[Bill Davis]

Yep, the scroll control is done by software running on a laptop.

I’ve got to say, however that teleprompters are equal parts blessing and curse.

If you MUST have someone say a script word for word, they’re the only good way to do this.

HOWEVER, put anyone but a trained professional in front of a teleprompter and you screw the NATURAL to WOODEN delivery ratio rapidly toward the latter.

If you need accurate – but stiff and unatural – go with the prompter.

If you want the attorney’s personality and command of the subject to come across more naturally, it’s typically MUCH better to put them in an interview style situation and have them respond to targeted questions – knowing that you’ll likely to have to edit the heck out of the results.

FWIW.

[Bill Davis]

And to extend Mike’s thinking… not only is it silly to buy wood, windows and shingles in advance of starting a construction job – at LEAST in construction, there’s a significant pool of people who are competent at basic construction concepts and skills. Framing a right angle wall is a snap since everyone sells everything from joist hangers to framing squares that follow the RIGHT ANGLE ideal.

But what if you don’t WANT right angles? What if someone informed you that parallel walls enhance standing waves and can make for a studio that SOUNDS BAD. What if what you REALLLY need is a carpenter who can work with walls that are NOT set at right angles? Then you need a specialist.

As someone who’s converted a haybarn into a fully functioning video studio over the past eight years, I spent the first two of those years educating myself as to what makes a studio work. That includes not only “soundproofing” but low noise air conditoning, 4×3 verses 16×9 shooting spaces, “clean power” verses “dirty power” and why you need both in a studio, and so many other topics that I can hardly recall them all.

Studio construction is NOT simple. Not if you want to avoid problems when you go to create content.

Professionals, or at least heavily educated amateurs are pretty much necessary to get something this complex done properly.

My 2 cents anyway.

[Bill Davis]

I realized that in my above post, I started out by responding to Mark’s comments, then switched to responding to the OP without making that clear.

Sorry.

I doubt Mark wants a new career in Advertising. He’s wise. After my stint in the restaurant bar industry – my new wife and I opened and operated an Advertising Agency and ran it for half a dozen years prior to discovering that my first love was video production and concentrating on that.

Such is life.

[Bill Davis]

So it’s been about 10 years since I started building my studio – about 8 since I “finished” it. (Like much in life, it’s an on-going journey!)

In the years since I’ve been VERY pleased. The essential decisions were as follows.

As in hospitals, run at least two separate feeds. One to standard white Edisons for “dirty” power – which will be used to drive any cycling or inductive loads including lighting, motors, office machines, etc.
Each box might also have one or more “clean power” (orange Edison) circuits that are kept separate. This will be used for all computers, computer monitors, and other data sensitive circuits.

One piece of good news is that power consumption has come WAY down since I did my calculations. Most solid state gear (amplifiers excepted) draw very little actual current. Likewise most of my studio lights are now fluorescent or LED, so I’m NOT drawing anywhere near the load of traditional tungsten.

On the wall behind where my edit bay sits – I specified 8 quad boxes. That’s 32 separate outlets. In the second week I started having to mount power strips on the wall next to them. YOU WILL NEVER HAVE ENOUGH OUTLETS near your edit desk – NEVER.

To keep things simple, I had the electrician ceiling mount 4 quad boxes spaced along the edge of the grid rails. Each of the circuits is ganged and switched such that when I power wall switch A – the A outlet of ALL four of the boxes goes on. Same with B, C, and D. This alone is quite a bit of flexibility for simple light setups. I can set all the background lights on A, Pair a Key and fill on B for the first talent, And a Key and fill on C for a second talent. I was going to buy a dimmer package and re-set for more complex lighting, but I’ve never needed to. If I need a dimmer I just use an in-line rig for the individual light.

One final note. Pay a LOT of attention to your Air handling system. I spent a LOT on a Mitsubishi Split system that keeps the air handler separate from the compressor and mounted the inside unit in a small closet with our studio refrigerator so it can be closed off for noise. That plus making bends in the ductwork and using flexhose for the end of runs to decouple mechanical rattling achieved decent noise suppression such that I can run the AC full out with open mics in the studio.

That’s a blessing here in Arizona!

