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Questions for Prospective Production Clients

Posted on April 13, 2010 · Leave a Comment

It starts with a phone call or email: “We’re interested in producing a video.” Sometimes, the project details are very clear with little room for changes.  Other times, the media need is more vague, with the client only knowing what they want to accomplish with the video production.  Most of the time, however, it’s somewhere in between–the clients knows generally what they want and how they want to accomplish it, but needs help getting there.

Helping the client understand their audience and how a video production can help communicate their message will build a very strong foundation for the project at hand.

To best understand what my client wants to accomplish with this video, I have a list of questions I ask them:

  1. Who is your target audience? Who do you want to watch these videos?  Customers?  Investors?  Clients?  Businesses?  Mangers?  Can you define your target demographic (people your trying to reach)?   What is the social target: age, income, marital status, number of children, education level, etc. Is this video for a particular region (east cost, city, state, etc.), or nationwide, or global?
  2. What are you wanting to communicate through this video? Brand, company stability, services, offerings, value, training, a new product, etc.?
  3. Is it more like a documentary (facts, information and education), or more of a narrative story (fiction, storytelling, hypothetical use, etc.)?
  4. What are some emotions or feelings you would like to communicate? Trust, confidence, strength, etc.? List some adjectives that you’re want to convey about what you’re wanting to communicate through this video.
  5. How many separate videos do you need, and what is the estimated length of each video?  For example, “I want one video about 8 minutes long.” Or, “We need a series of 4 videos, each about 2 minutes long.”  If you don’t know exactly the length, then estimate the range, like 8 to 10 minutes long.
  6. Do you want to interview someone — company leaders (CEO, president, manages, etc.), strategic partners, random audience or customers, or a mixture of those? How many interviews do you expect per video or total?
  7. Do you want live action coverage shots (B-Roll) of certain things happening — factory lines, people at work, customers in their environment, etc.? If so, what are you looking for, and what do you want others to see?
  8. Do you need any special graphics or animations to demonstrate a technology, a process or something futuristic that’s not created yet.
  9. Do you have an estimated budget for this piece, or range of budget?
  10. What distribution options are your considering? Website, YouTube, DVDs, Broadcast, etc.?
  11. Do you have a format preference:  Standard Definition (SD) or High Definition (HD)?  NTSC (Americas) or PAL (Europe)?

I use these questions with every new client when putting together a corporate video project.  After these questions have been answered clearly, we have a much better understanding of the client’s needs.  And, with this information, we can now begin budgeting the project much more accurately.

We then take this information and begin putting together the client proposal.  We find that our proposals are simply their information provided back to them in our own format.

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Russ Pond is the owner of Top Pup Media — a corporate video production company based in Dallas / Fort Worth, Texas providing production services for commercials, tradeshow videos, promotional spots, training media and a variety of other services.

Filed Under: Business, Film · Tagged: , , ,
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New Panasonic HD Camera for Indie Filmmakers – Game Changer!

Posted on April 12, 2010 · Leave a Comment

When the HDSLR cameras hit the market just shy of two years ago, all of a sudden, you had huge sensors capturing stunning high-definition video.  Things were about to change.  Huge sensors in affordable bodies were going to up the quality of HD video capture.

The HDSLR cameras, like the Canon 5D Mark II and the Canon 7D, started shaking up the video landscape.  RED cameras up that point were the only affordable HD cameras with the larger sensors, but the HDSLRs changed all that.  With camera body prices of $1800 to $2500, now it was possible to capture high-quality, shallow depth-of-field video. And, with frame rates at 24p, the filmic quality is quite amazing.

The challenge with HDLSR video cameras is that they are not video cameras–they’re still cameras.  The HD video capture was an after thought, a bonus feature.  While it had all the controls for still photography, it didn’t really support videography.  The Canon 7D was a step in the right direction, adding dedicate controls and additional video features, but when it comes down to it, it’s a still camera that shoot video.

The mumblings started.  I remember being on set with a friend, Blake Calhoun, talking about this shift in video technology.  A couple months ago, we both predicted that the next step would be to take the inner workings of the HDSLRs and stick it into a video camera body.  With the large sensor, now you’d have an affordable video camera that shot amazing high definition video.  We thought it would be a couple years.

