EFFICIENCY

When working on a budget, you want to get the most bang for your buck. With video projects, one of the best ways to do this is to plan to shoot footage for multiple videos during one shoot. Quite a bit of work goes into prepping for a shoot, traveling to and from the location, and setting up and tearing down the gear. If you only have to pay the video production company to do that once for a set of videos instead of several different times, you can end up with more videos for less money.

THE YMCA OF GREENSBORO

Lauren Bowers, the marketing director for the YMCA of Greensboro, is taking full advantage of this strategy. Every month or so, we schedule a day for me to shoot 4-6 videos at one of the Y locations in the Greater Greensboro area. Most of the videos are a couple of minutes long or less and we are able to shoot everything we need for all of those videos in just a few hours…

SETTING UP THE PROJECT

Guillermo Amaya, President and CEO of GAC Enterprises, LLC, reached out to me several months ago about creating a promotional video that they could use at an upcoming work fair. He shared his thoughts on what he was wanting from the project and shared some inspiration with me. I made some suggestions and we decided to move forward with our plan.

SHOOTING

On two separate days, I went out to several construction sites in and around Greensboro and shot footage of the crews working. I used my cameras to get most of the footage, but for some of the shots, I sent up my DJI Air 2s drone. My favorite shot in the video is when I flew the drone very close to the cable lasher as it was pulled quickly along the cable. Because of the wide angle of the drone’s camera, I had to fly it much closer than it looks. It was a bit nerve-wracking in the bright sun, but the end result was absolutely worth it.

POST-PRODUCTION

The post-production process was fairly straightforward…

“HE WASHED ME / HE TOUCHED ME”

Jonathan Solomon is a worship leader (King’s Cross Church) and songwriter living in Greensboro, NC. He recently recorded an album called “Now That I’ve Seen” and has just released a single from that album entitled “He Washed Me / He Touched Me”, which you can watch below! We were able to shoot the entire album, so you can watch those videos once the rest of the album is released.

GEAR SETUP

Our setup for this shoot consisted of several lights and four cameras. I ran the main angle camera (5D Mark IV) on a shoulder rig, Nathan Funderburg captured close-ups with his 5D Mark IV on a monopod, Max Wilmot stayed with the drumset with his handheld Blackmagic camera (as well as getting a few shots from the back of the set), and a 1DX Mark II sat on a tripod fixed on Jonathan.

ASPECT RATIO

I ended up using a 2:1 aspect ratio, which I felt best fits this particular project. It gives a bit of a wide cinematic look without having to sacrifice too much vertical space. (Watch this if you are interested in aspect ratios.)…

MY HISTORY AT MTYC

I have spent at least one week of every summer of my life (except one) at Mountain Top Youth Camp. It’s a Christian camp on the mountain beside Pilot Mountain in Pinnacle, NC. I transitioned from camper to staffer in 2010. In 2016, I started creating recap videos of each camp week to show on the last day.

I have loved doing this the last several years, getting to know the campers and staff each week, figuring out how to weave together my footage of the different activities in an interesting way, experimenting with different ideas I wouldn’t be able to try in most projects, and starting to outline the videos more and more with highlights of the preached messages.

2021 CHANGES

With the addition of a beautiful little girl to our family, it became clear…

ISOD DANCE RECITALS

Two years ago, we did our first dance recital video project for Island School of Dance in Kill Devil Hills, NC. After they took 2020 off because of COVID, we were so excited for this year’s recital!

ONLINE VIDEO COLLECTION DELIVERY

Most of our projects are delivered through Dropbox or Google Drive, uploaded straight to a streaming site, or sent through the actual mail on a flash drive. However, we occasionally have projects that are delivered a little bit differently, through a site called MediaZilla. The projects we deliver this way are basically like an online, higher-quality version of a DVD. There are menus to click through and multiple videos set up in the same collection. It can be accessed and viewed on a computer, smartphone, or smart TV.

OPEN TO NEW PROJECTS

I always want to continue learning and improving. During these first years of growing our video business, I have wanted to stay open to taking on new types of projects. I'm sure we will eventually settle into just a few of our favorites (more on that in our next post), but for now, I am enjoying the variety.

FAMILY PHOTOS

My sister-in-law recently suggested we add family photos to our list of services. I had considered it in the past but wanted to focus strictly on video at the time. When I looked on our fridge, I noticed that I had taken most of the photos used in our different families' recent Christmas cards. I remembered how much I enjoyed taking each of those photos, finding spots with good light, and trying to make the kids laugh.