and it quickly became the easiest part. He also welded several camera mounts to get the shots we needed. (on front of the car, by the wheel well, over the tire in the back, and even a helmet cam). We shot with the RED, and two Canon Mark II 5D. We also used an underwater housing for one of the Canons (the one that got muddy). It was incredibly effective. The only difficulty was it was hard to know exactly what you were capturing with it, since the mud covered the lens and viewfinder constantly.

You might also find it interesting that our “jib” was a scissor lift that was out in the field we were shooting it. It worked perfectly.

Our cast, except for Josh’s crew was all volunteer from our staff or staff friends.

http://www.vimeo.com/11501620

::Editing::
Matt Gibson edited this piece for us. As he approached the videos his first task was to categorize and sift through the footage for the best shots. It was during this process that Matt decided the footage we had of cleaning up was so good that the final title package started to take on that theme instead of the original theme of “getting unstuck.” In the end this was a great change. It really gave the third session a nice conclusion to the conference.

The challenge of making 3 videos fit into three very different sessions was very apparent in the music choice. Its hard to find one piece of music that would work with the vibe of the title packages and the vibe of the session. During the music search (using Firstcom.com) Matt found some great music that all fit well together as a progression and decided to have each video have its own music track.

Technically, Matt color treated everything to have a desaturated look to match the muddy, dirty, gritty feel of the footage, then bumped the contrast levels and used the Magic Bulletin Film Look Suite to finish of the footage look. The footage already had such a great cinematic quality to it (mainly due to the color treatment and the low depth of field the cameras captured), that he cropped the footage even further to intensify the cinematic effect & have ability to adjust composition of the shot. Also, a lot of our footage was pretty shaky because of being mounted to a moving car. Matt tried to use the FCP smooth cam filter. It helped some, but most of that footage was not useable for an extended shot.

::What we learned::
It can be hard to get volunteers. Even on a staff as big as ours. I can be tough. I’m still trying to manage that tension. I’m just glad we had as many as we did. Next time, I hope to have more information up front so that they know exactly what they are getting into and feel more comfortable. Until we got into the mud there was a lot of unavoidable delay because of the amount of shots that had to be set up. Each time we remounted the cameras it took a good 30 minutes to set up.

When shooting something like this, get TONS of footage. Keep the cameras rolling as much as possible. With all the underwater housings and the fast motion, it was very hard to know what we were getting so we just kept the cameras rolling and got what we could. AND filmed EVERYTHING. We had no shots listed for getting cleaned up. It was a last minute add, but we filmed it all and it ended up being a really awesome final title package.

All in all, it had to be the most fun I have ever had working on a shoot. I got paid to go play in the mud all day, and we got some amazing footage doing it. I think we also have a pretty amazing JEEP commercial if anyone knows anyone at Chrysler (give ‘em my name).

Over the years we have witnessed some pretty crazy “scripture notes”, “lower thirds”, and “titles” in the church world. Even North Point, on occasion, has been guilty of going a little off the ranch with some CRAZY looking lower thirds. No really, I’m not kidding. When your lower third is actually a third of your screen and the transition you programmed for it takes longer than 14 seconds - you might be a part of the “My lower thirds are more creative than your lower third” club. It definitely begs the question - are we thinking more about the creativity of some of these assets or their purpose; to communicate information?

Soooo, last summer we made the decision to TEMPLATE all of these assets. By template I mean that the animation, the shapes, and the concept of each series would have the same style of execution. The look inside of the template, however, would have different aesthetics that would be influenced by the look of the series.

We did this for two main reasons:
1 - We would NOT have to reinvent the wheel for every new series or message. We would just follow the same template and focus on implementing the aesthetics of the design.
2 - Predictability for the audience. Every time you animate something different, change a shape, a move, or even a FONT it not only takes some getting used to but it takes people’s focus away from the most critical piece - the information.

Let me say it this way when it comes to your lower thirds: Don’t let your creativity compete with the information, complement it.

One of the biggest changes we made in the development of the scripture slides specifically, was the addition of either the LOGO or ICON of the series. WE found that the more you push for this in your Key art - the easier it is to implement it elsewhere. A question you should ask in your design process: if I take this title/logo, lift it off it’s background, put it somewhere different, will it still be unique.

Below are some examples of of our series both with scripture notes and titles:

EASTER

“I Love my Church”

“White Flag”

“The Thin Line” with John Woodall.

“The Me I Want to Be” with John Ortberg

“Taking Responsibility For your Life” (we went a little different for the titles, which is ok to do, but at least you KNOW you are doing it. It’s ok to go outside your box, just determine what your box is.)

What are you doing with your scripture notes, lower thirds, or title slides?

http://www.vimeo.com/11899332

Typographic motion graphics pieces are all the rage right now– and why not?  If communication is your goal, words are usually helpful.  However, since typography-centric videos have become so common, you need to stretch your creative canvas a bit if you’re going to create a piece that is both powerful and unique.

For the one-part sermon “Focus” at Browns Bridge Community Church, the art direction– led by Mike Davis– gravitated toward the concept of the eye chart.  It’s a simple symbol, it’s easy to understand, and when you play with depth-of-field, it’s visually interesting.

When I set out to create a Title Package (a one-minute video we create and use to introduce each sermon), my initial idea was to continue in this same direction: eye-chart, depth of field, some motion, some relevant words, etc.  And that probably would have made for an adequate Title Package.  But as I worked, I had this nagging feeling that I wasn’t using the medium to its fullest extent.  Motion design has incredible potential for communication– you can use images, movement, sound, anything to present an idea.  Here, I saw a great opportunity to use movement to communicate.

The idea of the sermon, very simply, is that there are many things in our lives– such as work, family, school, money, friends, etc.– that, though they are important, can distract us from God.  But rather than present these words with meaningless motion, I wanted to capture the sense that all of these aspects of our lives are competing for our attention, and in our frenzied attempt to keep up with all of them, we lose focus.

I was inspired by metaphorical images for the internet, or “the information superhighway”– all of these little pieces speedily moving in different directions.  As the camera jumps from piece to piece, I wanted it to be slightly difficult for the viewer to focus on even the one word in the frame, like they’ve been dropped into some sort of race, and, in their struggle to hang on, they’ve become a bit disoriented.  (Nothing too crazy, though… “pain” isn’t typically one of our goals.)

With the reveal at the end, my thinking was: there was this big, important, stationary thing that we were missing the whole time.  All we needed to do was pull out, change our focus, and everything else fades away.  Originally the reveal was going to be “God,” but we make an effort in our Title Packages to not give away the meat of the sermon.  But hopefully, the message still came through clearly.