“You're Unbelievable”, “Great job” and “That was awesome” are just some of the praises we received from our clients in 2012.
We started the year helping Jasculca Terman create an Image piece for their client presentations.
We cut a documentary trailer for an incredible story about an Native American Lakota Medicine Man, Sidney Has No Horses.
IIT returned to MotionPost in the Spring of 2012, asking us to produce a recruiting video for their Professional Learning Programs (PLP). We put together a turnkey solution to highlight what great opportunity students have at IIT Professional Learning Program.
We partnered with the Chicago Chapter of the American Marketing Association to create promotional content for their flagship seminar BrandSmart 2012. The AMA Chicago wanted us to interview current and past BrandSmart speakers. These interviews included such luminaries as Ted Soder from Google, Dan Michelson from Strata Decision Technology and veteran marketing consultant, Kim Feil.
To further promote BrandSmart 2012, MotionPost proposed interviewing several of the out-of-town speakers via skype. We created a graphics treatment that accentuated the social media aspects of the interviews, and matched this year's theme "Owning the Tectonic Shifts in Marketing".
The AMA wanted to show members that were unable to attend BrandSmart what a great conference they missed. We brought in our favorite comedian and friend, Tim Walkoe, to show everyone what a fabulous time they missed.
Deltak, a leader in online learning curriculum, called on MotionPost to create a high end instructional presentation for one of their customers. We used the visual analogy of home building to illustrate the project completion cycle.
The Dober Group turned to us for a solution to showcase their commercial laundry software. We worked with Dober to write a script and create a production schedule, then our team went to Pennsylvania to document how Dober's software conserves energy and monitors employee productivity.
Special Olympics Illinois returned to leverage all the great footage we shot for their 2011 feature piece. We sat down together to create PSA's for several markets across the state.
We teamed up with Lite Fuze to build a series of graphic animations for Cobra Electronics booth at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show. Cobra tasked us with showing all of their products specifications and features in a visually appealing manner.
We helped the Chicago Creative pro User group Stream their monthly meetings this year.
Through it all, we traveled across the county to create quick turn-around meeting wrap up videos on location for several companies including Valspar and Molex.
These are just some of the highlights of an awesome year. We helped many more people move their message in 2012. We look forward to moving you in 2013.
MotionPost recently produced a series of promotional videos
for the American Marketing Association's BrandSmart 2012 Conference. But our
challenges threatened to overcome the available budget. Here are some of the
approaches we used to create a successful, motivating series of videos in spite
of big obstacles - they can work for you too!
1. Consider Video Conferencing
Flying out or hiring local producers to interview keynote
speakers for the promotions prior to the event was not in the budget, and
deadlines were tight. So we turned to videoconferencing, without the expense of
a fully-crewed video shoot.
2. Use Existing Footage
By using quick cuts of existing b-roll footage to supplement
the videoconference results, we added visual interest, depth and excitement, all
without costly on-location shooting.
3. Create Interesting Backdrops
We tracked the footage into a 3D-modeled desktop computer,
strategically including the Brandsmart 2012 logo. Our approach leveraged the
streaming quality of the raw footage to convey the immediacy and power of
social media. So we turned the unique challenges of the interviews into an even
stronger statement about the subject.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
The Chicago Creative Pro Users Group celebrated its tenth anniversary this last week and held a celebration at Encoenta Roma in Chicago Board and several of the founders of the Group.
Pictured Left to right top row, Brian Kaempen, Tom Foss, Fred Pfeifer, Gary Adcock, Geoff Slawson.
Middle Row; Jim Kropp, Kelly Emmerling, Sue Lawson, Jeff Evenson, George Patay, Steve Eisen and Keith Dadey.
Seated middle Billy Sheahan.
Often the unique challenges involved in
bringing together all of the elements of a video project can seem
overwhelming. With experience and the right tools, a good video
producer knows that the best solutions to the challenges of
logistics, budget and deadline can also provide the best
inspiration for the creative look and feel of a video presentation.
