I have a degree in Television producing, so surely we can figure something out. I know a friend whose parents still smother him with gifts (instead of love) and he just got a new Canon 5D – he probably knows how to use it by now too. While everyone else was studying Economics, another friend and I spent our senior high-school years ‘learning’ Film & TV. He used to have a pirated copy of Final Cut on his laptop, so he can probably edit some stuff to look real sexy.
Yeh, we can make you a video alright. Maybe it’ll even go viral – why not? As for remuneration, just buy us a case of beer and we’ll call it even. Easy.
…if only.
The art of film is exactly that – an art. Professionals exist for a reason, and have spent years refining their skills in one of the many particular and often excruciatingly specific roles that exist in the industry. You’ll find a guy on set whose only role is to change the focus of the camera during a shot (Focus Puller). Why? Because he is damn good at it.
As Razorfish moves further into the realm of creating great video content for its clients, we must accept that we aren’t traditionally the experts in this area. Luckily, the guys at Thinkbone are.
To set the scene (so to speak) this week Thinkbone’s crew turned our lobby into a live set in order to teach us a thing or two about production, budgets, and the different outcomes you can expect. They were to film the same scene (Pulp Fiction’s famous “$5 Milkshake”) three times – each with a different budget, and thus final product. For the purpose of the exercise, let’s assume each budget is for 60 seconds of final video.
Low budget: For this we are looking at a stripped back pre-production (logistics, scripts, basically all the organizing), three days of post, a bare minimum crew (Producer/Director, Production Manager, Production Assistant, D.O.P), catering and a basic camera and tripod set-up. Oh, and your mate/Mum/cousin acting. Approximate total: $20,700.
For that you can expect to produce something resembling the quality of video below:
Medium budget: In addition to the above, we’d be looking to add an Art Department, props, wardrobe, casting, semi-professional Actors, make up, location costs, and a beefed up camera kit. Approximate total: $ 65,200.
And for the extra money and effort you’ll be looking at something of this quality (ignoring travel costs):
High budget: Let’s add more crew, professional actors, expert lighting, more location costs, more catering, and amongst other things, a better camera, a dolly (the thing on the train tracks), and a dolly operator. Approximate total: $97,000.
Now we are looking at some high-end video production capable of matching, or even improving on the original scene. This isn’t to say you need to spend big for every bit of video you create. Each grade of production serves a purpose, so it depends on the individual project and the objectives as to how much you should be budgeting.
Here is the final take of the day (sound is from the camera mic, so apologies). Thankfully, Thinkbone opted to waive the $97,000 – thanks guys. That case of Superdry should arrive any day now.
or in the case of the French bottled water company Contrex a fun ad campaign using a Neon Male Stripper.
This ad was broadcasted in October and it features pink exercise bikes in front of a, what seems to be, historic building in Paris and when some curious ladies start pedalling Neon lights come to life and reveal a male stripper starting to undress.
At the end the girls are told that they just burnt 2000 calories which falls in line with Contrex “My Contrexperience” digital campaign which says that we all would lose more weight if the process was funnier and these ladies definitely look like they had a good time.
Interestingly there are a few rumours online that claim that this is fake as nobody recognizes the building and citizens of Paris claim they never heard of it.
I think it is still a great campaign – tell me what you think in the comments.
Christmas is a lively time of the year with everyone feeling quite festive and eager to have fun, last year Amnesia celebrated it whilst lawn bowling and it reminded me of a bad episode of ‘Murder she wrote’, (sorry Jessica Fletcher)
Put it this way if the grinch stole Christmas that year, I wouldn’t exactly be over-exerting myself to try and stop him.
This year a few of us decided to stir things up and let me tell you…you can never have enough sauce.
The 2011 xmas party is a secret yet to be revealed and we decided to make a teaser trailer as a lead up to our short film to get everyone excited.
Video content tends to play a standard role in most websites. The functionality is seldom messed with : Users click a play button to start (or get annoyed it played without your permission) and play only one video at a time. Normally video sits in a fixed position and will be of a set size. Indeed, screwing around with ‘standard video UI design’ can be a dangerous game but when it’s done right, it’s easy to start believing that video should be some much more in so many sites. Check out the Uniqlo website… it’s cool, fun, breaks some boring old rules and is our site of the day.
Alright, maybe that title is a little esoteric for the subject matter – but check out this coolness below.
This is the kind of 3D I’m excited about – the kind that removes the need for glasses. Sure, it might be hard to create 3D without glasses in a cinema setting where you’re unable to use head-coupling, but for personal devices? It’s great.
On a final note, something needs to be done about the term head-coupled. It’s gross.
Facehuggers, a modern classic example of head-coupling.
the video below shows off a tracking system where you can select anything in front of the camera and keep tracking it through the motions in real time.
you can track anything, faces, eyes, objects, text etc. etc.
check it out:
Pretty cool and hopefully this will show up in some games soon.
We love unboxing gadgets! …and the AR Drone from Parrot is GREAT fun. The Drone is controlled via an iPhone app which works by tilting your phone to steer whilst viewing a live video feed through a camera mounted in the Drone. It’s a truly usable Augmented Reality device.
How to buy in Australia: We ordered it from Amazon.com. It took 3 days to be delivered to Sydney from the US and cost just under $350.00 AUD including delivery.
So here it is the unboxing through to a test flight…
Amazon delivers it in a HUGE box…
Slightly smaller, but still big box inside…
The Drone is neatly packed surrounded by protective cardboard.
No unwrapping necessary. It pops straight out. Nothing to assamble.
Battery, battery pack and stickers for the external shell.
It comes with the outdoor shell, and adaptors for Au, UK, US, EU.