It was a couple months.

Panasonic announces today the AG-AF100, a new High Definition camera that does just that.  It’s a 4/3″ chip, interchangeable lenses, all wrapped up in a video camera body.

Dang! That was fast!

Here’s what Panasonic had to say about the new camera:

Panasonic Solutions Company today announced a game-changingAVCCAM HD camcorder, the AG-AF100, the first professional micro 4/3-inch video camcorder optimized for high-definition video recording. Scheduled to ship by the end of 2010, the AG-AF100 will set a new benchmark for digital cinematography.

Targeted at the video and film production communities, the AF100 delivers the shallow depth of field and wider field of view of a large imager, with the flexibility and cost advantages of use with a growing line of professional quality, industry standard micro 4/3-inch lenses, filters, and adapters. The full 1080 and 720 production camera offers superior video handling, native 1080/24p recording, variable frame rates, professional audio capabilities, and compatibility with SDHC and SDXC media.

The design of the AF100’s micro 4/3-inch sensor affords depth of field and field of view similar to that of 35mm movie cameras in a less expensive camera body.  Equipped with an interchangeable lens mount, the AF100 can utilize an array of low-cost, widely-available still camera lenses as well as film-style lenses with fixed focal lengths and primes.

“Designed in consultation with the filmmaking community, the AF100 eclipses the video performance of other cameras in this price range,” said Joe Facchini, Vice President of Sales & Product Management, Media & Production Services, Panasonic Solutions Company.  “Ideal for film schools and independent filmmakers, this affordable, digital cinematography camera employs an advanced professional AVC/ H.264 Hi Profile AVCHD codec compatible with a wide range of editing tools and affordable players.”

The AF100 incorporates a 4/3-inch, 16:9 MOS imager. The camcorder records 1080/60i, 50i, 30p, 25p and 24p (native) and 720/60p, 50p, 30p, 25p and 24p (native) in AVCHD’s highest-quality PH mode (maximum 24Mbps). Ready for global production standards, the camcorder is 60Hz and 50Hz switchable.

The AF100 maximizes the potential of its high-resolution imager with built-in ND filtering and dramatically reduced video aliasing. Standard professional interfaces include HD-SDI out, HDMI, time code recording, built-in stereo microphone and USB 2.0. The AF100 features two XLR inputs with +48V Phantom Power capability, 48-kHz/16-bit two-channel digital audio recording and supports LPCM/Dolby-AC3.

This newest Panasonic AVCCAM camcorder is the first to enjoy the benefits of advanced SDXC media card compatibility in addition to existing SDHC card support.  (SDXC is the newest SD memory card specification that supports memory capacities above 32GB up to 2TB). With two SD slots, the AF100 can record up to 12 hours on two 64GB SDXC cards in PH mode

The AG-AF100 will be available by the end of 2010. Panasonic will support the AF100 with a three-year limited warranty (one year plus two extra years upon registration).

Also found this video about the new Panasonic camera:

Filed Under: Film ·
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I continue to be amazed at the quality of visual imagery produced by these new HDSLR cameras — Canon 7D and Canon 5D Mark II. Below is another video I came across today that so well illustrates what these cameras can do.

Also announced this week, the season finale of “House” (which airs on May 17th) was shot entirely on the Canon 5D Mark II.

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Mapping online video content into the television business model doesn’t work

Posted on April 4, 2010 · Leave a Comment

This morning, I was reading a blog about the Television Industry’s response to online video content.  It was a fascinating article by Clay Shirky called “The Collapse of Complex Business Models”.  He shares an example about a web series so successful that the television industry acquired the content and tried to map it into their current business model, but the project collapsed.

In spring of 2007, the web video comedy In the Motherhood made the move to TV. In the Motherhood started online as a series of short videos, with viewers contributing funny stories from their own lives and voting on their favorites. This tactic generated good ideas at low cost as well as endearing the show to its viewers; the show’s tag line was “By Moms, For Moms, About Moms.”

