[Mark Suszko]

A perhaps too-obvious one, a cleared version of Vivaldi’s “spring” from “The Four Seasons”?

[Mark Suszko]

On the mac we use SonicFire SmartSound and Garage Band. On PC you can try Sony Acid. There are also free loop-based, multi-platform editors out there, just google them up, or get a copy of this monthsn Digitasl Musician magazine at any high-end book store; they usually carry a cd PACKED with synths, loop editors, effects and sample sounds for free or as shareware.

For libraries, depends on what you like and need, but I like Music Bakery and Sound Dogs. You can get some great values as well from the giant libraries at Digital Juice.

[Mark Suszko]

It could mean nothing. It could mean something. Meaning that it could just be marketing and packaging the same tape. Or it could be the pro-level tape has gone thru some more Q/C processes and higher standards for reliablity, etc. perhaps it is drawn from th emiddle of the original spool, where the tape is the best, maybe it has a slightly thicker magnetic coating, etc. We can’t really know, unless someone has a reliable document to prove one is better than another on a scientific basis.

Considering tape is the cheapest thing we buy, except when it has failed, I don’t think it’s worth quibbling over an extra buck or two to get something that works for you. If you get massive dropouts on an irreplaceable tape, the client is not going to care that you saved two dollars over the high grade stuff.

Pick a supplier, test it out a while, then stick with the one brand.

[Mark Suszko]

Sam, you are playing Russian Roulette… you have no control over those companies suddenly deciding to put their stuff on YouTube or a corporate website… then what?

There are numerous needle-drop libraries out there, and good ones. You also have the option of building your owen tracks using one of several looping technologies that are easy and even fun to work with. And of course, you still have the option of finding a starving artist composer to custom-make you a track for just a little cash.

With all those available, inexpensive, and legal options, it makes no sense to use un-cleared tuneage.

[Mark Suszko]

You are talking about writing a Creative Treatment. That’s not a script, but a blueprint for all that is to be seen and heard, with a section on why you make the dramatic and creative choices you do.

If you have the time, get a copy of John Morley’s book on corporate scriptwriting, it is an exceptional guide to this process.

Assuming you need this by tomorrow, here’s a too-short description of the process;

Research what the needs of the client are. Define in a few declarative sentences what the problem is and who the audience is, by age, gender, educational and socio-economic levels, etc. This helps you choose things like the vernacular and vocabulary that works best for the target market.

Pick a format for the program that speaks best to this target audience, and uses a vernacular they understand.

Describe, shot-for-shot, but without specific dialog, what viewers see. This is not yet a script, but a framework for the script. So dialog is described as: “Bill is showing frustration and confusion looking at all the HDMI, RGB and other cable imputs on his set. He says he can’t decide which connection method will give him the best HD picture quality, yet still allow him to also connect to his game system. Janice tells him that the best choice for the HD content is to run an HDMI cable from his converter box to the HDMI input of the TV. Then she describes routing the game to a secondary input, or the choice of getting a router box”.

(See, it’s not the actual dialog yet, but a writer can create appropriate words from this example at each stage)

Your Creative Treatment describes the style of your presentation.

In this case, you probably aren’t going to pick some genre, like making it look like a western or a detective show as the overall theme. You want a pretty straight-ahead, no-nonsense tutorial flavor for what you’re doing.

But even within that restricted envelope, you have choices to make and describe:

Is everything dead-serious, or will there be some humor injected in there, what kind, and how much? Do the jokes make fun of the viewer’s inability to work the new remote, or mock the content choices?

What about the supporting graphics? Are you going to be heavily invested in 3-d computer graphics, and if so, what is the look? Is everything shot live-action on a location like a “typical” viewer’s TV room (and what does a “typical” viewer’s Tv room look like, based on your research?) Is it shot in a tech lab setting, or a TV station control room setting? Or is it in a Matrix-like limbo set, or some other location? For an HDTV remote tutorial, is it all going to be extreme macro photography of a real remote, or a 3-d animated model, and is it relatively static, showing the whole remote the whole time, or will you do camera moves to full-screen pics of just a single button? Will you do side-by-side screens, showing the entire remote in one side and the detail closeup on the other? Will shots of the TV show a real TV screen, or full-screen of what the on-screen dispalys look like? What programming will be shown on the screens during the tutorial?

“As the closeup PIP box shows a finger pressing ‘Pay Per View’, the larger box shows the splash screen you get on the TV when selecting On Command Services. Janice’s voice says to expect to see this screen first, each time you want to order a movie” for example.

What about the presenter(s)? A disembodied voice of God off-camera? Man or Woman? Why? One on-camera speaker, or a duo of hosts that volley a conversation to each other? Or do they both talk just to the viewer, directly? Or a combination? Meaning, are we watching someone being coached thru the setup process, or are we ourselves being lectured? Those choices are based on your research and your idea of the most typical target viewer, and what they respond to best. Are you serving audiophiles or quasi-Amish technophobes whose VCR’s are always blinking “12”? What’s the right “in-between”? Are you assuming they all have had cable before, or do you really need to start at the most basic level?

