Tag Archives: boston video production

Shooting a Live Event

Live Event Video ShootSkillman Video Group did a shoot on Wednesday, August 15th, for a medical malpractice insurance company called Coverys. Coverys is a consistent client of Skillman Video Group, and continues to be a client through the years. We filmed a talk for them during a live conference. And now, I am here to tell you all about what happened during the shoot, and what I learned from it.

Video Production Lighting

Lighting during live event shooting for Boston video production can be tricky. During the shoot for Coverys, the lighting was not very good. The lights on the ceiling for the room were not very powerful, but the light coming in from the half-covered windows was ridiculously bright. This resulted in some very interesting shadows on the speaker’s face whenever she would walk to the left side of the stage. However, we were able to adjust the camera settings so that the actual footage was not that bad. So if you plan on shooting a live event, be aware of the lighting in the room. It could make or break your video.

Audio for A Live Event

When filming a live event, sound is kind of a problem. You can’t use your own sound feed from your camera, because it would be picking up the entire room sound and everyone watching the speaker, as well as the actual speaker. Basically, the sound would be messy and awful. For video production Boston, it’s important to make sure the venue of the event can provide the sound feed for you. That way you can hook up the microphone on the speaker to your camera, which is what we did, and the sound will be a lot better.

Location of the Camera

Funnily enough, the location of the actual camera during a shoot for a live event is more complicated than one might think. Because guess what. The shoot comes second to the live event that is going on. Which means that you can’t just put your camera in front of the stage and block everyone’s view, even if it means you’ll get a better shot. And you can’t film from the audience, because the angle that the speaker would be being filmed at in video production companies Boston would be absolutely awful. So we put our camera on a riser platform at the very back of the stage. That way nobody is being blocked by the camera, and the camera can get a lovely eye-level shot of the speaker. I recommend that if you are filming a live event, you make sure your camera is on a riser platform as well.

I learned a lot from participating in a live event shoot, and I hope you learned something as well!

Skillman Video Group LLC specializes in Video Production Boston Call us anytime at 1-800-784-0140.

What to Expect on Shoot Day

Recently, I filmed a YouTube video that I had written for my internship with Skillman Video Group. And building up to the shoot day, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I made sure I was prepared, and I made sure my actors were prepared as well. However, I still didn’t learn what was really going to happen until it did, so here I am to teach you a few things you should expect on a shoot day for Boston video production.

Actors

Now, if you’re filming a YouTube video, odds are you don’t have professional actors. I definitely didn’t. However, the actors I did manage to convince to be in my video did an excellent job regardless. But because they were not professional actors for video production Boston, none of them were completely confident in their lines. They all knew their lines, but they were still nervous about performing them once the camera started rolling. What I needed to do was make sure they were as comfortable as possible, and once they were, they did an amazing job. So don’t get frustrated with your actors for not doing something a certain way. Most people don’t perform well under pressure, so try to instead be encouraging and patient, and odds are the shoot will go smoothly.

Sound

I am going to be completely honest. I don’t have a ton of experience with sound in video. I usually just don’t film many videos with sound in it at all. I’m more of a put music in the background and silence the video type of person. However, for this shoot, since I wrote in several lines, sound was a huge priority. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a camera that I could record the sound on separately. My camera does not have decent sound recording, so this was extremely helpful. I would recommend doing this for anyone who doesn’t have access to an external microphone or camera with better sound recording.

Shooting a YouTube video for video production companies Boston can be stressful, but in the end it’s worth it. If you know what to expect, you stay organized, and you make little to no mistakes, you will end up with a product you are proud of, and that is all that really matters.

Skillman Video Group LLC is a Boston video production company. Call us anytime at 1-800-784-0140.

Preparing Equipment for an Upcoming Shoot

Boston VideographerEquipment for a Video Production Shoot

Are you planning a video production Boston shoot? Do you want to know all about how to find and/or use equipment for the shoot? Well lucky for you, I am here to provide that information!

