Archive for the “Production Blog” Category

Another testimonial from a client for the upcoming MediaCircus.TV Promo video. Scott Burton is a corporate entertainer who specializes in magic and mentalism.

Putting together the MCTV promo video. Here are some kind words from Film Training Manitoba’s Adam Smoluk about a production that we worked on with them.

We are taping the Bioscience Educators Conference that is taking place this week at Red River College in Winnipeg, put on by BioScience Education Canada. Once we’re done they have several hours of archived DVD’s plus highlightes of the speakers and interviews with participants for their website.

The Manitoba Film Training Expo 2009 DVDs are all finished up and delivered to Film Training Manitoba. There were only a few changes from early versions which made the post-production go by pretty quickly.

I ended up creating 3 separate videos, a 6:45 length feature about the Training Expo which had sections for the Stereoscopic 3d presentation, the Ben Davis Action workshop and the Music for Productions and Composers sessions; a 30 second version was also made. In addition, a separate video was made about the Poor Man’s Process workshop that took a week after the training expo.

FTM asked to have a version delivered that could be given to broadcasters and other media outlets when doing some promotional work. So in addition to a standard definition DVD, they were given MPEG4 files with the H.264 codec, both a SD version and a 720p version, which is the resolution of the original video. In addition, unmixed versions were supplied that had no graphics like name keys and lower thirds and also no music, just actualities and natural sound on separated channels.

Usually when completing projects I would lay them tape in this manner, with both a mixed and unmixed version, but with the advent of more tapeless acquisition formats I find myself less inclined to master to tape as well, instead I will keep hi-rez and medium-rez data versions, it really does depend on the project though, some long form projects I will still put to tape, and I imagine I will work it like that for a while still.

The full videos will be up on the Film Training Manitoba website soon.

Kilinic Community Health Care provides health, counselling and education services for people in Manitoba, with offices in Brandon and Winnipeg; one of the services they run is the Manitoba Suicide Line. The MSL is launching a new website (designed by Tactica) in the next few months to bring the hotline more attention and part of that launch includes video interviews with people affected by suicide.

A few weeks ago we traveled to Brandon Manitoba to shoot the first round of these interviews. I lived in Brandon for many years and got my start in media production while living there as an EFP/ENG camera operator for the recently closed TV station CKX-TV.  I enjoyed the chance to go back there and do some production. The morning of the shoot I had time to head to my alma-matter, Assiniboine Community College, to speak to current Media Production students who are in the same course I took many years ago.

The second set of interviews were done last week at Klinics head offices in Winnipeg.

The interviews were done first-person style, with the subjects looking directly at the camera, so that the visitors to their site will get a more personal message when they view them. Some of the interviewees were people that had attempted suicide, some were family members and/or friends of people that had completed suicide and some were councillors and people involved in their communities.

The subject matter was very different than anything I have worked on before. Talking to people about their very personal experiences in a sensitive subject was a humbling experience, and the people at Kilinic in Brandon and in Winnipeg were great to work with.

The videos and website launch will be highlighted here of course, I look forward to seeing them completed.

Last weekend Film Training Manitoba brought in William B. Davis, aka The Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Files, to conduct a 5 day workshop with Winnipeg actors. There were 2 classes, an AM and a PM, that had a total of 13 participants.

MediaCircus.TV was hired to provide HD video recording and playback for the sessions, and create DVD’s for the actors of all of their takes. I was using the Sony XDCAM EX1 camera, which shoots on SxS memory cards, which is a perfect way of working for a project like this.

After a take was completed, I would switch the camera over to “media mode” where the material on the SxS cards would be accessed and  Mr. Davis would review the take with the class on a HD LCD TV, having instant HD playback of the scene that was just completed. It was a very efficient way to work.

Each participant did 3 scenes over the length of the course, with the rest of the time spent observing the others and taking part in the discussion. Myself as a non-actor, watching the process they went through in order to make their performances as real as possible was quite an education. I’ve worked with actors before on commercial and promotion shoots, but rarely in any sort of scripted dramatic venue, which is what most of the performances in this course were focused on.

The classes participants ranged from people new to the industry to folks that have been in it for quite some time. Some people were getting back into acting after taking a hiatus to raise their family, and some of the participants I recognized from from other Film Training Manitoba workshops that I have either attended or been hired to provide video services for.