This has never been more true than with our promotional video work
for the Chicago American Marketing Association's (AMA) annual one-day
“Brandsmart” events.
"I'm Going to Brandsmart"
For all of the promotional videos we've
done for Brandsmart, the goal has been to create a series of short
testimonial spotlights that include a wide variety of past attendees
and influential CMO's, as well as the industry luminaries that will
be speaking at the event, explaining why Brandsmart is THE event to
attend if you are a marketer in Chicago (because, it really is).
Our target list of potential
interviewees are from all over map – industry-wise, and physically.
So, the the biggest challenge for producing the series is
coordinating all of our busy subjects into separate interviews in a
timely and economical manner, scheduled into a tight window optimized
to have strongest impact on attendee registration. For the 3 series
we've done, we solved the problem in 3 very different ways and each
solution informed very different creative approaches for the finished
product.
For Brandsmart 2010, we realized that
most of the people on our interview target-list would be coming
together for a separate AMA gathering a few weeks before the
Brandsmart event. We made arrangements to pull each one aside during
that preceding event to discuss on video about why Brandsmart was
important to them professionally. As luck would have it, the only
space available adjacent to the gathering was very small, and not
really attractive enough to offer a suitable background for our
subjects. A white psyche backdrop, a fast paced interview style,
and close, intimate photography, answered all of these challenges and
created very effective series.
"Relevance"
Here's the rest of the series, including an and amusing spoof of the concept preformed by Megan Gaus who proved to be a very knowledgeable professional, and very funny too.
More recently we produced two short
video promotional series for Brandsmart 2012. We wanted to
spotlight some top executives that had previous organizational
involvement with the event. For these we were able to coordinate a
more traditional and sophisticated one-on-one conversations with AMA
committee members using part of the Chicago skyline as our backdrop.
The second series we did for 2012
required interviews of Brandsmart key-note speakers to tease their
topics and give an impression of their unique outlook on the
industry. The AMA invites speakers from all over the country, but
flying out or hiring local production crews for each 2 minute piece
just wasn't in the budget. To save time and money in the face of a
looming deadline, we suggested that we interview the speakers via
video conference over the internet. We experimented with several
on-line services and found Skype to be the most accessible for our
needs. This approach allowed an extremely flexible interview
schedule, and was conducted without the expense of fully-crewed video
shoot.
Because of the limitations of streaming
live video over the internet, video quality was pretty compromised in
the raw interview footage compared to what we have gotten from a
traditional shoot. After getting the messaging just right, we needed to “dress it up” a bit so we tracked the footage
into a 3d-modeled desktop computer (strategically including the
Brandsmart 2012 branding as a backdrop). As a result, we had
leverage the “streaming quality” of the footage to imply the
immediacy and power of social media in today's marketing space. We
turned the unique challenges of the interviews into an even stronger
statement about it's subject.
The feature-length documentary is now available for sale
at the official Forsdon The Movie website.
Lovingly created by Ed at Motion Post for the producers at North Shore Films, a 3-disc set of Fordson is now available for sale. You get a Blu-Ray™ and DVD Video of the 92 minute
theatrical release as it appeared in AMC
Theatres in the Fall of 2011 (held over for two weeks in some cities!). The 3rd disc is a 122 minute
Special Features DVD which contains: Q&A with the cast from an
MLK Symposum held at the University of Michigan, Extended Trailer,
Theatrical Trailer, News Interviews with Director and Producers,
Fordson Principal Imad Fadlallah's Class of 2010 Commencement Address,
Repositioning Islam in America TEDx talk, FORDSON Rap Video, Comments from Hillary Clinton and Michael Moore and other extras..
