Thanks to Dr. Acton and everyone at Cary Family Dental.

1. WORDPRESS & VIDEO

The most basic question about video blogging might be: how do I get my video content into my blog? We recommend:

Video   —>   YouTube —>  WordPress

Upload your video to YouTube, grab the embed code and paste it into your blog. Make sure you paste it in “HTML” view in your WP blog.

Why not upload your video directly to WP? The answer is Search.

Search engines, and Google in particular, love video content. It is often returned above websites in a search result. Additionally, posting to YouTube gives a chance for a wider audience, better syndication and distribution.

Finally, don’t forget to use consistent tags when you upload your video to YouTube and WP.

2. EDITING IS GOOD

Editing is crucial to successful video production. Let’s start with available programs that are either free or under $150.

• PC - Pinnacle/Avid, MovieMaker
• Mac - iMovie, Final Cut

The key things you need to be able to do with video editing are:

• Edit sound and picture separately
• Decide the order of shots
• Decide the duration of shots

Those three are the biggies, but video editing has other key benefits as well:

• Ability to add music
• Add titles
• Add transitions (btw “Cuts” are 95% of all transitions)

3. PRODUCTION

Production (shooting) can be great fun. Here are a few tips and tricks to get a good result.

A. Composition

This is how you frame a shot in camera. Consider these four guideslines:

i. No need to move the camera

ii. Web video is a close-up medium

iii. Rule of Upper Thirds - place the subject’s eyes about a third down from the top of the frame.

iv. Keep it Square - pay attention to the horizon line.

B. Coverage

Make sure you get everything you need when you shoot.

i. B-roll and cutaways help illustrate the story

ii. Use different angles to provide variety

iii. Use the “short” end of the lens as much as possible (that is, stay wide and get close)

iv. Avoid zooms

C. Interview Technique

i. The person on camera should look at the interviewer, NEVER the camera.

ii. The interviewer needs to “hold the eyes” of the subject. Be nice, act interested, smile and nod. Don’t look down at your notes.

iii. Don’t talk over the talent. It generally ruins the take.

iv. Get the subject to restate your question in their answer (”statementize”)

D. Cheap Gear

• Tripod
• Low cost lighting - Home Depot aluminum reflector and high output CFLs
• Microphone

It’s also good to have a power strip, extension cord. some duct tape and a big plastic bin to keep your kit together.

E. Some Sage Advice

i. Plan your shoot in advance / develop a shot list

ii. Check your gear before you go

iii. You’re the Boss. Own it.

5. COMPARISON OF VIDEO CAMERAS

We also covered The Best Camera for Videoblogging, a reprise of an earlier post on this topic.

6. EXAMPLE

Here’s an example of a video blog we produced using the techniques outlined above. It took about an hour to shoot.

EXTRA

If you’d like a PDF of the slideshow that goes with “Intro to Video Blogging,” drop me a line.

* WordCamp photo by George Gumpert.

The gang at Vision Park in Raleigh invited us to an eye wear trunk show. We saw the latest trends from OGI and JeeVice. We even had cupcakes with lemonade icing.

Special thanks to Elizabeth from Vision Park and Michele from the blog One Chic Mama.

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.

• there are 2 billion Google searches a day (source)
• there are 78 million YouTube videos online (source)
• over 100 million YouTube videos are viewed per day
• 346 million people globally read Blogs daily (source)
• 77% of active internet users read Blogs
• Facebook has 175 million users from 170 countries (source)
• Facebook users have an average of 120 friends
• the fastest growing demographic of Facebook users are 35 years old & older

The old economy may be drying up, but the new economy is awash in opportunities. Need a lifeboat? Give us call.

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®.

Credits:

• Fiquet, Luxe Apothecary
• Kristin Murray
• Production by Goodtree & Co.

Thanks to:

• North Hills
• North Hills Buzz

Malls, mixed-use developments, shopping centers - call them what you will, they dot the landscape of America.

Many of the larger developments have websites. For the most part, they’re pretty awful. So, when we were asked to produce a new website for North Hills, a mixed-use development in Raleigh, NC, our goal was to help bring the category into a Web 2.0 world.

Two months after the launch, we have every reason to feel we’ve achieved. Stats are great, everything works, and best of all, a continuing content stream is beginning to bloom. It’s interesting stuff, too - stories, bios, pictures and video.

