BoardRoom DVDs | Now on Sale
Our Documentary, BoardRoom - Legends of Surfboard, is now on sale. Purchase your copy of the film at BoardRoom Legends
Corporate Storytelling
At FiveSix Productions, we find more and more these days we're shooting and editing for strictly web video delivery. Businesses are finding that to differentiate themselves from their competitors, their website needs to show rather than tell a potential consumer or client what the business or brand is all about. A compelling video that shows all facets of a business including their product or service in action can be consumed in a more effective way than reading text blurbs. We've done a few storytelling pieces in the past month and have a couple more scheduled in the next few weeks and anticipate this trend to continue as more businesses realize this is an effective way to spend marketing dollars.
With that said, these video pieces can't be considered as just another marketing outlet or they will fall into the forgettable category, nor can they be a commercial or heavily sales driven in nature. These videos need to be thought out well in advance and planned accordingly. The right tools are a start(such as our new Canon C300 camera, Kessler Cineslider or Steadicam Flyer), but more important are putting the right people in place. Those people are the ones who will listen to your ideas, help you focus them in the right areas and help you to visually get across what it is you think is more important about your brand and image. If the brand and image of a business is portrayed in the the correct way, the product or service will sell itself.
We understand how to put these corporate storytelling videos together and have had success in doing so. They are some of the most fun projects to work on where we get to be collaborative and creative and in the end, see the results in web traffic, views and conversions. We're just getting started in this businesss trend and we like what we see so far and hope to make corporate storytelling an intricate part of our video production work moving forward. Check out our projects page to see some of our more recent work.
At FiveSix Productions, the f-stops here.
What the Adoption of Adobe's Premiere Means for FiveSix Productions
In two words: Flexibility and Control
For the past few years, AVID and especially Final Cut Pro have been our NLE platforms of choice; with Avid as our high-end editing application and Final Cut as the everyday, workhorse solution. Adobe products have always been a part of our post-production arsenal, such as After Effects, Photoshop, and Illustrator, but in terms of an NLE, the ease of use and familiarity of the FCP platform (prior to X) was what we always fell back on. UNTIL NOW.
With the release of Final Cut X, we noticed some concerns within the industry. This was primarily attributed to, what appeared to be an emphasis place on the amateur consumer market and a departure away from professional editors, in terms of features. Also, FiveSix relies heavily on our ability to refer to our archives, which were all cut on early versions of FCP, which X initially did not support.
When Walter Murch, a highly decorated editor, with such credits as Godfather II and Apocolypse Now, viewed X for the first time, he stated, "I can't use this" (Macaulay, 2011). In a Boston seminar speaking about the new FCP release, he listed several disappointing, underachieving elements that Apple failed to include and felt as if FCP was turning their back on the professional editors that had been loyal to the software for years.
Even with the recent fixes in the FCP platform, including the ability to work with edits that were cut in previous versions of the software, the damage had been done for us. As soon as we identified the limitations of the new FCP, we sought other options. One such option was Adobe Premiere, which was a NLE that we had experimented in the past but never considered migrating to.
When the commitment to make a change was made, we decided to continue editing with FCP 7 but beta test Premiere for a couple editing jobs to ensure that Adobe's offering was going to be the right fit for our company. We knew immediately that we made the right decision. First and foremost, the bridging capabilities with other Adobe Products that compliment the editing process is exponentially beneficial. Also, the elimination of the transcoding of footage that was so bothersome with FCP, makes life incredibly easier. We shoot a lot in Panasonic's P2 format and what would have taken FCP hours, depending on the job, only takes Premiere a fraction of the time. FInally, Premiere offers a level of control that appears unmatched. Because of the inherent creative capabilites that can be found in Adobe's flagship Photoshop and Illustrator software, an application like Premiere has acquired the same ability to manipulate and sculpt images like no other program.
All in all, FiveSix's migration to Adobe Premiere has been a great success. In our opinion, the missteps of Apple's Final Cut X has given our organization the ability to offer our clients better quality and the ability to expand our creative horizons.
