Death of a Softbox
May 27, 2009, 2:21 pm - By: Diana Cimino
The death of our Lowel Softbox was tragic. We've prepared this video for you to share in our sorrow. Enjoy.
The Internet is a Sea of Color!
May 27, 2009, 9:27 am - By: Garret Voight
Well kinda...
The good folks over at ANTREPO4.com did some research using data from Alexa Web Information Service and Technorati to find out what colors the majority of websites use. Using their research they produced some neat posters as well. Click on over to their blog to see the results!
What is the color of the internet?
Shooting Green Screen Video for Websites
May 26, 2009, 7:41 am - By: Chad Halvorson
Green Screen Video for Websites
Green screen shooting (or iShooting to make use of the buzz word) for the web or interactive CDs requires a unique approach. We've shot a number of web hosts, spokes persons, web tour guides or whatever you want to call them. Regardless of it's intended use the production approach is the same.
One of the first things we determine is whether the talent needs to be shot full body, head-to-toe, or if we can crop the talent off at the waist or knees etc.
Whether it full-body or partial body, if the shot needs to be from at least from the waist up, we always mount the camera 90 degrees on the tripod. The reason for this is to ensure we are filling the 1080p frame with as much of the talent as possible. Even though we are considerably scaling the footage down for interactive use, it's always better—and looks better to have the talent fill as much of the frame as possible.
In terms of keying the more the talent fills the frame the easier and cleaner the key will be in post. Another thing to consider when keying green screen web video (or any green screen video for that matter) is the source. We use the Sony XDCAM EX3 which captures video to a SxS card and is compressed.
Most visual effects gurus will say compressed green screen footage such as this is not ideal for post— compression noise and grain often makes the post process dirty, etc. However, from my experience when it comes to the keying footage for the web, the difference is negligible. This is due to the fact that the 1080p footage is scaled down so significantly.
We've been working on some tests to illustrate the keying differences between uncompressed footage and compressed, but that's a topic for another entry—a video blog perhaps?
So what about head-to-toe green screen shooting? This setup clearly requires the most prep work and the most room. When shooting this type of setup for web, the lighting, green drop and overall details are very forgiving.
We typically use a 20x40 green screen drop and rig it on poles and c-stands to create a cyc-wall like environment. This probably isn't the best if pricing a 1080p production, but it works fine for web video and is much cheaper to the client than paying to have the entire studios cyc-wall painted chroma-key green.
You need a studio no smaller than 20x35 to pull this off. It's important to have enough space behind the talent so the cyc drop can be lit as independently as possible. The deeper the space is the better as well because the farther you can get the camera away from the talent the more out--of-focus the green background can be, thus softening the coffee stains, wrinkles and seams in the drop.
Beyond that just stick to your basic principles; light well and even—keep the drop smooth and shoes clean. Post should be pretty basic and not require a ton of extra work.
Shooting Devices for Tradeshows
May 19, 2009, 10:16 am - By: Chad Halvorson
We produce a lot of video presentations for medical device companies which sometimes requires us to deal with very small products. The current trend for tradeshow presentations is to use a large LCD monitor that is rotated 90 degrees—giving the video presentation an electronic poster feel.
For one client, we've been shooting their products on a solid black background in HD 1080p. The goal is to showcase the product through video similar to how the product is represented in the printed brochure literature.
To accomplish this we rig the device on a turntable. The turntable has variable speeds so we can control how the device ebbs and flows visually. Most products, such as pacemakers, are stationary and can simply be secured to a small wire while rotating, however, some products have unique movements and function—this requires some unique rigging.
Certain products need to rotate on the turntable as they move through their range of motion. For this I'll use some fishing line material to assist in the movement expected from the product. Other times no assistance is needed and we can simply put the product in action using it's native mechanism—usually a handle or dial. The shooting process is the same, but it can sometimes take longer to get the right shot when there are moving parts involved.
Another challenge we're often faced with is getting the device to fill the video frame enough to highlight the detail and design of the product. A pacemaker lead for example is very slender and small at its tip. Showing something this tiny requires a combination of camera and post production planning.
For most small products we can flip the video camera on it's side so we can shoot the product as full frame as possible. In post we find that we can scale the footage up to 120% without a significant degradation in clarity—another option we've considered is using the RED ONE camera to capture a 4K image and then scale it down as needed to 1080p.
Overall it's a fun process and the end results are visually very satisfying.
Do's and Don'ts of Web Design
May 8, 2009, 10:38 am - By: Garret Voight
Found this great resource of do's and don'ts of web design. It includes a lot of helpful links on how to achieve the do's and avoid the don'ts.
The Do's and Don'ts of Website Design
IE Specific CSS
May 6, 2009, 10:24 am - By: Chad Halvorson
I have a thing where I say we should send Microsoft a bill for 25% of all the CSS web work because it usually takes 25% longer to get a site compatible with IE 6 & 7 than it should. Garret found this great site that shows how to target specific versions of IE with certain CSS class prefixes. I'm not going to pretend we discovered this sweet tidbit so I'll post a link to the place we found it.
Target versions of IE with CSS
Layout and Interaction Design
May 1, 2009, 2:38 pm - By: Chad Halvorson
We are inspired by our medical division's interaction design and usability.
www.gomeditech.com