Central Park, NYC. August 2009

OK, so this post is going to be a bit Dear Diary-ish but I wanted to give a quick update and a little explanation on why I launched this blog and then basically disappeared for half a month.

First off- I moved. I only moved a few blocks from my old place but as you all know, moving is a big project and not the most fun activity. However, I love my new place! It has high ceilings and much more sunlight shining in. Which makes for a much better location for shooting videos!

Last weekend I was in New York City shooting Whitney Port (star of “The Hills” and “The City”) for a JC Penney back to school fashion promotion video. One lucky fan won a $1,000 shopping spree with Whitney acting as personal stylist and we filmed the whole event for a web video series.

We hired a local 2nd cameraman and audio guy that had been recommended to us from a trusted production company and they were both totally on point. This is actually a BIG tip- if you are outsourcing crew always get referrals from people you trust. I learned this the hard way (audio disaster).

Whitney was kind, patient and professional (as she always is) and the experience was a thrill for the 15 year old contest winner that drove in from Illinois.

The shoot went pretty darn smoothly. The reason: Lot’s and lot’s of PLANNING. Even though at first glance the shoot seemed fairly straight forward, there are always hidden logistical issues. My producer, Craig Bland, and I went over the shoot schedule, script, and shot list a dozen or more times over the week leading up to the shoot. Each time we did some other little issue that needed working out arose. We also did a walk through of the location (the new JC Penney in Manhattan) a few days before to identify exactly where we would shoot each segment.

Bottom Line: Pre-production is key to a successful shoot.

While I still have some boxes to unpack and I am still at full throttle at the day job, I am getting back into the groove of writing and making videos for this blog. Stay Tuned!

Now for a few shout outs:

-Special thanks to Daniel Sevitt, the Director of Corporate Communications over at EyeView Digital who wrote up a review of my free ‘Web Video Is Key‘ report on his blog. EyeView Digital is completely focused on using video to engage viewers and turn them into customers.

-Dan McAllistor, a Realtor in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL has begun making video tours of his properties and he emailed me with a few questions regarding exporting and conversion. The questions deal with issues I know I a lot of people are having and I am way over due in replying.  Dan - I promise to get to your questions this week and I will post the possible solutions up on this blog as well.

-Wistia has developed some pretty cool technology to track, in real time, how someone views your video. You can see what parts they viewed, when they jumped ahead or fast forwarded, and when they stopped watching. Visually displaying the results in what they call a video heatmap- pretty darn cool.

Tags: planning, pre-production, reality tv, update, whitney port

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 1:40 am and is filed under Tips, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.