Video Cameras

When creating a video project, you will definitely need a video camera. There is absolutely no question on this matter. Now, if you are doing this project for school, it is probably fine to use a smartphone. However, I would not recommend that method, as smartphones fill up storage quickly and the video quality is not as good as it would be on a regular camera.

Personally, I would either borrow a camera from a friend, or depending on the importance of the project vs. how many more videos you will have to take, invest in a nice beginner camera. Learn about DSLR Cameras

While preparing for my video shoot for Skillman Video Group: a Boston video production, I decided on using my Nikon D3400, even though the sound quality is terrible. The video is perfectly decent, and I was going to use an external microphone anyways.

setting up the diffusion and key lightLighting Set Up

Making sure you have good light quality in your video is important. You don’t want your video to look like you took it in a dark cave in the middle of the night, so make sure your lighting is decent. Using natural light can be tricky in video, because of the sun changing and clouds. Overall, the sun is very fickle sometimes. You could be filming and then all of a sudden have to stop because the sun went behind a cloud. Or maybe you started filming when the sun was behind a cloud, but now the sun is shining in everyone’s faces and creating a glare on the camera. You can make natural light work, but artificial lights are always helpful. A couple soft box lights here and there would be a good idea if you’re planning to film indoors especially.

Audio for Video Production

Unless you have a professional video camera, like production companies Boston do, you might want to think about the sound quality on whatever camera you’re planning on using. Investing in an external microphone could be important if you’re going to be filming with a beginning camera like myself. This is especially important if you’re planning to film outside. With background noises whipping everywhere, having a microphone that can focus on the sounds you need in your video will be vital in ensuring that your video turn out good.

Preparing your equipment for a video shoot may be stressful, but as long as you think of everything you possibly could have and you stay organized, you’re all set!

Skillman Video Group LLC is a Boston video production company. Call us anytime at 1-800-784-0140.

Writing a Script for a Video

 

How to Write Script for Marketing Videos

Part of the work of a summer intern at Skillman Video Group is to create a video for YouTube that you write, direct, and edit all by yourself. Now, this can seem pretty simple, considering it’s jShooting video on a DSLR, video production companyust a five or six minute YouTube video depending on whatever topic you choose. But no, this is just simply not the case.

Creating an Idea for a Marketing Video

If you’re interested in making a YouTube video, you should choose whether or not you want it to be funny or serious. Personally, I chose to make a funny video. You could also decide to make something serious, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Lots of amazing videos and short films are serious, but I personally would rather make something fun. Something that makes everyone laugh…hopefully. You also need a concept: a topic for your video. I decided to make my video an SVG-themed parody of a popular reality tv show called “The Bachelorette”. I picked this because most people know what it is, and it’s extremely easy to make fun of. Sometimes important sacrifices have to be made when it comes to Boston video production humor.

How to Write a Script

Next, if you want your video to be the least bit successful, you will need to write a script for it. This is the hard part. You have to make sure your story makes sense whilst creating characters, jokes, and ironing out all the details. You need to be thinking about locations you can use, people who can play your characters, and what is funny and what isn’t. Writing the script for my marketing video took a while because I had to figure out which contestants could be funny yet sensible options for my parody show. However, since the show already exists, I basically just followed the layout of a typical Bachelorette episode, which made my job a little easier.

Video Concept Ideas

Coming up with a concept for a video is easier said than done. However, once you come up with one, turning that into a script is a lot more complicated. We didn’t even discuss what shooting and editing one is like! But once you have all of your details ironed out,  you will have created something you’ll be proud of for a long time. Forever, actually, since once something is on the internet it never really goes away.

Skillman Video Group LLC is a Boston video production company. Call us anytime at 1-800-784-0140.

Tips For Interviews

How To Film an Interview

Last week Crown Visual reached out to Skillman Video Group to produce a corporate video. Christina Skillman Interviewed the owners of the company asking them all kinds of questions from the history of the company to the cleaning process.  So, What are the necessary steps you need to take when conducting an interview?