Finally, sound control is the most difficult aspect to achieve in a video studio space. Efficiency in construction means parallel walls and right angles are good. These same features create standing waves and echo that cause recording hassles on an open stage. And soundproofing is it’s only issue. Damping high frequencies are easy. But nothing stops bass frequencies but mass. That’s why I had the entire studio shell clad in sheetrock, insulation, more sheetrock, and then 3/4″ MDF sheets – which took six to eight guys to hold in place and nail up. But the mass keeps low freq airplane and traffic noise out and other than direct rain on the flat roof, I can record 24/7.

One more oddity – again for sound reasons, I specified that my control room have NO parallel walls to reduce the creation of standing waves. To achieve this we had to import a retired carpenter to do the control room framing because he was the only cat who wasn’t intimidated by calculating all the weird cut angles necessary to build all the non-parallel and non-right angle walls.

Building a custom studio is fun. But it’s not easy. Read and research a lot. Particularly about sound. I LOVE my studio. But it’s something you have to either hire outside expertise or devote a LOT of research hours if you want it to turn out well.

Good luck.

[Bill Davis]

Marcus,

In the spirit of being helpful. The next time you shoot in the club, think about two things.

First – light the WALLS first.
This forms a bright background against which people’s silhouettes can be seen. You can go NUTS with color on this background lighting – or you can use white lights and dimmers – but the object is to get a sense of depth and space by lighting the perimeter first.

Second – as you suggested, you need to light the faces of the PEOPLE in your foreground shots. An on-camera light or handheld broad spot or small LED array is a good choice for this. You really should have a dedicated light for each person you want to “pop” out of the background. And you can let them move through the light or follow them – your choice.

If you keep ALL other lighting at a minimum so the overall room is dark – typical for a bar/restaurant anyway – you can is focus your audience on the individuals and let the room serve as a background.

Finally, and as always don’t forget to shoot cutatways!

Close ups of room decor, lighting, swish pans of the dancers, bold moving sweeps of areas – all these can all be used in composites. Just look for beautiful things and people. The backlighted bottles on the bar. The candles on the tables. An elegant ear and earing in XCU.

Have fun.

[Bill Davis]

Mark,

With all respect because you’re the author of a lot of the MOST valuable content on this board…
I still have to respectfully disagree.

The issue is advertising fundamentals. You cite campaigns like the Tasters Choice work from some years ago – but it’s a poor comparison because General Foods is able to achieve something that the OP here cannot. The term in formal advertising practice is “reach and frequency.”

This kind of soft branding campaign ONLY works if there is enough media purchased to support TRAINING the audience to be aware of, and then care about, the people they’re watching.

Look, from Age 19 to 28 or so, I worked in the bar and restaurant industry. Starting as a DJ in a local upscale club, and ending up with responsibility for programming for a medium size subgroup of hotel bar/restaurants for one of the biggest name hotel chains in the world.

I’ve sat in countless meetings, and run countless more where the discussions have been trying to find the right balance of advertising, promotions, marketing and operating essentials required to keep a club or restaurant both popular and profitable. So I know something about this topic.

If the path to success was as simple as creating a video spot with a pretty girl and a pretty guy meeting in the club and going off together dancing, followed by a call to action tag, I could have become a marketing GENIUS at 24 – because I’ve done that spot about half a dozen times.

It’s more complicated than that. Not to bore you with details, but consider just these few sub-considerations.

Should the club cater JUST to the age/demographic of the boy/girl pictured? Are liquor sales ALL that matter here? What about the food side of the operations? Are there other issues that might be hampering club success? If we concentrate on the clubbing aspects, does that make us vulnerable vis a vis Monday to Thursday business? Are there significant Parking? Location issues? Would it be MORE effective if we addressed those in the spot?

This is why good advertising tends to steer away from opinions and deals to the extent possible with facts. And that means research. Someone has to talk to the customers of THIS bar and try to find out what it’s individual strengths and weaknesses might be. Then you build a spot that takes into consideration those – AND what the club or overall operation needs to accomplish in order to balance those needs with the other needs of the larger operation. Perhaps Mon-Fri the hotel or restaurant is filled with 40-60 year old business types. If so, will trolling for hip 20 year olds for Fri/Sat cause you un-forseen conflicts.

