Bright Circle recently wrapped up post on a commercial we were producing for a law firm in the Tampa/St. Pete area. We decided rather than distribute the ad by tape we’d use a satellite service by DG Fast Channel. It was a good decision.

If you’re sending a commercial by tape to a television station, a great number of them still require a Beta SP tape. Beta SP is an analog format, not digital. By keeping your advertisement in a digital file and uploading it (after a series of tests) your maintaining the integrity of the file. You’re not losing any quality!

The whole process is tapeless. DG Fast Channel provides you the technical specifications that are required. Once post-production has been completed, you upload the spot and DG reviews it. You process the order through Spot Central and select the television station or stations that the spot is running on. From there DG distributes the ad via their service. The television station ingests the file into their server and reviews the ad for quality control.

The benefits are clear. There’s no concern about loss of quality, there’s no shipping to deal with, and if a production company doesn’t deal with the Beta format they don’t have to rent one to master the ad…..keeping costs in line as well.

Simple, cost effective and efficient…three things every client loves!

Often when meeting someone for the first time and the subject of business comes up it’s important to have your “elevator speech” in hand.

Do you have one?

I do. “We use video as a tool to help business.” I like it because it always raises an eyebrow and gets that individual’s attention. It’s short and sweet and it says everything that it needs to. And…it couldn’t be more accurate! Video is a tool that helps business. It markets, it trains, it sells, it motivates….it’s the business worlds’ Swiss Army knife!

Recently Bright Circle had the opportunity to tape a sales seminar for a high profile company from the Atlanta area. Their top sales people were brought in to Orlando to listen to one of their peers. This sales executive was their cream of the crop and he was coming in from Salt Lake City to share his secrets and techniques with their Southeast sales force.

Naturally they wanted to videotape the seminar. Why? Because it made perfect sense. Videotaping the seminar would save them an incredible amount of money in the long run. Rather than send this sales executive all across their footprint (taking valuable time away from his sales efforts), they decided to videotape the event so that they could distribute a DVD to their other sales teams across the country. Teams that could profit from his talents.

Smart business….and another example of how video is used as a tool for business. Not even a Swiss Army knife can compete with those results!

Bright Circle recently traveled to Miami and videotaped a two-part interview with Gigi Glazer, Organizational and Development Consultant, Shoreside Operations for Royal Caribbean, that touched on a number of subjects revolving around employee training.

In Part 2 of our interview, we focus on topics such as shipboard training and the delivery method, as well as ROI and the future of training itself.

Please feel free to share any comments you may have. We hope you enjoy.
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Bright Circle recently traveled to Miami and videotaped a two-part interview with Gigi Glazer, Organizational and Development Consultant, Shoreside Operations for Royal Cariibean, that touched on a number of subjects revolving around employee training. This interview marks the debut of a new series that Bright Circle is unveiling with the creation of “Profiles in Excellence.”

We hope you enjoy it.

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So…your company requires a video but it’s something you’re a little wary about. It’s a bit unnerving overseeing a video project for the first time. Right?

Well of course. We emphasize with anyone placed with the first-time responsibility of managing a company’s video project. After all, there are a lot of factors to consider. Having said that, we’re a company that believes in open communication…we ask all the questions that need to be asked so that no stone is left unturned. So why do we do that? Because we believe in taking ownership of a project. Quite simply…we want it to be successful. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out!

Sitting down and determining a story line and the focus of the video is one of the first steps in pre-production. We ask some other questions in this stage as well. Hint – it’s something we’ve talked about before a number of times in this blog…

Give up?

Who’s your Audience??? That question right there…it’s like the holy grail of the video world. It’s one of the most important aspects in getting started. Once we know that…the script can then get started. Writing a script generally doesn’t just happen overnight. It’s a process that can take three or four revisions over a two week period. Being as responsive as possible in the scriptwriting phase is important in meeting a project’s deadline. Once your script is approved the production phase follows. Each project is different…your company may only require a half-day of shooting, or possibly a week. From there post-production is the next stage.

So how long should you account for in getting your project produced? It’s good to have a 4-5 week timeframe. That period of time is generally sufficient to master pre-production, production, as well as post. It’s also enough time to trade a couple dozen emails and build a pretty good relationship for the future! So let’s get started……

Each company has their own unique story to tell. How is that so? Because of the people that make up your company. They all have different personalities, passions, things that affect them differently…and that’s key.