If you missed it last year, and you have
Netflix streaming, you can also see it in it's entirety online. Obviously, I
can't link to the stream directly here, so if you have a Netflix
streaming account, login to it and do a search for "Fordson". (edit: or try this)
Mothlight Pictures brought Memorial Healthcare’s Joint
Replacement Team commercial to us. DP Pete Biagi shot on Fletcher Chicago’sArri Alexa. What beautiful looking footage. Directed by Marc Wellin cut in
Final Cut Pro 7 by Jeff Evenson. Sandy Weber of FlixDisc created and tracked all the red glows.
One of the more rewarding aspects of being in the marketing and communications business is when a new client calls because they saw a previous video you produced and loved it. That’s what happened last fall when the Applied Learning Program at the Illinois Institute of Technology called to say they wanted to talk to Motion Post about producing a recruiting video. During the spring of 2011 Motion Post produced a re-branding video for IIT’s Institute for Food Safety and Health, better known as IFSH.
At our first meeting we decided to shoot some scenic shoots of the campus during the beautiful fall weather. Tom McCosky visited the IIT campus on a beautiful September day. The footage looked incredible. Our client had even asked if that was the same place he worked. :)
View of IIT Campus from the tower
After the Holidays we sat down with the IIT team and started to plan the project. University recruitment programs need to hit the mark. What’s the draw for students to want to come to IIT Chicago and join the program? IIT is a world class university. Chicago is a great city. The Applied Learning Programs offers a 6 week internship that not only increases the student’s business skills but has proven to be an extremely effective program for helping each student with their English skills. That’s the big pay off. And we captured it all.
Great locations at IIT's University Technology Park
Some amazing interviews from the faculty and of the student’s experiences and how they’ll be able to apply their new working skills and their coursework to the workforce back home or wherever they choose to live and work.
Now it was time to edit the program, with ten hours of interviews in the can, we decided to use the latest version of Adobe’s industry leading software Premiere Pro CS 6 to cut this project. We love premiere’s ability to work with P2 footage right off the cards (no need to transcode), this would let us speed through all of the interviews and capture the best possible sound bites. Next we had to fine tune the interviews into a clear narrative. We used the faculty to give the program the flow then interspersed the alumni to support the faculty comments. After the first round of positive client reviews we started to polish the program. We used Magic Bullet’s Colorista 2 for color grading and Digital Anarchy’s Beauty Box to really have everyone look their best. Adobe audition completed the audio clean up and mix.
McCormick Center with Colorista 2 applied
McCormick Center without Colorista 2 applied
Interview with Beauty Box and Colorista 2 applied
Interview without Beauty Box and Colorista 2 applied
Interview with Beauty Box and Colorista 2 applied
Interview without Beauty Box and Colorista 2 applied
The final step was to author a dvd and print up the packaging. We worked with IIT’s internal communications department to create an effective/informative video brochure, packing for the finished DVD.
The Recruiting video made its way to 8 Universities in Korea a week after we finished the program in April 2012. Rave reviews by all. Next stop China. The program plans to make it to 8 countries including the U.S.
A quick blog post to give you an update of what is happening in vegas. Lots of great software and equipment to look at on this trip to Vegas. The things that impressed me the most Adobe CS 6, Smoke on a Mac and Da Vinci Resolve were my three favorites.
AutoDesk lowered the price ($3500 plus $500 per year License). This is an awesome product I'm looking forward to testing it out on their public Beta this summer.
I'm no writer, but I'm fascinated with the process of writing. It's the purest form of art in my opinion. I think the writing process has a lot in common with video editing, especially the kind of unscripted work that I do most of the time, (to be honest though, at it's best, editing can probably only be regarded as a "high craft")
Anyway...
Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck
1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
Motion Post had another fantastic year in 2011. We edited a feature length documentary, Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Footballwhich had a very successful national theatrical run.
The film won several prestigious awards including a Special Jury award at the Slam Dance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. It also won Best US Documentary Film at the Traverse City Film Festival, where Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore commented, “I want everyone in the country to watch this film.”