Top Interview Tips

Interview Location: 

When filming an interview, one of the most important factors of  is it the location. Depending on the location, it can make a video interesting, it can help set a mood, and even help tell the story. By shooting b-roll of the location, it can also help the viewer get a better understanding of a company and how it runs. Even if a location isn’t great, it’s always good to prep the room to make it more interesting for the viewer.

Camera Setup for Interviews

One of the most important things you need to have when shooting an interview is two angles on a subject. Although we only filmed with one camera for the Crown video shoot, it’s helpful to have two cameras because it allows different angles and shots. It can not only make a video more interesting but it can help establish the story.

Lighting and Audio Tips

To get the right shot, one thing you need to think about is the lighting. For a film, it’s important to know what 3 point light system is. The 3 point light system is a standard light set up often used for interviews. It is a system that allows light to focus in on the subject. It can make a difference in your video for it puts your subject in better focus. For audio, you can have something look great, but if you don’t have great audio, you won’t have a great video. Audio and visuals go hand in hand. You need to be able to hear the subject clearly and make sure that the audio levels are just right. You don’t want to film something and then have the audio levels way too high or too low. There needs to be a balance. Audio can make or break a video, without crisp sound than you are already losing the quality of your video.

Next time you have an interview to film, think about these steps to have a great outcome on your video!

Skillman Video Group LLC specializes in Boston video production. Call us anytime at 1-800-784-014

Target Audience and Market Segments

professional video production, New England video productionIn digital marketing, it is critical that a team or individual accurately and strategically targets an audience. This process of strategically placing an audience into separate categories is referred to as market segmentation. What segmentation does, as The Balance puts it in their blog post, is it allows a company to understand an audience in a way that makes them able to satisfy the needs of their customers more effectively. Segmentation strategically categorizes audience members based on characteristics such as geography, knowledge or lack of knowledge pertaining to the company/product, age, gender, religion, etc. Based on these categories, marketing teams can now begin to create specific messages that relate closer to each of the segments within their target audience. Perhaps a segment of their market, is recently showing a lack of engagement. What a team can do now is create specific content or copy this segmented piece of their audience. It is all about trying to strategically hone in on a specific group within a target audience.

 

In professional video production, this type of strategizing is critical in order create an effective piece of content that will truly speak to a group of people. For one of our most recent New England video production shoots, we Dr. Chang who runs her own dental practice in Natick, MA. While interviewing her, the conversation and questions were guiding her towards compelling and eloquent responses with a target audience in mind- that being current and potential new customers. During the shoot and interview, this was on the forefront of everyone’s mind, and so, the interview process was took shifts and turns in order to appease that specific target audience. With the questions we asked, the energy we invited Dr. Chang to exude and the responses we knew were critical to the project, it was all in spite of the target audience in mind.

 

When in the process of professional video production, audience is always key. Who is watching this? Who cares? And above all, why do they care? Keeping a target audience as the compass is something every professional video production company or marketer needs to learn. From our Boston video production, professional video productionexperience as a New England video production company, it has proven itself undeniably valuable to creating successful video content.

Editing Process on our DIY Series

At SVG each round of interns are asked to create a video project of their own. For this current Boston video production, video production services, DSLR video productionseason while on the Boston video production team.  As this current round of interns, we decided we wanted to make something that would be useful for current followers of SVG’s blog and for DIY/DSLR videographers. By creating something with these two audiences in mind, we hoped that we would be able to instruct current followers with their own personal projects while attracting a new audience towards SVG through DSLR video production. One thinBoston video production, video production services, DSLR video productiong we learned about video production services is that the processes before and after shoot day both play major roles in the projects. In video production services, a major portion of the work comes after and before the shooting day. The video editing process is half of the creation process in video production.

