Here’s my latest TV commercial project: “Eyeball” featuring edgy London lingerie company Agent Provocateur.

Starring Melissa Cabral and Hays McEachern, and written by Britt Benston, Kathi Funston, and me. Production design by Pam Chien. Makeup & Hair by Gabriela Banda. Camera Assistant Katie Ferraro. I directed, edited, and did all the visual effects work.

This one was tough- two visual effects artists who’d worked on major motion pictures like “Harry Potter” and “Captain America” failed me. They said it couldn’t be done. One fired visual effects guy told me “if you can do this shot, you can do anything”.

So, there you go. I can do anything.

Seriously, it’s all about creative thinking and finding a way to sell the gag to the audience. Think inside the box, and they’ll take you home in one.

Shot on RED MX, color in DaVinci. VFX in After Effects, Mocha, and SilhouetteFX. Thanks, Marco.

Enjoy!

These days, it seems like most web design and social media clients are asking about incorporating video into their projects. The days of an unscripted, unrehearsed talking head welcoming you to the client’s website or Facebook page are thankfully almost over. Video isn’t a novelty, anymore. It’s an expected part of the online experience. And whether you’ve decided to roll your own video, or hire a professional to help, there’s a few guidelines you really should follow to make sure everything turns out well.

The level of video production quality still varies quite a bit on the web, but the fact is that smart businesses are realizing that effective video, just like an effective website, tells a story. Oftentimes, figuring out that story falls to you- even if you’re not writing the script for the video, it’ll often be your job to work with your client to develop the creative brief that you’ll then give to your video agency of choice. I’ve found the best way to get started with figuring out your video’s story is the same way you get started with a new website design project or social media campaign- that is, you ask a lot of questions.

However you phrase it to your client, your first job is to figure out (more…)

If you do a search for Los Angeles Video Production Company on Google, one of the top ten results is our very own film & video page. That’s awesome, especially since we really haven’t worked to get that ranking- unlike a lot of competitors we’re not gaming the system or trying to fool Google. We’re just putting out quality projects and letting the work speak for itself.

Meanwhile, we’re prepping some amazing things for 2012. Our video client Vocre is back for new videos talking about their awesome iPhone app, we have a new TV commercial to post online soon, and my film “Unlaced” is currently in post production.

Speaking of post, we’ve added a daVinci color correct suite, and our 4K pipeline is a well-oiled machine that lets us deal with the highest quality video footage without a hitch. On the production side of things, our RED MX camera is kicking butt, and we’re adding a RED Scarlet-X, to help us continue to lead the pack as far as quality.

There’s other stuff we can’t talk about yet, too, from corporate videos to a top secret 2012 project. Suffice to say, video is a huge part of what we do, so much so that I think it’s fair to categorize us as a digital & video agency. So, thank you Google for the top ranking. We’ll keep doing our thing if you keep doing yours.

As a very early adopter of the RED One camera, RED is offering an amazing deal on swapping our RED MX for their new Epic-X camera. We won’t be taking the deal. It was a tough decision, but let me share my reasoning with you.

First, I am sentimentally attached to our RED One, now a RED MX. I’ve had it forever, and I feel like I’ve finally gotten it to where it makes some of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen. My movie “Unlaced”, now in post, looks fantastic. Stunning, really. And the last two or three tv commercials we’ve done look amazing, too.

Second, we just got our RED One upgraded to the MX sensor this past summer, and that’s the same sensor in the Epic-X and Scarlet-X. We also just upgraded to the solid state drives (SSDs) on this camera. That’s over $10K right into that camera in upgrades that we’d lose if we gave up our RED MX as part of the trade in for Epic. That doesn’t seem to make sense, as our RED MX is now a truly amazing and wonderful cinematic tool that I and my crew know how to operate in our sleep. Plus, again, I just plain like this camera. It’s gotten me through some fun and trying times.

Then there’s our production pipeline. It’s set up to deal with 4K footage pretty well. Up that to 5K, and you’re looking at some serious slowdowns in post. That’s not good for us, one of our advantages to clients is the value we provide at the quality level we give. If I have to upgrade our production pipeline right now, we’ll need to raise our rates immediately, or do less work. Neither is appealing to me, I like that we offer cinema-quality to our clients at a reasonable price.

People often underestimate the cost of setting up an efficient production pipeline- it’s not just the camera you’re buying, you need to make sure you have computers with tons of RAM, SSDs instead of hard drives, esoteric cards like the RED Rocket, RAIDs for big storage… the list goes on. I learned this the hard way when I bought our RED One. It ended up really costing us about $100K, all in. Getting Epic means starting over, in some ways. Not cool for our little shop.

Finally, there’s Scarlet-X.

RED really knocked it out of the park with Scarlet-X. It’s basically our RED One MX in a package 1/3rd the size, but better. Or maybe a better comparison is, it’s basically an Epic-X minus a few features I have little use for on our jobs. It’s tiny, and it does almost everything its big brother Epic-X can do, minus high framerates and the best compression. Now, those Epic-only features do make me drool, but I haven’t needed them yet- not once, not even with the film, and our tv commercial work. Plus, I live in LA, so when we do need- absolutely need- those features that are specific to Epic, we can just rent one of the thousand or so that’ll be available shortly.

Scarlet is perfect for what I need it for: as a compact, high quality camera for grabbing stuff on the street, as a camera ideal for airline travel to tv commercial shoots, and so forth. Plus, if it gets broken we’re not out $40K.

Of course, the initial cost to us of going Epic or Scarlet is about the same, thanks to RED’s awesome Epic upgrade/trade-in deal. But the hidden costs of Epic with the pipeline and accessory changes we’d need, compared to the prospect of having two complete worldclass camera systems that work for our production pipeline by keeping our RED One MX and adding Scarlet, really sealed the deal for me. Again, if RED hadn’t done such an amazing deal with Scarlet, the story would be different.

And sure, the geek in me wants the biggest gun, and that’s clearly Epic. But the filmmaker in me understands that owning both an upgraded RED MX and a Scarlet provides advantages to us that outweigh RED’s awesome trade-in deal with Epic.

We finished principal photography on “Unlaced” this week. Here’s the film’s Facebook page. We’ll be adding a lot of behind-the-scenes and other stills from the movie in the next week. “Unlaced” turned out incredibly well, it looks like a million dollar movie. I’d like to thank everyone who was a part of the production, and I expect we’ll do very well in festivals in 2012. I’m looking forward to post production over the next few months.

I think one should grow with every project. I certainly grew as a filmmaker and director on this project. Exponential growth is perhaps a more fitting term. When I look back at 2011, it’s been an amazing year for us in both interactive and film/video. We’ve won six awards for our work, and we got to finish up the year with my passion project- a film that I’ve been wanting to make for years.

Of course, we’re not done, yet. We just landed an opportunity with an existing client to do a web video, and we’re looking at some more web work and possibly one more large-scale video project before New Years, too.

A little while ago, we created a top-secret promo video for a new iPhone app called Vocre. Last week, they debuted their new app at TechCrunch Disrupt, and they won big. They won the “Audience Choice Award” and “Best Mobile App”, and you may have started to see our promo video being played on technology shows on various tv networks and on the local news.

When myLanguage approached me to direct their web promo video, I was incredibly impressed with their idea and how far they’d already taken it. It’s basically the Universal Translator from Star Trek. It’s amazing. Learn more about the Vocre app, their win, and so forth on our Facebook page- and while you’re there, please “like” us, and Vocre, too!