The commercial was shot entirely on mini DV and edited in Final Cut Express.

Credits:

Director & Editor: Hal Goodtree
Media: Leslie Huffman
Music: Fool With Time

Thanks to:

Julie Hendricks
Mary Beth
Ashley
Dana
Emily

The spot is now running on What Not to Wear and elsewhere on Time Warner Cable in the Raleigh area.

Thanks to:

Wick Morgan
The Spectacle
Raleigh, NC

Brands in this episode:

Rayban
Persol
Barton Perriera
Paul Smith
Blind
Kieselstein Cord
Chrome Hearts

Music by:

Fool with Time

©2009 Goodtree & Co. Inc. All rights reserved.

From a viral Trader Joe’s ad that’s had 340,000 views on YouTube to TateShots from the venerable British museum, people are watching TV in a new way.

It’s true: they watch it on their iPhones and on their PCs. They watch at the airport, at a soccer game and at work. Television has become portable, and people watch it when they have a free minute, wherever they might be.

But new channels of distribution aren’t the whole story. A new class of producers is filling the void as the networks stumble and broadcast audiences erode.

Consumer cameras shoot hi-def. Video editing software costs a couple of hundred bucks and runs on budget laptops. And the technology has been around long enough that some people are learning how to use it pretty darn effectively.

We decided to enter the fray with a new show of our own: StreetStyleTV. It’s a quick hit of fashion, fresh off the street, real people wearing real cloths.

We were inspired by streetstyle photoblogs like The Sartorialist and Garance Dore. This is a similar idea, but on video.

We’ve started a website too: StreetStyleTV.com

It’s a WordPress site with a special theme designed for video. The theme, TV.Elements by Press75, ingeniously breaks a post into media and text elements. Take a look at how we deployed it.

The new television is already changing the way we watch. Soon, it will be changing the way we think and feel and act.

In our new video for Luxe Apothecary, a lot of techniques we’d explored came together in one perfect No-Budget Video (NBV) project. Our experience may be a model for others and has already inspired interesting discussions and new assignments.

The development of an effective No-Budget technique can bring television-quality web video to businesses and content producers of all sizes. Here’s what we learned.

RULE #1

You don’t need a crew and a lot of fancy gear to make quality web video. Here is the single most important technique:

Edit video and sound separately

Lots of inexpensive desktop editing programs provide this capability. For the Mac, we like Final Cut. Perhaps readers can share some favorite programs for the PC.

Once you are free from the tyranny of the soundtrack that is recorded when you are shooting, the whole world of filmic communication opens up to you.

SCRIPT

Even though you have no gear and no crew (and presumably no writer or producer) it does not pay to wing it. We script every project. Here are two useful structures for No-Budget Video:

INTERVIEWER TECHNIQUE

Interviews can be about discovery or they can be a vehicle for a marketing message (i.e. a testimonial). Either way, write out a list of questions.

• • If discovery: what do you want to learn?
  • If marketing: what can you ask that will motivate an appropriate answer?
  • Technique: always have the subject look at the interviewer, not the camera

Here’s an example of discovery that Hal produced for the National Football League. Players and fans were asked to name their “Recipes for Success” during the NFL season.

Here’s an example of the marketing technique in an interview:

Both examples used questions to motivate the subjects on camera. The first cost about $100,000 to produce. The second cost less than $1000.

NARRATOR TECHNIQUE

Another great technique for NBV is narrator-driven. The formula is very easy to shoot:

• • Introduce the narrator on camera
  • Use the narrator’s voice under a series of illustrative shots
  • Close with the narrator once again on camera

Here’s our video for Luxe, an example of the narrator technique:

Gear & Crew for the Luxe shoot:

• Camera - Canon 800 miniDV (costs about $250 new if you can still find it)
• Lights - None
• Crew - Just the director
• Editing - Final Cut Express on a laptop

Time - 1.5 hours to shoot; approx 4 hours to edit

PLANNING

Before you start shooting, look at the script and make a list of the shots you need. Plan a couple of backgrounds for your opening and closing titles. Make a thumbnail schedule of how long each shot should take to get.