There’s never been a more important time in sharing that story than now. In a weakened economy, it only makes sense to differentiate yourself from your competitor. In B to B marketing you need to prove yourself…so how do you do that? Showing results. Interview clients and use those testimonials as a key device in your video. Tape interviews within your company with your own personnel; show off their passion and service in the work that they do. What else is effective? Emotion. Video is a powerful tool because through video…you convey emotion.

Here’s a couple of other ideas you can contemplate using:

Relive a success story. Show your prospective client the amazing service that you provide by giving a firsthand account of something extraordinary you did for a client. If you don’t have an extraordinary story…you may have a problem.

Deliver a promise from your CEO. If you’re targeting a certain company and marketing your service to that company, consider having your CEO on camera making a specific promise that your company will backup. It’ll come across as a strong point, but one that you have to have every confidence you can keep. When the DVD is sent out you could even have an enclosure form signed by every member of your company that stands by what your CEO says.

Finding ways that you can differentiate yourself from the competition is vital. Consider your past achievements and ask yourself what’s going to make a difference to company B. What’s important to them? Answering that effectively and using video as a tool in doing so should have you on the right track.

Sometimes through performance, heart and soul are revealed in stunning fashion. When it’s captured on video, there are moments where we lay witness to the spectacular.

One classic song, performed by street musicians across the world…captured by a team of filmmakers dedicated to connect the world through music.

Enjoy.

Ok…so we’ve all been there, experienced it, lived through the disappointment. The simple fact is we don’t always get the project that we’re called for. Hey…it happens.

Case in point, earlier this week we had a call from a past client telling us that a project that we were up for wasn’t going to happen. They are a local church here in the Orlando area that bases their Sunday worship service out of a theatre. Interesting concept, and very popular! They thought that they might need a second theatre for overflow purposes on an upcoming service later this month. If so they were going to need a company come in to do a 3 camera live switch and send it to the theatre down the hall. Turns out that they were able to stay in the theatre that they house their regular Sunday service which is ample for their needs.

We were happy for them!

It saved them several thousand dollars, funds that they can use to do a lot of good work in their church community. Short term losses aren’t necessarily devastating, in fact more often than not, things work out just the way they are suppose to.

It’s a lot bigger than the world our parent’s grew up in, but in some ways it’s smaller too. It’s tougher to get lost even if you’re driving to Chocowinity, North Carolina. Why? Because of devices like Magellan and TomTom. To sum things up our world today is constantly changing, constantly growing, constantly evolving, constantly constant.

So what does that have to do with media production?

Well, naturally the video world changes with the times too. The big bulky expensive cameras have been replaced with the sleek smaller ones. Everything is about efficiency.

Our industry is slowly moving away from shooting on tape, instead we shoot on solid state cards. Cards that can hold up to 32 gigs of media. Why? Well, it cuts down on transfer time entering the footage you shot onto tape and ingesting it into the computer. With cards, you take a USB cable from your camera, plug it into your computer and copy the files over. Faster than real time.

What’s better than that?

Maybe coconut cream pie, but that’s the subject of another entry altogether. The moral of the story is that the future is here, the technology keeps getting better, and it’s the client that wins.

It’s happened. The unthinkable…the corporate video that everyone has been working on and planning for so long is now done. The DVDs have been sent out…and the response hasn’t been great. People are falling asleep. Why? Here’s 7 possible reasons…

1) The objective of the video was never established. A successful video needs to have a clear cut objective. Write it out…it should be a sentence long. Try it, it works.

2) A committee wrote the script. Ever heard of too many cooks in the kitchen? Same thing applies to writing video scripts. Too many voices, too many perspectives coming at the same script from too many places. A successful video needs to have focus.

3) The video wasn’t professionally produced. Hmmm…this hasn’t happened before has it? “Let’s bring in the intern from college…didn’t he say he had a camera?” Professionals pay close attention to detail and have honed their craft for years and years. They’re worth the money.

4) Not enough time was put into the project. Depending on the format of your show and the goals that you have set forth for your project….generally speaking two to three days should be reserved for the shooting. Sometimes less…sometimes more, but that’s a good average. Trying to fit too much into a single day of shooting can ultimately cause a project to fail.

5) The guy on camera was…well, a little boring! Personality is important…it engages the viewer and in order to deliver your message effectively you need to keep that viewer awake!

6) The video was too long. Five to seven minutes for a DVD, two minutes for a homepage video on your website. Attention span is everything…don’t assume that people will just watch.

7) The video didn’t have a subject matter expert on set. This is an important one. When producing an instructional video that will be distributed to your employees make sure that you have a subject matter expert on hand so that when taping correct procedural habits you know that you’re demonstrating proper behavior. It’s a must have.