We were filming at Floating Children's Hospital last weekend, and when we came through the door with all of our gear, one of the doctors said, in so many words, "Holy cow! That's a lot of equipment." Relatively speaking, it actually wasn't all that much, but her response is a common one among folks who haven't experienced video production before.  Throughout the weekend, she also commented...

You can watch this video for one of two reasons: 1) to hear Rachel muse about how organizations differentiate themselves; or 2) answer the question Why the heck is she dressed up like Julia Child? Rachel: We’ve entered the holiday zone and I’m just whipping up some of my famous Indian pudding for the office party. This is also the time to reflect on the past year. We here at Reflection...

Labor Day weekend is upon us, which means barbecues galore! And with barbecues means leftovers– yum! You would never let Grandma's baked beans go to waste, would you? Of course not! If you have leftover footage from your last video, would you let that go to waste? Many people do not realize the potential their existing content has to offer. Today Rachel discusses how to effectively use recycled...

I had the pleasure of giving a presentation on video storytelling at Third Sector New England last week and thought I would share a snippet of Q&A from the event: Your relationship with your video producer One participant asked about how to strike a balance when working with a video producer.   When do you weigh in on what video content should be used?  When do you allow the producer to make...

With surprising regularity, we see videos that are using copyrighted music. We definitely could be wrong (it happens sometimes) but we're pretty sure that most of the time it's music that's being used illegally. We're not attorneys, so we can't give legal advice, but if you have a Justin Bieber song you're absolutely dying to use in your video, it's probably best to resist the temptation. Rachel...

  Nov  8, 2013   I recently attended a webinar conducted by Jason Thibeault, who is the Senior Director of Marketing for Limelight Networks, a digital content delivery network with an emphasis on video hosting and sharing. In his webinar, Thibeault introduced 7 challenges in tackling the “video monster” and then tips for overcoming these challenges. I'll start with his first four and then share...

Rachel was talking a few days ago with a marketer who mentioned to her that he often finds himself having to explain his work process to clients to help them understand that, regardless of how straightforward a particular project might seem, there's usually a good deal of effort required to deliver an outstanding final product. This resonated with us because it's a situation we often find ourselves...

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...

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,...