We shot the footage on one of our Panasonic HVX200s, using only natural light and one reflector.

We created the spot using After Effects, Shake, Motion, FCP, and Bias Peak Pro. 

Update April 22, 2008: We’ve been asked to temporarily pull the spot until May. However, if you click on the Work link above, you can see the new trailer for our show Couch Cases.

That said, there have been some interesting developments at NAB this week. Most notably, for me, is the introduction of RED’s new products: the Epic, Scarlett, and some sort of media player thingamabob.

Like a lot of video shops, we’ve been waiting on delivery of our very own RED ONE camera for quite some time. The ONE is a very revolutionary camera, and we decided it was something we needed to jump on. But now, even before our camera is ready to ship there’s a new and better RED camera system announcement. Whereas the ONE has 4K recording, the EPIC has 5K. Whereas the ONE has tiny weird little mini-XLRs for audio input, EPIC has full-sized XLRs.  The sensor in the EPIC kicks the ONE’s butt. And the biggest difference to me: the ONE is pretty heavy. The EPIC is 30% lighter in weight.

Of course, the EPIC costs twice the price of a ONE.

RED’s being pretty cool about things, though. If you own a ONE, you can turn that in for $17,500 in credit towards an EPIC. What other camera companies would even consider doing this?

So, the question quickly becomes: does one forgo getting a ONE and wait for EPIC, renting a ONE in the meantime as needed? Or does one suck it up, buy the ONE and figure on a later “trade in” if the EPIC becomes RED’s new main product?

The decision shouldn’t be a light or emotional one. Many numbers ought to be crunched in many spreadsheets. The bottom line for us and any other video shop is: will the ONE now pay for itself and the accessories to support it before it must be upgraded to an EPIC?

Part of our decision hinges upon RED: will they support the ONE indefinitely? For a lot of us, the 4K images are, quite frankly, way more than enough for the foreseeable future as long as RED continues to support the camera and offer software improvements. 

Couch Cases is a sitcom about a neurotic therapist who can’t follow her own advice.

We produced this project for about 1/1000th the price-per-minute of a network sitcom. We’re very excited about releasing the trailer, since we’d been working on this project for some time now.

We are happy to announce that Genius Monkeys will soon have Red One #2464, set to be delivered in late May/June. The Red One is an amazing camera, as it shoots 4K. That’s the highest resolution camera you can get, even Star Wars had only 2K resolution. 

What this means for us is, we will be able to offer our clients work that rivals and in many cases surpasses the capabilities of super 35mm film- for about half the cost. Suddenly, the “big look” of high-end television commercials is now available to clients without the deep pockets traditionally needed to afford such a professional look. This camera changes everything.

This is the new camera being used by Peter Jackson, George Lucas, Steven Soderbergh, and many other high-profile cinematographers and directors.

Not only will this allow us to deliver better quality projects for our customers at a much lower pricepoint than what they’re used to, it also means we’ll be able to do a lot more interesting work.

Much of our work involves digital set extensions and greenscreen work. In the past, doing this type of work has been somewhat labor-intensive. With the Red One we’ll be able to cut our production time in creating these special visual effects shots to a fraction of what it is now, freeing us to create even better composites and more creative special effects. 

We’ve already played with the Red One, and we’re incredibly excited about the capabilities this camera will bring to Genius Monkeys and our customers. 

We’re very excited about SXSW, too.

Lately we’ve been trying to educate clients on how to embrace Flash without causing all sorts of usability and visibility problems. We’ve developed a pretty great workflow and design solution, which we’re using for the very first time on this web design project.

This particular project really pushed us, and I can’t wait until we get signoff from the client so I can tell you more about it. This project will probably end up as a whitepaper on the Genius Monkeys website at a later date.

There wasn’t a lot of heavy lifting needed, as the spot centers around a live action puppet show. It should be up on YouTube soon, though, and it was a fun couple of hours.

Genius Monkeys has purchased Zaxwerks 3D products as part of our digital media production pipeline. Zaxwerks creates plugins and standalone applications that work with Adobe After Effects to streamline production and increase our creativity.

We’ll be putting Zaxwerks’ ProAnimator to work next week on a new television spot for Biotene PBF Mouthwash. Look for a step-by-step whitepaper on how we built this spot, once it’s complete.