add video to your social media campaign in 2010 … can you afford not to?

Business is buzzing with social media and, as a corporate film production company, we are extremely excited by the opportunities that offers us and our clients.  Our Film It! and Webvert products are geared towards web streaming and social media while retaining highly professional production values.  However, we also recognize that some businesses would prefer a more informal approach and with this in mind we are introducing an amazing new service to accommodate clients who are looking for a slightly more ‘raw’ form of delivery. We come to you, we bring a professional camera, just one light for a quick setup and we give you an hour and half to record up to three clips. These will usually be informal, straight to camera pieces which you could use to present up to three of the following possibilities:
1) a company overview
2) talk about a specific product
3) a video blog, maybe industry related or just a good story
4) describe a case study
5) a product demonstration
6) … your call
We will edit the footage to three short clips ready for hosting on You Tube at a best-value introductory price of £399 plus VAT.
See us online at: www.bestbitsmedia.co.uk or call us on 020 8549 6744

How Final Cut X is benefiting our Clients

The Apple re-build of Final Cut Pro (Final Cut Pro X) has received a great deal of criticism in the film industry and, it now seems clear to most, Apple released the product much too early. As a result they upset many seasoned professionals who had been loyal to Final Cut for 10 years or more by, firstly, declaring that they would no longer support Final Cut 7, secondly, that Final Cut 7 projects could not be imported into X and, thirdly, by producing a programme which could simply ‘not do’ certain things which professional editors had come to expect of editing software as a matter of course (like multicam editing for example – where one can edit the footage of more than one camera together).

However, after seeing a demonstration in November, 2011 – by now on its second incarnation – we were impressed enough to invest not only in the new software, but also in a new 27″, fully expanded iMac so we could make full use of the new 64-bit technology.

Since then, we have been editing some projects in X and some in 7 but found the more we used X the more we liked it.

Just over a week ago, Apple launched the fourth version of X and, at the same time, Alex and I attended one of the first Apple certified courses so we could get fully up to speed with what is in many ways, a quite radically different way of working.

How then, will this benefit our clients? There are two most obvious ways. One is the quality and range of titles available and the ease with which it is possible to modify these. Animated titles are now accessible in the programme itself rather than through additional programmes. These not only look fantastic but it also means that we can compose very professional-looking animated titles in-house rather than putting these out to a motion graphics expert. But the most significant aspect is in the quality of image in the finished film. The 64-bit technology makes the images look more contrasted, sharper and amazing, and effects which one would, with version 7, have hesitated to use – like vignettes for example, which tended to look blotchy and ‘false’ – now add real focus and power to an image.

The lightning speed of our new 27″ iMac, allied to Apple’s fundamental rebuild of the Final Cut means that our clients get a smarter, better looking outcome without spending any more money.

Overall, while it’s hard to understand why Apple initially launched X at the time they did and in the manner they did it, we believe that the new programme represents the future of film editing and we are genuinely excited about its capabilities.

We are now teaching the programme and using it on the majority of new projects.

Why use an Autocue?

The use of an autocue has long been the norm in TV. In some programmes, such as “Not the Nine o’clock News” the producers have made a feature of its presence, whereas traditionally of course it was unseen as one of the many staging blocks of slick programme making.

Like many independent production companies, we wouldn’t have entertained the idea of buying our own autocue until a few years ago when a variety of new, cheaper products were introduced.

But since buying our Prompter People autocue we’ve made good use of it, as business owners become more aware of the power of video and the importance of good quality, convincing presentations.

One does still see some rather embarrassing attempts to use ‘autocue substitutes’ and that’s why we’ve made the short autocue demonstration below.

If you’re interested in using our autocue, either as part of our ‘autocue sessions’ or in a bespoke session for you business, please get in touch with us at Best Bits Media.

Or, you can book for our next autocue session directly through Eventbrite: http://autocue1.eventbrite.co.uk

Video Party

We’ve just held our second Video Party and we have tickets for the third and fourth available on Eventbrite:

http://videoparty3.eventbrite.co.uk

The best way to get introduced to the idea is by watching our short promotional film:

Whichever length slot you wish to book (of three available) the rules are:

1. as many videos as you like within the time
2. straight to camera, no editing

So after the production we add simple beginning and end titles and deliver them to you ready for You Tube.

It’s an ideal product if you are looking for simple videos with which to vlog (or video blog) or use for social media.

We provide you with cameraman, HDV camera and professional lighting and audio equipment in our Kingston office.

Here are some examples:

http://vimeo.com/channels/284090

Obviously, if you are to make the most of this, you need to be well rehearsed and well prepared.
We recommend you come with at least a couple of changes of jacket/tops to vary the look and keep things interesting.

Where do you start planning a corporate film … ?

For most companies, the idea of making a film is potentially attractive.  But like many ‘want haves’ there can be a tendency to be sucked in to the whole ‘cool’ idea of it while not giving the implications full consideration.  What are the implications anyway, we’ve never done this before!

We’re a corporate film production company so, hoping it’s useful to do so, we’d like to share a few snips of advice which could save you money and prevent you driving your production company bananas.

Story and Message
Making a corporate film involves all the same techniques as making any other film. Its closest broadcast relative is probably the documentary. In a documentary the motivation is a ‘point of view’ in the journalistic sense. In corporate film, the emphasis is on the ‘company message’ – sales pitch or educational purpose.

Film Types and Approaches

• Promotional film (story/documentary/montage with music and narrator)
• Presentation for teaching purposes (productisation of knowledge)
• Product demonstration (for information or teaching, for internal use or to stimulate sales)
• Film which focusses on a particular issue (for example, health and safety)
• Film which documents a company event (such as a product launch, training day, CEO speech etc.)
• An advertisement for a particular product or for the company (for TV or for the rapidly expanding market of IPTV or use with social media)

With the advent of social media and the great possibilities it offers for marketing on the web, short film clips are all you need and you may find a series of short clips dedicated to specific facets of your company more valuable than a longer, more comprehensive film – for the web – promotional films are still extremely valuable in certain circumstances.

In the next blog we’ll look at how you can become more involved in the production so you get exactly the result you desire.