Making Movies in Black and White
November 11, 2008
You may well ask where the chicken has been for the past several weeks. I apologise, the chicken has been busy making movies. Yes even the chicken gets out now and then.
For those of you have signed up for our newsletter, this will not be news to you, but we have just finished work filming and editing the new TV and Radio campaign for Silverburn (if you’ve never been you should go - it is a mecca for shopping). Working again with Threebrand, we wrote all the ads this year, after our work last year on the ‘Red Dress Ads’ which you can check out by clicking here.
This year we went back in time with an homage to the great 40s detective films and in the series of 5 TV spots and 5 Radio Spots we meet our grizzled detective and his seductive client/employer/suspect? It was fun recreating the look and feel of those old films. The shadows, the suspense, with a great original music track from Chris Bradley - an incredible talent and one to watch for the future! You can see the first ad by clicking here, and you can hear the first radio ad here.
Has HD hit a ‘Tipping Point’?
June 4, 2008
A ‘Tipping Point’ is reached when ”the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable” - or so said Malcolm Gladwell in his excellent book on the nature of tipping points. In his book he remarked on the shape taken by an epidemic, that it can reach a point when suddenly it spreads like wildfire, everyone catches it, and then just as quickly it can die out. He then took that shape and applied it to all sorts of situations in life. He used the ‘tipping point’ argument to explain how films with tiny budgets or books by unknown authors can suddenly can suddenly become world-wide hits based simply on a spreading word-of-mouth.
Although the dimming of the lights part of the analogy is probably not the case with HD TV, with the launch of freesat at the beginning of the month finally offering people the opportunity to realise the potential of those huge HD Ready TVs they all bought two Christmas’s ago, is this finally the tipping point for HD TV.
Certainly some large corporate have been producing films on HD for a while now, even though they have often only delivered it to staff and customers on Standard Definition, because the infrastructure to watch high definition pictures just hasn’t been widely available. That is certainly now changing. Blu-Ray DVDs are becoming more popular and it won’t be long before the internet can offer subscribers broadband that can deliver true HD pictures. Certainly within some companies their intranets are already working towards this.
This month we produced a number of short films shot on HD for a client who provides television and internet systems to hotels and who are about to launch a full HD TV delivery platform for hotel clients. Other clients want to shoot on HD to start building an HD library of footage for future projects. The momentum to HD is certainly growing and will accelerate.
The Dos and Don’ts
April 10, 2008
For our clients, making films is an enjoyable, collaborative, creative endeavour, which produces something for them of real value, whether they are making something to gee up their troops internally, or raise their profile externally. They enjoy it because we really do try and take the worry and troubles off their shoulders. And in the case of the shoot on the right for Northlink Ferries, we pass it onto the shoulders of Lighting Cameraman Jan Pester, who carried around that steadicam rig for three days!
For some people new to the process however it can be a little daunting. You don’t know how developed an idea you need, or how you might schedule filming, or who you need to involve. Don’t worry about that – we’ll guide you through that process, but for a quick and slightly irreverent guide to making corporate films, this guy from the States has some pretty good advice.
Come back to this blog, we’ll be writing it every week, with news of what we’re doing, and links to other interesting bits and bobs.
