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.

Brandsmart 2012 - Challenges inform Creativity

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.

Ted Souder, Google:

"Ted Souder: Google"

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.

"Marc Klein: Clean Energy Fuels & Vehicle Production Group"

Click here to see the entire series.

 You can learn more about the Chicago American Marketing Association by visiting: http://www.chicagoama.org/

Fordson Released on BluRay

Our documentary editorial project Fordson: Faith Fasting Football is now available for streaming on Netflix and for sale.

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)

Memorial Healthcare’s Joint Replacement Team

Mothlight Pictures brought Memorial Healthcare’s Joint Replacement Team commercial to us. DP Pete Biagi shot on Fletcher Chicago’s Arri 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.

Illinois Institute of Technology Professional Learning Programs

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.  

Jeff Evenson  

Las Vegas NAB 2012

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.

Adobe CS 6 

Lots of great improvements to an already powerful suite of products. After Effects looks even better and Premiere Pro looks awesome.

Smoke on a Mac

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.

DaVinci Resolve 

The best color grader on the market is even better, Blackmagic also introduced a 2.5K camera that looks like a prototype :)

Six Tips on Writing

Ed says:

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.