Making two videos was essential to the success of Arch Painting’s marketing campaign. Commercial and residential clients are looking for very different capabilities from a painting company. A residential home may be concerned about the painters’ cleanliness and friendly attitude, where a business may need the painting to be done quickly and for the paint crew to work seamlessly within the space while business continues as usual. Combining these specific needs into one video would force the company to leave out important information that could, in turn, lead to missing out on important clients.

If your company’s client base is broad, sometimes one video for your website or social media pages isn’t enough. If you try to reach every group of customers in one clip, trying to include all the necessary information will lead to the video being too long. Online customers are not the most patient people, and probably won’t wait through a 15-minute video to learn what they need to know about your company. On the other hand, if you cut out too much information to shorten the video, you risk viewers not learning enough about how wonderful your company is. By breaking the information down into several shorter videos aimed at specific clients, the information they need is presented in a simplified way, making it more likely they will learn about all the advantages of your business.

If your business has a broad client base, talk to Skillman Video Group, and we’ll work to find the best way for you to reach each and every one of them.

The stylistic choice for this instructional video was  shots of our talent, Lauren,  putting up the wallpaper in her

SVG Creative Director & Principal, Christina Skillman, directing the talent!

“room”, and a narration recorded separately to be added in later. The video covered the most common issues a homeowner might have when installing wallpaper, such as insuring the first sheet is straight, successfully navigating around a corner, and working around outlets, light switches, and doorways.  A scripted narration is a great option for a how-to video; it ensures that the instructions are succinct and easy to follow, and takes the pressure off the on-camera talent to get the information out and allows him or her to focus on doing the job right.

Once again, a video like this can be a great way to introduce potential customers to your company. The use of a real customer like Lauren with the straightforward instructional narration gives the client a look at the beautiful wallpapers Brewster Home Fashions has, and the simple, stress-free application of the product.

This two-day shoot was a success, and the “room” looked fabulous after it got a makeover with a fantastic Brewster Home Fashions wallpaper. We were able to shoot some more footage for our “behind the scenes” video, which will give people a glimpse at the process from start to finish. Check in soon to see the final product!

Former SVG Intern and current SVG Set Designer & Assitant Editor, Chris Plummer working on the set!

A how-to video like the one for Brewster Home Fashions will be a great viral marketing tool for the company.  Many people turn to the internet for tips on everything from making the perfect souffle to installing a car radio. Putting a video demonstrating  proper wallpaper installation on Brewster Home Fashions site will draw frustrated homeowners to their website, and when they see the professional demeanor of  the company, as well as the beautiful wallpaper they create,  the viewers will be more likely to use the company for their business in the future.

SVG worked closely with Brewster Home Fashions and Hollywood  set designer (and former Skillman Video intern) Chris Plummer to conceptualize the perfect set for their shoot. We put together a mock room made up of 6 drywall flats, including a door, light switch, and outlet to replicate all the challenges a homeowner comes across while their putting up their wallpaper. We painted the “walls”, and put together some furniture pieces so the video feels like a real room.

Skillman Video Group also shot some footage for a behind the scenes video of the set construction. Check in soon to see the process, and what the final set looks like when Brewster Home Fashions has installed the wallpaper!

SVG Crew is filming Lecture Series on Location!

Video can never replace the one-on-one interaction that comes from being in a class room nor should it, but it can be a tremendous help to people that would have to otherwise commute great distances or simply cannot afford to attain the knowledge that they seek. With the astronomical price of higher education, spreading free knowledge is somewhat of a rarity. However schools including MIT and Yale offer many classes online and free to anyone with an Internet connection. Some might say that video lectures are a cheap substitute for “real” education, they’re probably the same people that charge college students forty to fifty thousand dollars a year. In a time when America struggles to keep its place as the most influential country in the world, every little bit of knowledge helps.

Keyboards on the wall?! It must be the future! SVG saw the future of marketing on Wednesday at FutureM.

What is FutureM?

A looking glass into the future of marketing.

Who’s at Future M?

Skilllman Video Group.

Shopximity invited SVG to tape their presentation at Future M, a marketing conference held in Boston focusing on the impact of technology on marketing. They asked us to shoot, edit, and upload a video of their presentation in 24 hours. They wanted to get the video up while the conference was still going on. It’s like a well-produced video tweet from Shopximity. For us it felt like a 24 hour race made possible by technology and our experience in fast production.

