Amy has a close encounter with a guy at her gym and ends up getting much more than she’s bargained for!

As always, more at www.couchcases.com.

Couch Cases Comedy Series: The Ick Factor from Patrick Ortman on Vimeo.

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Couch Cases Comedy Series: The Intimacy Guy from Patrick Ortman on Vimeo.

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couch cases, production, red camera, red one

I shot the opening in my garage with my Red One camera system, handheld and stripped down to make it as light as possible. When we got the footage to post production, we sped up my handheld camera work about 400% (speeding up the footage and massively accentuating the bumps and movement of the camera work I did), removed frames here and there, and ramped up zooms to give an amateurish, punky look to the footage.

We love it. It perfectly captures the energy of our show.

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Right now we have two edit stations set up- I’m doing sound mixing and audio cleanup on one workstation, and she’s doing the final picture lock edits on the other. It’s like a factory.

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ADR, couch cases, editing, living in los angeles, production, red camera, red one

This project is a corporate film, and it’s going to require shooting under a lot of different situations. The environments we’ll be shooting in have weird light- including daylight, sodium, fluorescents, and a few things I’m not sure about.

I’m working out my strategy with shooting Red One under tungsten during nighttime, too. So far, I’m not sure which approach I take is best. That means more tests.

The good news is, this camera blows me away and I’m a pretty tough audience to please.

I’ve also begun testing a new VR camera rig, which of course is a lot less complicated than the Red. Once I get that workflow down I hope to have some examples online. That’ll probably happen in the next few weeks.

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We also have a premiere date for Couch Cases. Season One starts at the end of October.

Kathi and I are very excited to unveil the show, finally. We still have a bit of post work to do, including creating a titles/motion graphics package and music. Music is the fun part!

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business, corporate video, couch cases, production, red camera, red one, video

Whenever I’m in San Francisco I love to go carless and spend a lot of time walking and taking public transportation. Here’s an iPhone snap of a few new friends I met on one of my long walks:

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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.

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

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.

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production, video, corporate video

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.