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...

We just finished 13 days of filming for a series of marketing videos for Explo, a summer program for kids ranging from 4th to 12th grades.  Much of the filming we did, both for activities and interviews, was done outdoors.  Fortunately, we had good weather, so we avoided getting wet.  But a sunny day presents its own challenges, which a cloudy, overcast day does not. Most notably, bright sunlight...

In this 75-second video, Rachel shares a couple of thoughts on why it's valuable to understand your audience's engagement with your online video, which can be easily measured if you have solid video analytics. Transcript: So understandably, folks want to have their marketing, fundraising and sometimes even their training video up on their websites.  There are a variety of hosting options out there;...

We're doing a series of marketing videos for Explo, which is kind of like a summer school but a lot more fun.  Kids can take a huge variety of classes that are all engaging, hands-on, and zero-pressure (no homework or grading).  And classroom time is balanced with activities, athletics, and trips. The high school kids are based at Yale University.  We were down there last week and popped our heads...

A gentleman came in to visit us today who is interested in getting some fundraising and marketing video for his organization.  One question he asked was:  "What am I getting when I hire a professional video production company that I might not get if I sought out a camera guy to shoot some footage for me?"  This is a very sensible question, and there’s no single answer, of course – cameramen...

The Great Happiness Space is a documentary that is full of sad people.  It focuses on a Japanese host club, Cafe Rakkyo in Osaka, in which young, stressed-out and lonely women pay "host boys" to entertain them and escape from life. At first, this seems just a little pathetic and nothing more - why not spend your time looking for true love rather than paying to be entertained?  But before long we realize...

Let’s suppose you’re a tech company and you need to create a marketing video that explains your technology.  There’s a good chance that you’ll need to create a script, accompanied by some kind of graphics or animation to illustrate how your product works, since it's hard to give an on-camera demo of your software or medical device in action. So where do you start with your script?  The first...

With the increasing need for marketing video to go just beyond a single, one-off piece of content, marketing and fundraising departments should approach their video projects with the mindset of collecting video assets. In other words, marketers and their video producers should have the mindset of "How can we extract as many video assets out of this production to have not only for our immediate needs,...

Some parents do know how to damage their kids, and Monika Hertwig and Sebastian Marroquin are sad examples.  Both were children of fathers who were not ideal role models, to put it lightly.  Monika’s father, Amon Goeth, was the sadistic commander of a German death camp during World War II.  Sebastian’s father was Pablo Escobar, the ruthless head of the Medellin drug cartel during the 80s and early...

I attended an interesting roundtable this morning with the savvy folks at SMEI Boston.  The subject of the conversation was, basically: Is social media worth it?  Very quickly, we all agreed that it’s a necessary activity for marketers.  Next, was a discussion about what is SM’s greatest value. This provoked some lively talk, and Lisa Dennis from Knowledgence Associates began by relating her experience...