Below: Unboxed looking at home in the studio…
Below: @bradyohalloran takes an instagram photo of the AR Drone:
Below: Flight Test: This a video taken from the Drone’s camera in the studio.
Below: We do like the idea of attaching a GoPro camera to the Drone to attain HD video – here’s a nice clip of someone flying the drone pretty high… (you can unlock the altitude sensor in the iphone app allowing you to go up as hi as the wifi lets you).
Below: The Promo Vid for the AR Drone.
Things you should know before you buy:
You get one battery that lasts for about 15 mins flying time. Charger comes with four adaptors incl AUS, UK, US, EU. You need an iphone or ipod touch to control it. You don’t need a wifi network (the Drone creates one). It takes about 5-10 mins to get to grips with the controls. You need a seperate app to record video. Onboard Video is 15fps There is a secondary camera on the bottom of the Drone. You need 2 of them to have a virtual dogfight. It’s much bigger than it looks. It’s a lot of fun.
When a new bit of tech is released it’s always fun to see what crazy/creative new things people can do with it. Dentsu London, in collaboration with BERG have produced a short film exploring the idea of “Making future magic” using the iPad to “paint” 3D objects in the air and bring it all together with long-exposure photography.
It’s hard to say what’s more impressive in this video – Super Mario Bros. being beaten in 7 minutes or the way it was motion-tracked onto a roadside barrier.
I am a keen photographer and over the years I have bought multiple lenses that I always carry around with me on big trips to make sure that I have the right lens for the job.
Now Canon came up with a new concept – the Wonder camera
Canon is pretty confident that by then it’ll have figured out how to do a single lens capable of going from macro shots all the way out to a 5000mm focal length. This non-interchangeable lens is backed by an all-touch interface, an extremely high-resolution sensor, and image stabilization so advanced as to make shooting at high zoom range a viable option.
The only thing i don’t agree with is the video-only capture. Canon argues you won’t need to shoot stills when its video is capable of keeping everything in focus all the time — you’ll just pick out your favorite scene from the movie reel.
We’ve seen many a fake viral fall flat in the past; most notably the high profile backfire of Naked’s Witchery viral in early 2009. It’s true you can’t fool a YouTube audience. However, Hi-Tec have made a masterful attempt at tricking YouTubers into thinking a group of european thrill seekers have managed to run on water. Gullible bogans. Lots of people have called it, but many people seem to have been taken in:
… or are they?? Or have CCCP (the dutch ad agency behind this genius) done the sensible thing and flooded the comments board with a load of bollocks to make you put all logical thought to one side and think this is actually real. I sincerely hope these comments are genuine, but sadly I suspect the most gullible ones are not.
I have to admit it had me going until I saw this shot:
… and the bit with men running on water.
As an agency, we don’t create “viral videos”. We create pieces of content that, given the right ingredients, we hope will achieve viral status.
So I thought it would be worth deconstructing the ingredients of one of the best ‘fake virals’ I’ve seen.
Everybody likes finding a good bargain, and that’s exactly what this is. Wolfire Games is an excellent indie game developer, with a couple of wins tucked under its belt. All five games are cross-platform (Win/Mac/Linux) and DRM free. This is a sales model that’s becoming established, and I like it – more on this after the jump.
This isn’t the newest fantastic piece of animation around, but we haven’t mentioned it here yet – and it’s well worth watching. Produced by Sugimoto Kousuke (director) and Manabe Takayuki (music), it’s an excellent example of carefully combining sweet animation with thumping beats.
How you can not watch something with a scene like this? I don’t know. Click through to see the video.
We haven’t blogged about this here yet, and given all the tablet-like devices we’ve covered over the last couple of weeks (iPad mania? Maybe.) why not add Microsoft’s possible entry into the fray.
The Courier appears to sit somewhere between a smartphone, PDA, the current imaginings of a tablet and… a book. It may sound odd, but if you can see the picture below, you’ll notice just how enticing this might be to certain creative folk, myself included.
Courtesy of Engadget
Notice the menu on the left hand page, sketching. Sure, reading, playing, all of that is great – but for someone who loves to draw, and loves to draw on the go, this is some kind of dream come true. It hasn’t come true yet, but it looks to be on the way. This concept is intended for both touch and stylus, recognising (much like this) that touch is great for some things… but for others, it’s honestly best to have another tool in hand.
Not all fancy new devices have to come in iPad/Slate/Tablet form, and the idea of a digital note/sketchbook complete with camera and mobile web capabilities is a fantastic step into an innovative, digital future. Better yet, it should fit in your pocket.
What do you get if you take a ukulele, a 6 year old and the most popular song of 2008?
Forget kittens & unicorns, this video is pretty much one of the cutest things we’ve ever seen.
At over 540,000 views in 5 days, we predict he’ll be at well over two million by mid next week!
Got a recipe for a better viral video? We’d love to hear it!
The song is I’m Yours, by Jason Mraz.
I’m a big fan of Kasabian. I’m a big fan of Guitar Hero. I’m not a big football fan(soccer to the aussies) but I’m a big fan of tech stunts. I love this.
If you haven’t checked out the Milkquarious rock opera yet and you’re into bizarre milk-oriented retro glam rock psychedelic warfare with unicorn pegasus cows, you should have a look and listen: www.milkquarious.com
The Milkquarious experience includes:
A lengthy but entertaining rock opera of high tongue in cheek production quality
Possibly more entertaining running commentary in an optional audio channel
A competition for students to remake scenes from the movie
Extending the rock opera into a competition is a great idea. Have a look at the YouTube channel to see what it’s all about. Here’s the lowdown from White Gold himself:
Finally, some more screens from the movie for extra milky flavour…
Posted by Dean Vowles 
Amnesia Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.