BBBBRRRR!!!! Special Olympics Illinois asked us to go outside to produce a marketing video for their annual Polar Plunge. We interviewed the "plungers" as they got ready to run into the frozen waters. We wanted to show how easy it was to raise money for this awesome charity.
IIT's Institute for Food Safety asked us to produce a Satellite Media Tour for their re-branded Institute for Food Safety. Motion Post put together a turn key production to show off all the work IFSH does to protect consumers.
HOOPS! Veteran ESPN producer Erik Rosenthals came to Motion Post to create a “X’a & O’s” interstitial series for ACC college basketball on ESPNU. Coach K and Coach Roy Williams were some of the luminaries who mapped out their best “buzzer beater” strategies for college hoops fans.
The Once of Prevention and director Chris Guillen partnered with Motion Post to create a powerful fundraising video for Educare, The Once’s national network of early childhood learning centers. We put together a veteran crew that traveled to 5 cities in 10 days to show the fabulous work that this charity has been doing. We got a lot of great footage on this trip and the footage has been helping their communications department leverage it well beyond the scope of the main program.
2011 saw dramatic changes at Sara Lee, Inc. as they conducted a broad divestiture and restructuring to emerge as a stronger and company in 2012. The Bricolage Group hired us to showcase all these changes. We post-produced an ongoing series of videos for their re-branded Meat and Coffee divisions to help keep their workforce informed and motivated.
We completed several local commercials for Abt electronics, Pekin Hospital, Illinois Valley Community hospital and web-ads for Cobra electronics.
We traveled to Thailand and San Diego to produce sales meeting wrap-up video for Molex.
These are just some of the highlights, we helped even more clients tell their stories. We look forward to telling your story this year.
Lite Fuze partnered with Motion Post to create a content for the Cobra Electronics booth at the Consumer electronics show 2012. Cobra's new radar detector follows the contours of a Lamborghini Gallardo.
Cobra's Vedetta is latest in an excellent line of radar detectors. Cobra wanted us to appeal to adrenaline junkies that buy their products, so we rented a Lamborghini for the shoot. Take a look;
Nice review of Fordson on the SunTimes blog this weekend. Written by Omer M. Mozaffar in Chicago. It was uploaded to the blog by Roger Ebert.
"When my brother-in-law watched "Fordson," he felt chills. A high school football player himself, now a physician who also supports local high school football, he was personally touched watching the players perform their pregame prayers, by reciting the Qur'an. I expect many others will feel the same."
Created by Executive Producer/Director Rashid Ghazi of North Shore Films, "Fordson" has garnered over 7 laurels from film festivals across the country, beginning with Slamdance in Park City, Utah. Later, Ghazi secured a national release with AMC Entertainment starting September 9th. In August it won Best U.S. Documentary at the Traverse City Film Festival, founded by director Michael Moore. After the ceremony Moore told the filmmakers, "I want everyone in the country to see this film."
"We're inviting all of our colleagues and friends in the Chicago area production community to come celebrate the release of 'Fordson' with us," said Ed Pickart, partner at Motion Post and editor of the film. There will be a reception after the screening, "it should be quite a night."
Shot in Dearborn Michigan in only 10 days in 2009 using Panasonic's popular Vericam HD format, the 92 minute feature was edited and finished entirely using Final Cut Studio at Pickart's Forest Park facility.
"Since we released the first trailer for the film last summer, interest in it has soared," Pickart and the producers were in post production together for just under a year. The trailers for the film, also finished at Motion Post, can be seen on YouTube.
"We follow a predominantly Arab-American public high school football team during the last ten days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan." stated Ghazi. "It unearths the story of a community holding onto its Islamic faith while struggling to gain acceptance in post 9-11 America." That week of primary photography marked a unique overlap of Ramadan, the team's big game against cross-town rival Dearborn High, and the 8th anniversary commemorating the tragic events of September 11, 2001.