I’ll admit that I was somewhat intimidated at first working with William B. Davis (or ”Bill” as he suggested I call him)  having been quite an X-Files fan during it’s original run. I rarely get star-struck when working with well known people, and I wasn’t here either, though Bill carried a certain demeanor with him that left me in awe for the fist few days.   

As we would get ready for a scene I would do some basic lighting to flood the area with a lot of light, there wasn’t enough time to do proper dramatic lighting custom for each scene, and that wasn’t the point of the workshop.  Lighting is one of those things that makes a huge difference in the quality of a shot, so even just having flood lighting made a difference.

Between the lighting, the HD playback and the speed with which we were switching scenes (the workshop participants often would help move things in changing scenes) we moved along at an efficient pace and Bill remarked that this was a “high-end” workshop. That felt good to hear. He has been on numerous film and TV sets (including 9 years on the X-Files) , and has been in theatre for many years, and he called our little workshop production high-end. He wasn’t comparing to those big productions of course, but to most workshops that might have a small handycam with a TV set to playback material on, while we had proper lighting, mics, instant HD playback and DVD production and duplication on site. Film Training Manitoba is raising the bar when it comes to bringing in people to train Winnipeg Actors and putting on workshops that will help the participants improve in their skills, and I’m glad to be a part of it. 

 The Winnipeg Actors involved were;

Shannon Jacques, Dana Horrox, Dean Harder, Ashley Hirt, Cindy Marie Small, Sherry Coffey, Krysia Andrzejczak, Dan Augusta, Janet Shum, Jason Malloy, Tyhr Trubiak, Yvette Jones and Ali Tataryn.

Last weekend was the Manitoba Film Training Expo, put on by Film Training Manitoba. I was pleased to be hired back for a third year in a row to provide video production services for the weekend. I took footage of the various workshops and conducted interviews with several conference instructors and antendees.

In addition, this year as part of the package I am training people on Camera Assist, Editing and Motion Graphics with After Effects, they are Film Training Manitoba after all.

Over the course of the next month the footage that wa shot at the Expo will be edited by 2 students along with the creation of motion graphics to spruce up the final product. Once the training is done then I will take what the student did and make a final video that Film Training Manitoba will use for their archives.

The video I made from last years Expo is now up on Film Training Manitoba’s newly revamped website.

Here are some stills from the video that we shot this past weekend.

I’ve been doing a lot of dubs lately from DV tape (both mini-DV and HDV) to DVD for clients, particularly the Eritrean Community of Winnipeg We’ve been meeting.a lot lately, working on helping them get funding for a future, big project. One of the things I was making DVD’s of all of the footage we taken so far, about 10 tapes worth. They are going to be relying a lot on the community members to assist in completing the project, so they have timcode dubs of the footage for them to look at.

It took a lot of work to make that happen. I captured all of the material into Avid, added the generate>timecode effect and then exported out QT References. By doing the export I was able to render all of the sequences at the same time. Rending a timecode effect on 8 hours of footage, even on fast system, is going to take some time. I went to sleep and when I woke up, voila, it was done.

I took those QT reference files and brought them into Sorenson Squeeze to create the MPEG2 files I would need for DVD. Rendering all of those hours of footage into good quality MPEG2’s was going to take a long time as well, so I went away for the weekend and let them finish. When I came home, again, voila, it was done!

Tonight I brought all of these videos into Adobe Encore, let the audio transcode within Encore and burnt one disc per original shoot tape. I thought the burning process would actually take longer but it turned out to be the quickest step of the whole workflow.

Now the DVD’s are burnt, printed on (I use ink jet printable DVD’s, looks slick) and in nice cases, ready for delivery to the client.

About a month ago I reported that we were going to be working with non-profit organization Teen Touch. I contacted them and offered our services pro-bono because I heard them on a local radio show mention that they had about 50% of their funding cut and were having a hard time getting by. I suggested that a marketing video directed at corporate sponsors might help them meet their financial needs, and that MediaCircus.TV would be willing to donate our time to putting together the project.

Since we met with Teen Touch in July to talk about the video it seems that they have decided that they need to shut down their operations. We wish the folks there at Teen Touch good luck and give them thanks for the what they and their volunteers have done over the years in helping people.

The work on the new MediaCircus.TV promotional video continues. The current one, seen at the top of the home page, is going to have some client testimonials added, along with adding material from some new projects and removing older projects.

I did a shoot with a few clients last week, Karen from the Occupational Health Centre, and Liz from NSI. Thank to those folk and their organizations for helping us out.