Sources:
Macaulay, S. (2011, October 29). Walter murch on fcp x: “what is the ‘pro’ part of it?”. Retrieved from http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/news/2011/10/walter-murch-on-fcp-x-what-is-the-pro-part-of-it/
Terrablock 24EX Storage
We got our new 24TB Terrablock racked and ready to go. The entire process took less than a day to get everything up and running. The editors are loving the Fiber connectivity and have already started sharing project between the bays.
We had high hopes for this acquisition and so far it's living up to all of them.
FloLight LED Panels
We bought a pair of Flolight panel lights about 6 months ago and I thought I'd wait a bit and see how they held up over half a year span. The lights we purchased are daylight balanced with an anton bauer battery adaptor on the back. We've taken these lights all the way from red carpets to the middle of the desert and the ease of use and versatility have made us believers in this type of lighting. For ENG, run and gun type productions, to be able to set up quick, toss on a battery and have 1000w of light without the hassel of cords was a life saver in many situations. Top lights sometimes don't cut it. We do plenty of quick shoots and I find myself packing a flolight more often then not.
There are a few problems I've found that should be shared. First off, all are lights come in balanced between 6000k and 6300k, not 5600k as advertised. The lights aren't built tough, meaning in the 6 month time period we've had them in for flicking, dimmer malfunction and one went toast and stop firing all together. The build quality isn't up to what I would consider production standard. The light can also be a little harsh so a couple pieces of diffusion are necessary if doing any sort of interview which drastically cuts the throw of the light. And, even though we have the gel adaptors, adding gels or diffusion isn't an easy endeavor. However, when we 'separately' purchase the barndoors that problem should be solved.
The most common question I'm asked is how do the Flolights compare to the LitePanels. We rented a couple of LitePanels for a shoot and while we had them we decided to do a few tests for comparison. The Flolights, despite being 6300k, had a more realistic daylight apperance then the LitePanels which didn't even make it to 5600k but closer to 5000k. They were almost twice as bright as the LitePanels and lit our subjects at much further distances. The LitePanels did appear to be studier and have a better build and a few more features like the dual color temps. Oh and the one Flolight costs about 1/3 the price of a LitePanel.
I'm not going to use them for everything but these lights do have a place in my packages and I will continue to use Flolights until I see another panel light that can give me the same value. And though they tend to have a few more malfunctions than I'd like, returning the poor units and customer service has been very good to this point.
The f-stops here.
C300 in Low Light
DP David Dalasta of FiveSix Productions, decided to use the Canon C300 for our latest commercial production. Our shoot included filming outdoors at night as well as some driving down the Las Vegas strip shots. We were amazed that we only needed to bump the camera to 6400 ISO to get a properly exposed image. The versatility of the C300 was outstanding and exceeded our expectations.
Our subject a female atop the eiffel tower was lith three LED panels and our Male talent was lit with one LED while driving the car.
Director Bill Aylward, also had us shoot some macro elements using the Canon100mm L Series Lens. We overcranked at 60@24P shooting 720P. Our clients saw the footage and requested an additional spot based just on this footage.
Camera bag for the Canon C300
With our new camera in hand we wanted to find the right case to transport it. For our day to day shoot we opted for the Cinebags camera daddy. The bag holds comfortably the camera body and 4 lenses and accesories. We considered the Pelican 1660 case, I loved the build quality and protection it offered but we would have needed another case just for lenses. I'm sure we will pickup one of these cases for when we travel.
Color Correcting Red footage
Over the weekend I had a Davinci Resolve session. The footage brought in was all shot on the Red in 4K. The clips were all green screen that had a lot of spill on the sctor and set. Now the big question. Do you correct pre or post keying? We decided to help the animators out and remove the green spill from the talent and set. With different nodes and tracking we were able to seperate the talent from the background and even had time left over to smooth out the green for the animators. We processed 19 clips in 3 hours. We outputted 4K ProRes 444 files at the animators request.
The Davinci Resolve steps up again, I'll let you know when the spot hits the airwaives in a couple months.
The client told me after the fact, that he had booked a full day session out in LA to do the color corection. He was able to cancel his trip and session and was very grateful to have this capability in Las Vegas.
New CineSlider Review
We were able to test out the new Kessler CineSlider on our last commercial shoot. We really got some nice table tops and bar shots that just were not possible with our doorway dolly. So far this is exceeding our expectations. The crew loves it.
We shot with the HDX-900 on it as well as the Canon 5D.