One of the things that really stood out was that the  quality of the videos they were using for their blog was lacking; not their fault, they just didn’t have the expertise to bring it where it needs to be, that’s where I come in.

In addition to using proper lighting and audio recording, I suggested shooting their sales manager on green screen so we could put a custom graphic background behind them, which would be more interesting to look at than the office they were previously shooting in.

During our meeting I showed them this video that I put together a few years ago about how green screen works and how we can use it to improve the look of their videos. They were very interested to see how this could be done within the budget and time frame they had and showing them this sample really helped to sell it.

Here is the green screen sample from a shoot I did with Anders the Infotainer which he used as an introduction on his website.

 Course Participants Craig Matthews and Nicolette Rieger

On April 26 I helped out with an ACTRA Auditioning workshop put on by Film Training Manitoba.  The workshop was run by veteran actor and casting director Rebecca Gibson.

I brought out my light kit, green screen for a backdrop and my know how to put together DVD’s of the auditions for folks. I used the Sony XDCAM EX camera, which is just great for a project like this. Since it is a data-based camera, rather than tape based, moving the files around and putting together a DVD is pretty quick, even with the extra work of transferring and transcoding files.

I make DVD’s for all of the workshop participants at FTM’s request, which I think is a great idea since it adds to the value that the participants get out of the workshops.

She was teaching the students how to have great audition and how casting decisions are made; hint – it’s not always about the acting, sometimes it’s the producers niece that gets the role

Jackie was very precise with the feedback she gave, and worked hard to get the best performance out of people. As usual, I learned a lot just from observing the process, which is one of the benefits from helping at a workshop like this.

What I was doing was taking video of the “auditions” by each performer, playing back the takes onto the HDTV monitor that was set-up and helping with DVD playback. I set-up some lighting and used my green backdrop (which I usually use for green screen chroma keying) to add a nice color to the background.

Over the course of 2 days I shot over 4 hours of footage of 15 different actors. I was using the Sony XDCAM EX-1, a beautiful camera I used a few months ago on another FTM production. The tapeless workflow it uses was perfect for this job.

I am compiling all of the takes of each actor into a DVD that will be given to the  attendees. I wasn’t quite sure what the best workflow would be to achieve this. When I ended up doing was unloading the contents of the SxS cards (the format the EX-1 shoot on) onto my laptop and using the Sony Clip Browser software to convert the clips to the MXF format, which is what Avid Media Composer (my editing software) uses. One they were converted I imported them into the Avid and put all of the takes from each actor onto their own timeline. Up to this point everything is in High-Definition, 720p 24fps.

I am now in the process of exporting QuickTime movies in Standard Definition which I will then import into Sorenson Squeeze to create the MPEG files used for the DVD authoring. From there, the MPEG files are imported into Adobe Encore for DVD authoring.

Wheh! For short projects this doesn’t take so long, but with over 4 hours of material this process does slow down a bit. I’m still experimenting with ways to make this workflow more efficient.

So in a few days (likely early next week) all of these lovely actors will have DVD’s from this session, so they can see the progress they made through 2 days of rigorous training.

Monday morning I was at Palliser Furntiture shooting some visuals of Punjabi employees for the Occupational Health Centre“Workplace Health and Safety” video being done for member of the Punjabi community. Palliser has always been very accommodating with us and very helpful in making their employees available for us. In fact there was a work slow down there recently but rather than cancelling the shoot date they had the people we were going to be using come in for an extra day so that we could still go forward with the shoot, full paid of course. Thanks to Val and James over at Palliser Furniture.  

Next up was a shoot at Hep Communications. It was a green screen shoot for a company called Diamond Retirement. Hep is working on their website and they want a video of the owners, Daryl and Karen Diamond, to play on the front page; this was somewhat similar to an earlier shoot I did for Hep for a site they built for moving company Quick Transfer.

It was one of the coldest days this week, schools were closed and people stayed home to be warm and cozy but we toughed it out and made it down to Hep for the shoot. I brought along my “portable studio”, green screen background, lights, wireless mics, HD camera and the needed accessories.  

I’ve been doing a lot of chroma keywork in the past year. Getting the green screen and it’s accessories has been one of the best purchases I’ve made; not only does it get me work it also gives me a chance to improve my technique. Creating a good green screen shot can be tricky; the clothes and hair have to be right, the lighting has to be right, the distance to the background has to be right; if any of those are lacking it’s much more difficult to remove the green later. 

Working off of a memorized script, such as Daryl and Karen did, is rarely easy, even for the pro’s. I recall one shoot I did a few years ago where the on-screen talent needed over 30 takes to get their lines right. OK, it was me, doing a stand up for a news report I was VJ’ing. So I re-assure any client I work with doing a project like this not to worry about taking 5 or 6 takes, even the pro’s do the same.

Sarah has been over at Hep for about 5 months in the Marketing Deperament and this was her first video shoot that she was running and was on hand to observe the process. We all had a good time and it was nice to work with Hep again. It went pretty smooth and the video should be up on their website in a few weeks. 

2 previous clients of mine, Anders and Scott Burton, offered to provide testimonials for me to use in promotions. Since MediaCircus.TV is a media company, I thought, why not video testimonials? This week I went to them and they spoke a little about what I did for them, how smooth it went and how quick the turn around was on their projects. With Scott he had his video for about an hour when I started seeing it pop up on Facebook and Google Video! I will be refreshing the MediaCircus.TV promotional video (as seen on the main page) with some new visuals and these testimonials in the coming months.

Other than running a little behind in arriving at the location, the shoot with Scott Burton went very well. We set-up in his parents basement, and even though it may have seemed to be close quarters we managed to get everything we need.

A successfulgreen screen shot really depends on having proper lighting, and this goes to show that we can set-up in places that might even seem like it wouldn’t work. The portable green screen has turned out to be one of the best investments I’ve made, it’s gotten a lot of use.

Scott did very well, he had a short memorized script to go from and then spent some time talking to the camera off the top of his head, about what he does in his shows and some of his background. We might not end up using a lot of that material for this project, but it’s good to shoot extra when we’re already set-up to go.

Scott has been performing magic for 20 years, that’s a lot of experience! I have some great clips of him in his shows that he’s provided for me to include in his video. It will be done in early January and will eb a nice addition to his website.