The SVG produced video should be up today. The idea of video at the speed of twitter is especially interesting to us. Instant video production might be perfect for clients who want to post while traveling or at events or any situation where time is crucial. With the world becoming more instantaneous, more 24/7, getting the word out about your company or event with near-instant professional video from anywhere will be expected. And it has to look better than the usual talk-into-the-webcam stuff you see on YouTube.

We’re going to stay ahead of this trend and keep providing fast, high-quality content.

This conference was the perfect event for us to tape. SVG believes strongly in pushing the boundaries of marketing. That’s why we embrace an integrated approach to video, social media, SEO, web design, and so on. Shopximity presented ideas about mobile technology as the new frontier of marketing. They have plans for integrating video content and interactive shopping on mobile devices. We’ll have to keep an eye on where this interactive mobile video marketing goes too.

Stay tuned to SVG’s blog for more insights into the future of video marketing.

UPDATE: Watch the video on our channel.

On location, in wardrobe, handling props. New videomercial services at SVG use filmic elements to market our clients.

This summer on our blog I have written about social videos that use entertainment alongside information to market a company or organization. You can read about two of my favorites: Inspiration Studios and YouTube Show and Tell. I wanted to show how to use entertaining marketing videos to attract potential customers, B2B clients, job candidates, donors, and so on.

To demonstrate how this approach might work for your company Skillman Video Group made a 2-minute social video. The idea was to create something cinematic and entertaining while advertising our social media and marketing services to a target audience, namely organizations and companies that lack modern interactive marketing campaigns. The project was out of the scope of our usual documentary style marketing videos which usually employ a single camera angle, b-roll, graphics, and interviews. Our new Videomercial utilizes actors, set design, location shooting, wardrobe, cinematography, and multiple camera angles to tell a story. It takes careful consideration of our brand and tone and balances everything with available resources.

Check the video out. What do you think?

This is a new type of service Skillman Video Group wants to offer to certain clients who would benefit from a more lighthearted, mass-appeal approach. We’d love to collaborate with clients to produce more videos of this style.

This kind of entertaining video casts a wide net and attracts a large audience. That audience then visits the company’s website for more in-depth content and marketing videos geared at turning visitors into clients. Your social media campaign (blog, twitter, email, facebook, youtube, etc.) would spread the video to both your current and potential clients. See how all the pieces fit together? That’s why SVG offers those complete, interlocking marketing services.

Imagine you are a law firm looking for the young, ambitious, future associates. You could really distinguish your firm from all the others with a short, entertaining, well-shot videomercial. Your competitors would look dull by comparison and you would see immediate ROI with more job applications. One of our clients already does something like this with SVG. The same method should work for finding B2B partners, customers, and donors, if you are looking for a younger, more casual demographic.

If you are looking to impress people with a cinematic marketing videomercial, give SVG a call.

If you want to read more about the production of this video check out our behind-the-scenes blog and pictures.

Joe, our Shopkeeper, and Brian, the Director of Photography line up the next shot: an insert of addressing envelopes.

Skillman Video Group spends so much time helping our clients market their companies that we rarely get the opportunity to market ourselves. When I began my work at SVG, I decided to make a cinematic commercial for our social media services, something more broad than our usual work.

It takes a lot of work to make a commercial. Scheduling, finding locations, casting, budgeting, lighting, food, etc. As if that were not enough, I set our video in a “turn-of-the-century” shoppe, which requires extra work with wardrobe, set decoration, and props. But I felt the greater production value was worth the extra investment in time.

After searching for several weeks for an appropriate, available location to serve as an Old Timey Shoppe we decided to build a set in my basement. The plan had the advantage of giving us freedom to do whatever we wanted, short of setting the building on fire, on our own schedule. It had the disadvantage of requiring that we build and decorate a set from scratch. My background in set design made it easy, despite the extra work involved.

I knew that the most important part of making a high quality video production was the cinematography. We shot the video on the Cannon 7D, a camera I’ve talked about in a previous blog post, that captures a “film-like” look. We also had quite a few more lights than we usually use in our small shoots, another element vital to achieving a cinematic look. Our cinematographer used not only his lights and camera, but also drew on his experience as a photographer, gaffer, and grip in Hollywood films.

Christina Skillman, Joe, and Francis rehearse their scene in front of Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge.

The set, performances, costumes, and cinematography combined to make a short that showed off what SVG can do with a social video if we “pull out all the stops.”

I cashed in all favors owed to me and had great help from friends and local businesses. Many of the props came from Freight House Antiques and Mad Props. Our costume designer, cinematographer, and actor were good friends from the film business. Our supporting cast were the people of SVG. I even tapped the assistance of my local wine and cheese shop, Formaggio Kitchen, for our exteriors. It’s cool what you can get when you just ask.

