That’s me (Patrick), disheveled and feeling like a kid opening the world’s greatest present on Christmas morning. In my hands is Red #2464.

Camera tests will follow in the next few days, but I spent a big part of this afternoon figuring all the little bits out and getting the camera set up to shoot.

First project it’ll be used on: exterior shots for Couch Cases.

This camera system will allow us to create tv commercials and video projects that look absolutely stunning, and I’m very thrilled to be one of the “first” Red owners.

Technorati Tags:
business, corporate video, couch cases, production, red camera, red one, video, web business, tv commercial

We’ve been hired to create a new tradeshow video for a client’s HR department. The mandate is to create something that is attractive to potential recruits, which means something that is interesting to “Generation Y”. Something that catches their interest and helps them consider a career at this client’s company.

I love this. It means we get to create something that’s fast-paced, colorful, and fun.

Most important, however, is the time I’m spending right now before the project gets underway. Right now, what I’m working out is the core message of this project. I’m asking myself what the story is. Because all the awesome visuals in the world are just noise if you don’t say something with them.

I’m looking beyond the client-supplied text (which is not bad stuff, to be sure), and the existing corporate images and approved messages. I am trying to go beyond the words on the screen from their old tradeshow presentation, to get to the meat (or the soul, really) of this company.

Because it’s all about story, really.

Sometimes applying the “so what?” principle really helps with a project like this. That is, I read what the client had written or look at the imagery it has given me. And I think, so what? Sometimes it helps cut through the clutter.

One problem a lot of presentation videos have is trying to cram way too much “stuff” into them. Looking at this client’s previous work, I see a lot of that. And it dilutes the core message. We can’t have that this time out.

Well, I am getting back to it now. It’s a lot of work but very rewarding to take a client’s message and figure out how to get that message across to different audiences.

Technorati Tags:
production, video, corporate video

We got the first batch of numbers late last week for our national television commercial spot. And the client is thrilled- sales are up 20% since the ad began its run.

We’re working with the client on an expanded campaign. And we’re integrating the spot into their website and other corporate marketing materials. This is good.

There’s a lot of really bad websites out there, and it’s understandable- a lot of clients don’t understand what their web company is doing. And really, a lot of web companies have no idea what they’re doing, either.

It’s especially hard for clients to understand what they’re getting from a web company when a lot of really poor design practices can easily be hidden. See, a lot of what makes a good website happens in the code. And people don’t look at code so much. It’s time consuming to work at the code level. So most web design companies don’t bother.

That’s a mistake, and the client who chooses a web design company without understanding the design and development process is almost certainly destined for failure.

We’re currently working on a new website for a client. Let’s call them Zelda’s Bakery, because we signed a nondisclosure for the client. Zelda hired us to take another web shop’s work and well, make it work. We’re not particularly fans of the look of Zelda’s site, but she loves it, and more importantly her customers love it.

The problem is, her old web design company implemented Zelda’s design in a really cruddy way. Sure, it looks like Zelda’s design. And it sort of works like she’d like it to. But the entire website consists of images and very little text. Additionally, her navigation system uses a ton of javascript that junks up and bloats the filesizes. Since so much of the site is image-based it’s really hard to update. And finally, they’re getting really bad search engine rankings. Google can’t “see” images.

Enter us.Zelda’s new website will look an awful lot like her old website. Which is what she wants. But it’ll now have a nice database back end. The extraneous javascript will be removed in favor of CSS for her navigation menu. We’ll use CSS tricks to minimize the amount of images used throughout the site, too. Some of those tricks involve really cutting-edge things like CSS Sprites. The site will be a lot easier to update, too.

Most importantly, the guts of Zelda’s new site will be extremely search engine friendly. Which, it turns out, makes it extremely friendly to users from all sorts of computing platforms- iPhones, Blackberry users, disabled users, etc. In fact, by taking the time to program Zelda’s website using standards-based solutions we’ll be making her site much more friendly for any user.

Which is really the first step towards making the website successful.

Technorati Tags:web standards, web design