The move to TV was an affirmation of this technique; when ABC launched the public forum for the new TV version, they told users their input “might just become inspiration for a story by the writers.”

Or it might not. Once the show moved to television, the Writers Guild of America got involved. They were OK with For and About Moms, but By Moms violated Guild rules. The producers tried to negotiate, to no avail, so the idea of audience engagement was canned (as was In the Motherhood itself some months later, after failing to engage viewers as the web version had).

The critical fact about this negotiation wasn’t about the mothers, or their stories, or how those stories might be used. The critical fact was that the negotiation took place in the grid of the television industry, between entities incorporated around a 20th century business logic, and entirely within invented constraints. At no point did the negotiation about audience involvement hinge on the question “Would this be an interesting thing to try?”

Either the television industry needs to adapt its model or collapse under the weight of their inefficient, bloated system.  Things have to change.  He talks about what we can expect:

In the future, at least some methods of producing video for the web will become as complex, with as many details to attend to, as television has today, and people will doubtless make pots of money on those forms of production. It’s tempting, at least for the people benefitting from the old complexity, to imagine that if things used to be complex, and they’re going to be complex, then everything can just stay complex in the meantime. That’s not how it works, however.

The most watched minute of video made in the last five years shows baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger. (Twice!) That minute has been watched by more people than the viewership of American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and the Superbowl combined. (174 million views and counting.)

Some video still has to be complex to be valuable, but the logic of the old media ecoystem, where video had to be complex simply to be video, is broken. Expensive bits of video made in complex ways now compete with cheap bits made in simple ways. “Charlie Bit My Finger” was made by amateurs, in one take, with a lousy camera. No professionals were involved in selecting or editing or distributing it. Not one dime changed hands anywhere between creator, host, and viewers. A world where that is the kind of thing that just happens from time to time is a world where complexity is neither an absolute requirement nor an automatic advantage.

When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

Dallas video production company, Top Pup Media, produces a variety of media projects for businesses and corporations. Productions include corporate videos, marketing videos, tradeshow videos, promotional spots, commercials, educational and training videos.

Filed Under: Business, Film · Tagged: ,
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Putting together your Demo Reel

Posted on March 24, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Some more great information from Phil Cooke’s Blog

The Truth About Demo Reels

Let me set the record straight about “demo reels” because I’m tired of seeing the wrong thing. Filmmakers pay attention. Here’s what producers are looking for:

1. Finished pieces. We want to know if you can tell a story and if you understand the totality of a project.

2. Specifics. Tell us if you ran camera, if you directed, if you were production manager, or whatever. Don’t send us a commercial you catered and lead us to believe you were the director. Trust me, we’ll find out sooner or later.

3. Easy to watch. Send us a link, but don’t make it a tiny thumbnail screen. Make it big enough to view. Vimeo or Wiredrive size is fine. We don’t need DVD quality right off the bat. First we want to know if it’s something we’re interested in. Send a DVD and it will sit on my desk for a month or two lost in the stack. Send a link, and I’ll watch it pretty quickly.

4. Make it current. If your graphics and effects look like the 80’s, get it off the reel.

What we don’t want:

1. Those quick cut “compilation” reels of your life’s work set to a hip current song. Total loser strategy. You can compile anything and make it look decent – especially if you’re pulling from your last 25 projects.

2. Someone else’s work. I had a director send me a reel that included spots I had directed. Boy, was the meeting awkward for that guy.

3. Appropriate stuff. Don’t send me hot tub spots if I’m looking for a director of serious drama. In fact, don’t send me hot tub spots – ever.

Edit mercilessly. Think about it. It’s not about how cool you think your work is, it’s about what a producer is looking for at that moment. Step back, breathe, and take it all in perspective. I love Francis Ford Coppola’s quote after he directed Apocalypse Now. He said that after 2 years up to his a*s in alligators, a star having a heart attack, and the nightmare of shooting a Viet Nam war movie, after the screening, the first thing the audience thinks is “OK, where should we go eat?”

I’m not sure what that has to do with demo reels, but I love the quote… :-)

Filed Under: Business, Film · Tagged: ,
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