Everyone is invited to the Motion Post event on September 12th, but seats are limited. If you'd like to attend the complimentary screening, contact Ed Pickart at ed@motionpost.tv, or call 708-427-1254 to reserve a spot on the guest list.
We just finished a great project for a marvelous Chicago organization "The Ounce of Prevention". They are focused on early learning programs in disadvantaged neighborhoods through a network of education centers called "Educare". Our favorite production team of Tom McCosky, Bruno Strapko did a phenomenal job with Chris Guillen producing and directing.
I recently had the privilege of traveling to Phuket Thailand for Molex's Asia Pacific Sales Meeting. We were tasked with producing several roll-ins for the five day meeting.
Other than the long plane rides I had an amazing experience. The meeting was held at an amazing hotel the JW Marriott Phuket.
I traveled from Chicago from to Seoul South Korea, 13 hours. Then another 7 hour flight from Seoul to Phuket. I watched a few movies and read a few books and was happy to get to Thailand. We started shooting right away, is it really work when your overlooking a beautiful beach on the Andaman Sea?
I did manage to get off the property and here is a shot of the dinner I ate that night.
"..deftly balances the feel-good exuberance with the acknowledgment that the young Fordson high schoolers, along with their friends and families, continue to face the prejudices of those who insist that Arab-Americans -- even those who excel at the all-American game of football -- may not be true Americans after all.
The Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Featurewent to the excellent film "Bhopali". Our sincerest congratulations to the producers of that moving and important work.
Everyone at Slamdance has been incredibly supportive of Fordson. At the awards ceremony they said, "The Slamdance jury was moved by this great American story about life, liberty and the pursuit of football."
The juror who presented us with the award, Adrian Belic (director of the 1999 doc Genghis Blues), was personally very vocal, supportive and complimentary of the film. My personal thanks to him for championing us all this week.
Kudos, congratulations and thanks go to the production team: Director Rashid Ghazi's dogged determination to get this thing done and done right, producers Ash-har & Basma Quraishi's creative guidance, Ruth Lietman's insight providing structure to the chaos of 75 hours of raw footage, our amazing photographers Michael Shamus and Mark Berg for their amazing photography, and to all of their unwavering trust in my input and ability to help bring it all together.
I look forward to the next opportunity I might have to submit a work to Slamdance. I'll always keep an eye on Park City, Utah.
Ed Says:
I'm at Slamdance this week. It's been really fun out here in Utah.
We had a pretty full house on the first showing of Fordson and they were a really receptive audience. Very responsive -- and seemed to cue to all the right places, and then some. It was a total kick watching the audience watch the movie. Second showing was on Monday first thing (noon) with a smaller, more subdued (read: hung over) crowd.
I've been getting stopped by people and complimented on the film. My friend Sue Lawson said yesterday that she had been given a list of top 5 must-see docs, and we were first on it.
I'm not bragging, I'm kinda stunned. All of the other work here is so amazing. Last night without realizing, I sat next to Vilmos Zsigmond (the DP for The Deer Hunter) to watch a showing of the first feature he shot (Summer Children, 1965). The dude shot frakking "Deliverance", and all I know is he's some old guy who DP'd once in 1965. After the screening I turned to him and said, "wow, that was really beautiful. Nice job." He looked me in the eye and said "thanks", like no one had ever told him that before. Then he got mobbed by the press, and I realized he was "somebody".
I think he took the compliment the way he did because when he looked at me he realized I didn't know he'd worked with DePalma, or Spielberg, or Cimino, or Altman.
My point is that we're all just sitting in the dark together, hoping someone likes what we've made.
I changed my flight home. I'm staying here 'til the end of the week.
(We don't normally link to clips that we didn't create, but in this case I'm making an exception. Also, you can buy it here)
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Ed Says: Well, we're just chock full o' Fordson lately here at Motion Post. We've been accepted to the Slamdance Film Festival. One of only 18 or so films of the 5000 submitted for this year's event. Wow. Here's the announcement...