 

Editing a video requires a close attention to detail, imagination, and practice. After trying to begin learning the programs of video editing, it was clear that this expertise deserves its credit- things are complicated and extremely technical in this stage. With this in mind, one of our videos used iMovie as the main editing program since it allowed a much more user-friendly interface as it doesn’t possess the intense technical abilities like other programs such as Adobe Premiere. With a smaller project such as this, the editing program didn’t require such complicated tools, so we stuck to the more familiar and amateur friendly, iMovie.

 

One aspect of the editing process that took us by surprise was how effective clipping and trimming some of the footage made the project. Most of the video is an interview style setting. In these takes though, some of the dialogue and pauses went on for too long. After seeing the takes in order in full, we knew that we needed to trim. After beginning the trimming process we started seeing a clearer and more refined product. In the end, it created a more streamlined and entertaining piece.

 

In video production services, the editing process has proven itself to our interns as a dominant influence in the success of any video project. It is easy to assume that the main work and creative vision happens on the shoot day, as we quickly learned, this is not true at all. The work and creativity begins at collaboration and strategizing and continues all the way into the editing process.

 

Skillman Videography Group LLC specializes in Boston video production. Call us anytime at 1-800-784-0140

How to Narrow Down Topics

How to video ideasHow To Video Ideas

When it comes to video production services, half of the battle, if not more, is the planning and strategizing that comes with pre-production. A major part of this, and one that the current interns are discovering, is narrowing down a topic in regards to the message and a specific target audience.

How To Video Concepts

For our current project, the interns are creating “How to DIY” videos for various DSLR technicalities. When beginning to try and brainstorm about which aspects are most important in order to educate and inform the audience, we required a good deal of imagination and strategizing. What we needed to try and imagine was, “As a beginner trying to learn DSLR videography, what do I need to know?”. After delving into this question we came up with two crucial aspects of DSLR video production. Those two aspects are lighting and audio. DSLR is tricky and requires a bit of extra assistance apart from the camera, giving us the strategy that the lighting and audio aspects of DSLR video production require the most education.

How To Shoot Video on a DSLR Camera

Now that we broke down this topic of DSLR video production, we needed to narrow them down each specifically. For example, one of the topics is audio. Again, we had to use our imagination to put ourselves in the shoes of our audience. “What do I need to be shown and taught in order to understand how to capture professional audio with a DSLR?” The three main objectives we want to cover in this DIY video are: Professional mics/sound recorders are necessary, how to attach and assemble the sound recorder using a Zoom H4N as an example,How to shoot video and how to configure the settings properly for clearest sound quality.

For all video production services, planning and strategizing are crucial steps in the pre-production process. When it comes to narrowing down a topic and thinking of the best ways to communicate a message to an audience, the surest way of doing so is by putting yourself in the shoes of the target audience. In this space, one can begin to understand what will be necessary and most memorable.

Stay tuned for the final production of our DSLR DIY two part series coming soon!

Skillman Videography Group LLC specializes in Boston video production. Call us anytime at 1-800-784-0140.

Video vs. Film: What’s the Big Difference?

Film is a big word in the entertainment industry. The word is used as both a noun and a verb, to describe the creating motion visuals. At the start of moviemaking and photography, everything was all about film. It was the only option at one point. In today’s world, the advances in technology have allowed more than just film as an option. Although video is a big part of the industry today, it is overlooked and people still describe it as film. Film and Video are two different ways of recording visual movement. When people think of video, they most likely go straight to thinking about the big screen in the entertainment industry, film. Our Boston Video Production Company works with video, and we want to prove to your there is a difference between Video and Film. Check out some of the major differences below:

Latitude

The overexposure or underexposure of light on a certain area through the camera, has to due with the Latitude of the shot. Film always had a broader exposure latitude than video. In the corner of a take that may not get enough light, film is still able to make out figures and colors, whereas with a video camera it was harder to do so. On video, the corner might have come out as completely black. This allowed people using film to play with light more, which was good for cinema. However, Video has been updating through the years and has been decreasing the gap. Video continues to enhance, allowing them to capture more light with a broad exposure latitude.

