A question we get with some regularity is, "Do you guys do scriptwriting?"  It's not always clear what people are hoping for when they ask, but it might be a concern that if they don't have a "script" for the folks on camera, the result will be something like the interview excerpt above - a rather incoherent mess. But here's a little secret about video production and editing that shouldn't be much...

A documentary about a grown man playing with dolls in his back yard wouldn't seem, initially, like a very engaging film.  What makes it work, however, is the absolutely honesty and vulnerability of the film's subject, Mark Hogancamp. Mark was viciously attacked and beaten outside a bar in Kingston, NY in April 2000, and was in a coma for nine days afterwards.  The attack left him with extreme brain...

A couple posts back I mentioned how a client, The Family Equality Council, was thinking about using a green screen for an interview and then inserting a background afterwards. Because we thought a green screen might not give the look they wanted, we advised against this approach.  The Council eventually found a space with a window view that matched the background they were seeking.  See adjacent...

I've discussed before the subject of how long a marketing video should be, and the question was one that we recently explored with a client. We are working on a series of online videos for them, and one of the videos was proving to be problematic. We watched the first draft of it and thought it was good but not great. We reviewed what we had done and decided that we were trying to pack too much into...

Last week we had a conversation with a new client who asked about filming their executive director in front of a green screen and then inserting a background afterwards. Our response: We can film her in front of a green screen, but we don't think it's going to communicate what you want. Green screens can definitely come in handy, but they need to be handled with care, so to speak.  In this case,...

An important conversation to have with your producer is to discuss the best approach to your production. Put another way, should it be slow-brewed or instant?  Here are two examples to illustrate what I mean. Example #1: The slow-brew. We are currently working with MIT on a couple of admissions videos. One of them is the inspiration of an imaginative fellow in their admissions office who had the idea...

// We recently completed work on an animated video for Basis Technology.  One look at our website, and it’s pretty clear we haven’t done much work in the technology field.  Basis could have chosen to collaborate with other production companies with tech portfolios.  And this, I think, confirms a point I made in an earlier post about why video producers don’t necessarily have to be experts...

A couple posts back, I shared a few suggestions for how to create a filming schedule during the pre-production phase.  As I’ve mentioned on several occasions, pre-production is what can make or break a video production.  Here’s another scenario. We are working with the folks in MIT's Admissions Office on a music video of sorts that communicates the magical world that new students will enter...

Romántico is sad, funny, visually beautiful, heart-wrenching, soulful, moving, and poignant.  And I almost didn't watch it.  The Netflix description is so inaccurate - "two Mariachi singers play for unappreciative audiences in San Francisco" - that I came very close to skipping over it. A truer description of the story line might say something about the unhappy quandary Carmelo Sanchez finds himself...

We were visiting with the folks at MIT Admissions Office last week, figuring out a strategy for the three admissions and marketing videos they want produced.  Like many clients, they wanted to understand how to best prepare for the filming days.  It all basically comes down to, in their words,  "filling out the matrix." A matrix is one accurate way to think of it - not being from MIT, though, we've...