If you’d like to know more about how we made our social video just leave a comment. Also check out the Behind the Scenes photos on our Facebook page.

Next up: editing. Stay tuned.

Setting up the Cannon 7D next to a Sony Camcorder.

Last month on our blog I talked about why Skillman Video Group embraces trends and developments in camera technology. A major trend in videography in the past two years has been the adoption of DSLR’s. Cannon, and others, have produced still cameras capable of capturing 1080P hi-def video. The quality of the video is so great that many videographers, marketers, students, and filmmakers started using them for all manner of projects that the manufacturers hadn’t anticipated. SVG has caught the bug and and we used a Cannon 7D the Hebrew at the Center  video. What a difference it made! Our client received a high quality, cinematic-looking  video.

There are many excellent examples of the high quality image of the 7D here, here, here, and here. The difference in quality compared to a camcorder might not be immediately noticeable, but here are a few comparisons of DSLR vs. HD camcorders. Hebrew at the Center loved SVG’s DSLR footage, which made their video surpass their previous camcorder shoots.

What makes the DSLR image so great, so much more cinematic? Shallow depth of field. Motion picture film and still photographs often have a very shallow depth of field, which means that only certain objects are in focus while the background and even foreground objects are blurred. It focuses the viewer’s attention to the important parts of a shot and closely resembles how our eyes perceive the world. Camcorders, on the other hand, just look unnaturally sharp. This is one reason why your home videos never look as good as your grandparents 8mm home movies. Some also laud the colors, contrast, full frame image of DSLR’s, but the depth of field is the most noticeable difference.

DSLR’s still have a long way to go: they lack stereo audio capture, lack power zoom, lack zebra patterns, poor low-light performance, require expensive cumbersome rigs, inefficient or difficult to use codecs, etc. The lenses, essential to the depth of field, and rigs often cost more than the camera itself, but as more videographers have used them, manufacturers and third parties have found solutions.

If you want a cinematic looking marketing video a DSLR, like our 7D, is definitely your best option. A DSLR will make your social video look more professional and stand out.

A few of the many film formats of yesterday and today.

In the days of film — real celluloid with images stored as silver shadows — it was too expensive to print every take from the camera negative. When the director saw a take he liked he would shout “Print it!” and the script supervisor would circle the take in her notes. The printers would then only print the circled take saving huge money for the production.

Now that celluloid film is largely a thing of the past and video is so cheap, filmmakers can make economical use of nearly every take. Normally a whole take would be rejected if just one thing goes wrong, but now filmmakers keep shots if only one thing goes right.

In these days it’s not about what you “print,” but how you “print it.” Do you host it locally or on you tube (or vimeo)? Can viewers comment and share? Do you distribute DVD’s to your clients? Does it need to be High Def? If so, which file format? Do you need a teaser? Do you want to build a website around your video?

This is where a company like Skillman Video can really help you. We can build your website, kickstart your social media campaign, and use SEO to boost your video’s exposure. We integrate video, social media, web design, and SEO to gain our clients the highest return possible on their investment.

This sums up the madness and obsession of film editing

I remember my college days sitting for forty hours at a Steenbeck cutting and splicing a five minute short, getting to know every frame intimately. Today the same short would probably take a quarter of the time to edit, but I think I would know the project half as well. There’s something about the tactile act of physically cutting film by hand and splicing it with tape that makes one appreciate their own work as well as the work of master editors and directors.

Nowadays it is so easy to edit video digitally on their home computer, that nearly everyone can do it. An entire generation of filmmakers has never actually “cut” film.

But don’t think good editing is not still an art. Editing is where the story comes together and takes a certain level of experience and expertise to take the most jumbled of raw footage, and turn it into a concise and powerful video. Professional editors not only use the best practices and technology, but they also use years of experience solving problems, shaping story, and most importantly, following the technological changes. They also know how to create graphics and polish audio — integral to creating professional looking and sounding video. They know how to compress video for the web just enough to make it load quickly without losing quality. It might take“do-it-yourself” home editor hours to read printed manuals and scan online help forums; only to end up no better than when they started. When you have a deadline, time can’t be wasted finding answers. That’s why the editors at Skillman Video Group keep up-to-date and well practiced in the latest editing techniques and usually can end up editing the project in a fraction of the time as a novice, and with far superior results!

Save iMovie for your home videos.