Look, I’m not trying to be negative. If you believe in your spot – go for it. The WORST that will happen is that business won’t go up and you’ll have problems collecting your money. Both survivable annoyances.

If, however, you want to build a career doing this kind of promotional video – it will benefit you greatly if the first one succeeds. And your chances of that happening can only INCREASE if you don’t approach this by thinking of the kind of production that YOU would like – but rather thinking about the kind of production that will PRODUCE THE BEST RESULTS for the client.

Good luck.

[Bill Davis]

Please, please, PLEASE don’t over complicate this.

It’s a commercial. So it has ONE single overarching goal in order to be successful. It must generate significantly MORE income than it costs to create and show to it’s audience. PERIOD.

That’s it. End of story. It doesn’t matter one WHIT whether the audience loves or hates your characters – or the story – or the lighting – or the pacing – or the overall idea.

For a restaurant/bar commercial your POSSIBLE TO ACCOMPLISH goals are very simple.

If not enough people are AWARE of the business – you can increase awareness. This is why hotel video’s are typically just short tours of the in-building restaurants and bars. Awareness – is a simple and achievable goal. In certain cases that’s enough. If so, simply concentrate making the facility look as attractive and welcoming as possible.

The next typical restaurant/bar video is concerned with boosting SALES.
For this, forget all the fancy “boy meets girl” stories and concentrate on PROMOTION specials. Whatever it is, RUM night, Ladies Night, Jello wrestling, you name it and people have already done it to death. Why? Because promotion works. 99 cent Big Macs INCREASE STORE TRAFFIC – always have, always will. So no need to re-invent the wheel.

Quality, lighting, storytelling, everything else is important ONLY to the extent they improve the above.

In other words, if you succeed in making people AWARE of the restaurant, but the commercial leaves them thinking the place is a dark, poorly lighted DIVE, you’re toast. Unless it is. If it is, you can fool them by making it look better – but then the spot will still fail because it will promise one thing and the experience of the product will deliver something else.

The bar/restaurant business is BRUTAL. (I know, I spent my youth working in it)

And typically, owners only try to bring advertising to bear after they’ve screwed up operations so much that even when you bring in new people, the poor operations will lose them following exposure.

Harsh, reality. But true none the less.

One final word of advice.

Get CASH up front. ALL of it. Don’t deliver ANYTHING until you’re paid in full.

Doesn’t matter how big the “parent” company is. If you don’t have an IRON CLAD contract with the owning CORPORATION (and you don’t because NOBODY does that at the level you’re talking) then CASH in hand is your ONLY real defense against getting screwed.

[Bill Davis]

Charlotte,

You sent up a big red flag when you said you’re originating on HDV – which by definition is horizontal size limited to 1080p and “blowing up” your work to 1920. Add in the HDV Reality of 4.2.0 chroma subsampling limitations built into HDV and I’m not shocked that you’re having problems.

I know it’s tempting to think that taking one resolution then mapping it to a “better” resolution before editing preserves more detail and color accuracy – but often the exact OPPOSITE happens.
You’re spreading out limited color resolution over a more dense raster in bumping to 1920. Essentially making the computer GUESS where the color boundries might be and reproduce them across the different pixel densities as best it can. Then you’re LOCKING those guesses into the rest of your workflow. This is NOT good.

I think you’d be MUCH better off keeping your original raster throughout your editing so you’re not making your computer re-rasterize before you even start your work.

With digital, you want to keep the math as simple and as close to 1 to 1 as possible.

So if you need more resolution, you want to both edit AND shoot that way -not shoot with less then try to calculate it up to more.

Hope this helps.

[Bill Davis]

Buy yourself a current copy of Jay Rose’s “Producing Great Sound for DV.”

That and a quiet month to read, assimilate and PRACTICE the info contained therein and you’ll know pretty much everything you need to improve your audio recording about a zillion percent.

[Bill Davis]

And if you want something that doesn’t quite look so “retro” on camera – try the Beyer M-58.

Leno used to weild on on the “jaywalking” segments.

A lot more “modern” looking and so solid it will easily last you the rest of your career.

Under $250 at all the reputable mail order companies.