SHOOTING

Here are a few basic guidelines to getting good results:

• Keep it simple - no fancy camera moves or zooms
• Get a wide establishing shot
• Tell the story in a series close-ups
• Use a mic if you can for important dialogue or narration
• Use available light if it is soft and indirect
• Get what you need, but don’t overshoot

EDITING

Lastly, a few conventions and helpful hints about editing.

Duration - Keep it short. Two minutes is a lot of time to fill.

Selects - when you load your video into your editing program, slice the raw footage up into “selects” or shorter clips. Label each piece descriptively, for example “Intro, Take 1.”

Grab the Main Pieces - You know you’lll have an intro and an ending. Drop those into place on the timeline. Look at your main selects again. Choose the best two or three clips in the project. Fit those on the timeline. Fill in and build your story.

Titles - Text on screen forms an important part of the message, but don’t overdo it. No one likes to read TV.

Wipes, Flips & Dissolves - Don’t use fancy transition devices like mosaic wipes and flips and cube rolls. It distracts from the message. Use a fade up in the beginning, cuts throughout the body and a fade out at the end. Dissolves are used to connect two same-sized shots or to communicate passage of time.

MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT NO-BUDGET VIDEO?

Are you producing No-Budget Video? Do you have an idea for your business but don’t know how to get it done? Drop us a note.

————————

Hal Goodtree's work has been honored with a Cannes Lion and Emmy®.

• Producer: Hal Goodtree
• Director: Neil Tardio, Jr.
• Production Co: Bedford Falls
• CD/Art Director: Ron Thomson
• CD/Writer: Tom Daniels
• Agency: Siquis
• Music: tomandandy

Producer: Hal Goodtree
Director: Kevin Smith
Art Direction: Scott Skaggs

In this new spot for Upstate Carolina Radiology, one boy tells the other “My Mom’s a Radiologist.”

“What’s that?” ask his friend.

“I don’t know,” the first kid says with a shrug.

But it turns out that radiology is fascinating - it has the ability to see inside the human body. In “My Mom,” radiologists explain what they do - screen women for breast cancer using digital mammography, open arteries to the brain, kill cancer.

The new spot is currently airing on Lifetime, Food Network and HGTV. You can also see it on YouTube.

Special thanks to the doctors, nurses and staff at Upstate Carolina Radiology, St. Francis Bon Secours Hospital and Spartanburg Regional Medical Center.

Credits:

• Director of Photography: Kenneth Wilson
• Gaffer: Randy Whiteland
• Key Grip: Steve Cabinum
• Sound: Sid Williams
• Stylist: Lorrie Hobler
• Editor: Joshua Steadman
• Writer/Director: Hal Goodtre

In this spot, the mission is to explain endoscopic laser ablation. That’s a procedure to treat varicose veins without traditional surgery. With an incision the size of a pencil tip, special doctors called Interventional Radiologists operate from inside your veins while observing the procedure with x-rays.

How to bake a little charm into the message? And how to get the actress (Kerry Murphy) to wash my pickup truck? See the spot on YouTube and find out.

Also airing on Lifetime, Food Network and HGTV.

Special thanks to my friends at Southern Vascular Institute.

Credits:

• Director of Photography: Kenneth Wilson
• Gaffer: Randy Whiteland
• Key Grip: Steve Cabinum
• Sound: Sid Williams
• Stylist: Lorrie Hobler
• Editor: Joshua Steadman
• Writer/Director: Hal Goodtree

There are 70-75 words in a :30 TV commercial

80 is too many and 6o words feels too loose.

Although a writer may be able to read 85 words in half a minute, that hectic pace doesn’t allow for nuance, meaning or emphasis. Tighten it up and give the copy room to breathe.

After all, it’s the meaning the audience takes away, not how many words you can cram in.