After the show airs, do you have some way to measure the effectiveness of the presentation? Are you going to count trouble calls regarding remotes both before and after it airs, for example? For how long? Or hits to a special web address? Typically you want some kind of gross measure at least, so the client knows he’s getting results.

When you have all these decisions mapped out in a document, you have yourself a Creative Treatment. With that document, you can figure out the script, the time the project needs, the costs, and the schedule for producing it. It’s a collaborative touchstone: The client can see in advance pretty much exactly what he’s going to get, before a dime is spent, and this is the best place to make changes before they cost money and time. It explains the reasons things need to be the way you decided. You protect yourself from making a huge investment of work, only to be shot down later by some exec saying “that’s not how we pictured it in our mind/ not what we wanted”. If the budget gets cut, the Treatment shows where the cuts take effect.

That’s why every project, no matter how small, can benefit from this kind of document creation process. Even if you only do an informal Treatment, just for yourself, you’ll find it helps you to be able to give smart answers to every unanticipated question, and to justify your choices.

[Mark Suszko]

More pixels is always better. In this case, I say you want as big a file as you can handle, because when you shoot green screen and want to cut to a closeup from a wide shot, it is nice to have the replacement footage be big enough that you can zoom it in a little without creating visible pixelization.

This sells the viewer that the background is real, because the subconscious expects to see a shift in the width/size of the background when you cut to a closeup. Chromakey backdrops that remain at one size, while the talent in the shots changes, are a dead give-away.

The larger image also allows for control in x and y of the relative positions for best composition.

As to how big to make a green screen backdrop, you really only need it to be very slightly wider and taller than the subject you want to show: the rest you remove in post with mattes and garbage masking.
Don’t forget to make a green floor if you want real full-body shots.

[Mark Suszko]

I loved it too… but can’t STAND all the needless play-by-play audio by Bob Costas. He was a little more restrained than he was in the winter games, when he just talked all over the “child of light” pageant like a drunk in a movie theater. Maybe this is like audio watermarking all over the video, so you will want to buy the DVD later to see and hear it without the play by play.

[Mark Suszko]

Sounddogs probably has the projector sound effects cheap. I have used them before and like them for this kind of stuff.

Can’t say too much more since we don’t know what kind of b-roll and original source materials you will get to work from. If you can get the original footage clean without the super on it that’s going to look the best, obviously. The morelimited your source materials, the more compromises you’ll have to make.

One thing I’d advise you to watch out for, as a duty to the best interests of your clients: sometimes re-purposing old footage makes perfect sense. Other times, it actually creates more work and expense, at less final quality, than re-doing something more “customized” from scratch. Keep a litle running total in your head and keep comparing what the “fixer-upper” is costing them versus what you could do better and cheaper for them from scratch, more purpose-designed for what they want to do.

[Mark Suszko]

Don’t get discouraged. You can fix this,or at least improve it, now that you know what it’s supposed to do. First thing I’d think about doing is to run a URL keyed along the bottom of the frame for the duration of the piece. Perhaps format everything in a letterbox and then put phone numbers and URL’s in the black space: “Now registering, call 555-5555 or url.com to sign up and RISE with us!”

Even if you don’t change anything else about it, that’s going to help steer a viewer towards a decision to make a call or use a link to get the registration info or at least learn more.

I would also think about re-cutting the narration and music/fx track to goose those up a little.

Even if they said to leave this one as-is, you should take some spare time for yourself to play around with alternate revisions of this and see how far you can take it, for your own satisfaction and personal development. What you learn from that, you can apply to future work, and that helps everyone.

[Mark Suszko]

The voiceover could be better, I thought it was a little dry and flat, particularly right at the beginning. Very much news style cutting and writing. I didn’t like the music. Some injections of live sound from the events here and there could add energy.

The montage is okay, but would seem smoother if you ramped up the rate of shot change rather than abruptly jumped to the faster pace. Would be nicer if the cutting went better with the music. Some of the stuff in the fast montage looks like it is not part of RISE but just high-tech eye candy because it changes from video to still shots. Am I wrong about that?

Beyond all that though, I think the script needs tweaking; it doesn’t have a strong call to a specific action at the end, IMO. The opening line is kind of cliche’. It needs a stronger overall narrative direction so we know what the point is. Use some CG supers and titles in combination with the narration and shots to reinforce the message. Decide what the message IS: are you just defining RISE, or asking people to sign up for it, or for somebody to fund it? I don’t know, until tha last 2 seconds, then the you-tube screen fades away.

RISE sounds like a great program, and hints at who is eligible to attend, but the video doesn’t tell me where to go or what to do, once I’ve been motivated to be interested.