Cost

Video Production camera shotsAs defined by Google dictionary, film is; “a thin flexible strip of plastic or other material coated with light-sensitive emulsion for exposure in a camera, used to produce photographs or motion pictures.” Each second of screen time is equivalent to 24 frames of film, and with the rate of $2 per 24 frames, the cost of your shoot will be very expensive. The digital side of Video Production Services, where we stand with Video, is much more affordable. Digital makes it easier and faster to create and upload shots of moving visuals. The roll of film needs to be developed chemically which makes it more expensive. The advances in technology that allow you to use a digital chip makes it easy to upload the takes, instead of needing to develop.

Color

The color depth includes brightness, shades, and more. Before Video became more advanced due to technology, Film had a better depth of color. Due to the better exposure to light, the color came across more clear than video. The possible colors were a larger selection on film than video, but now video has the ability to capture many more colors than it could before. The light exposure is much better, allowing for more colors to been seen and recorded. The human eye sees the most color, which is why sometime when you have seen something on video or film it might come across different than in real life.

Technology has done a lot for Video throughout the years. Today almost everything is recorded on video, but everyone still uses the “film” term to describe it. Film is actually outdated; with the digital world sweeping the industry, video is the big thing. It is actually incorrect to say that you are being “filmed”, with the cameras all being digital you are being recorded on Video not Film. As a Video Marketing Company, our work wouldn’t be what it is today without the advancements in Video. We love to see how it has changed throughout the years and become the top of the industry.

Skillman Videography Group LLC specializes in Boston video marketing. Call us anytime at 1-800-784-0140.

Our Most Recent Corporate Video Shoot

Top Corporate Video Production Shoot

Last Friday, SVG was on set to film a corporate video in collaboration with Wells Fargo. SVG was hired to shoot a series of videos for the company’s “Customer Business Stories,” which is meant to advertise the small businesses that Wells Fargo represents. For this particular video, the set was at a Boxborough veterinary clinic, where we interviewed the founder and owner, as well as shot extensive amounts of B-roll to layer over the footage. In order to produce a successful video, SVG brought in the help of a professional Boston video crew.

Professional Video Equipment

There were two Sony FS7 cameras set up, one for a wider shot, and one for a closer shot of the talent. They were the two primary cameras used on set. Then, in order to shoot the B-Roll, the professional videographers on set used shoulder rigs and mobile tripods to get shots of the animals at the clinic, the facilities, external shots of the building, and the doctor performing various actions, such as lecturing, performing checkups, and brushing the pet’s teeth. One of the plans for B-Roll footage was to attach a GoPro to one of the dogs in order to get a POV shot.

The Audio Equipment

For the audio setup during the interview, a shotgun microphone was placed above the talent just outside of the shot, which made sure that her voice was picked up clearly and in a reasonable decibel range. For extra coverage and clarity, a lavaliere microphone was attached to her clothing. An audio booth was set up towards the back of the room so that the crew member, with the use of headphones, was able to gauge the varying levels and clearness of the talent’s voice. Moreover, the audio had to be directed three ways, which is called a video village. The audio had to be sent to the two FS7 cameras, and then to the actual audio recording device.

Lighting for Production Shoots

For this particular interview, there was an extensive lighting setup. Several LED lights –Lite Softboxes — were used to counteract the backlight, which was coming in through the window behind the talent. The key and fill lights were strategically placed so that the interviewee was evenly lit, which gave the video a professional look. Since LED lights are quite harsh, it was important to diffuse some of the light and reflect it elsewhere. For the B-Roll, there was a battery powered mobile LED box, which was used as needed when moving around the hospital.

In order to produce a successful video, every element of the production process has to be harmonious and planned with great detail. While the set had not been seen until the actual day of shooting, and while there was some troubleshooting with regard to positioning certain lights, there was still a cohesive plan that coordinated with the schedule. Every member of the crew was aware of their respective on-set roles, which made for an incredibly adept day of filming.

Skillman Videography Group LLC specializes in Boston video marketing. Call us anytime at 1-800-784-0140.