So here’s a checklist of things we think a contemporary mall or mixed-use website needs.

The Basics

1. A page for each merchant
2. A picture for each merchant
3. Descriptive text for each merchant (more than just a phone number and an outside link)

It is surprising how few big developments have reached this level of information. See our collection of links for malls and mixed-use developments on Delicious (and please feel free to add links to other sites in the category).

The Finer Points

1. Interactive Map
2. Continuing Content Stream
3. Ad Platform

(1) The interactive map is a challenging bit of engineering and UI. We’ll write more about it soon. (2) In most cases, developing a rich content stream requires cultural change for clients. Training and continued support are mandatory to advance evolutionary adoption of web 2.0 tools like blogs and twitter. (3) Big developments like North Hills have the potential to draw big traffic. Why settle for pennies on the dollar when you could have it all with your own ad platform? Tune in again for a discussion about implementing your own ad server.

Best Practices

To boost the performance of a site in this category as measured by key stats like Time On Site and Page Views, here are a few best practices we can recommend:

1. Minimize outside links
2. Run outside content in an iframe within your site
3. Drive traffic to niches with CPC advertising
4. Pay attention to what Analytics tells you about your audience

The Last, Most Important Point

Like all other advertising and marketing ventures, success is rooted in a good agency-client relationship. We are deeply grateful to Kane Realty Corporation for their vision and their patience throughout this project.

Special thanks to:

• Anna Smith
• Mike Smith
• Bonner Gaylord
• Jon Masterson
• Katherine Knott
• Angela Slater
• Paul Newcomer
• Walt Stewart
• North Hills Security

For Goodtree & Company:

• George Gumpert, master programmer
• David Holt, design
• John Dixon, flash
• Leslie Huffman, merchant database and blogging diva
• Hal Goodtree, precious little

Thanks also to Allen Weiss, Michael Kimsal, Lindsey Chester, Paul Harnett, Dorothea Bitler, Jill Harris, Fiquet, Kevin and Stacey Jennings, Wick Morgan and Jason Peck. And thanks to Jake St. Peter and Mike McTaggart for their generous time.

Please contact us for more information about mall, shopping center and mixed-use development websites.

Thanks also to our friends at North Hills and, of course, to Fiquet of Luxe Apothecary.

We’ll post our own story about the video shortly: How to make quality TV with a home video camcorder and a mic from yoor band.

We decided to look at the stats.

YouTube has a feature called Insights where you can see daily views, demographics and location data for your videos.

What did we learn? Well, 72% of our audience is male; the largest group is 45-54 year olds. YouTube Insights has a long way to go to become a truly useful statistical tool.

“Department of Babies” (Cannes Lion winner) is the most popular spot followed by “Warren Sapp” for the NFL (above).

Thanks to everyone for viewing our YouTube channel!

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

The Complete History of Lighting (Abbreviated)

Back in the day, “hot” lights were the norm. Incandescent, HMI, tungsten - they could light up a room like the sun. Generate about as much heat, too.

Smaller hot lights could be plugged into the wall, but larger instruments need special outlets. On location, that meant an electrician and tying into the power box.

Then, fluorescent lights for film and video came along. Banks of tubes started popping up on locations everywhere - lightweight, low power draw from any household outlet and soft, even illumination.

But a new light is dispelling the darkness. It’s LED lighting for film, video & photography.

The Future of Lighting?

FloLight in Campbell, California has introduced the LED 500. This 14×8x3 package has 500 tiny LEDs and generates 500 watts of illumination while drawing only 40 watts from the wall.

For versatility, the output is switchable in steps down to 25% of total wattage. The unit weighs only 5 pounds (!) and can be mounted horizontally or vertically.

Two interesting facts about LED lights:

1. Very rugged compared to hot or fluorescent lights
2. Narrow beam angle - that is, more of the light is pointed forward. This gives the LED500 a usable range from 5 to 15 feet. Fluorescent lights especially fall off in brightness dramatically as you move the subject away from the source.

At less than $500 (with 50,000 hours of projected life for the LEDs), the FloLight LED500 seems perfect for web video, podcasting and vlogs.

We’ll see if we can get one and test it out ;)

BASIC WEB 2.0 FOR REALTORS

We’re always going on and on about Web 2.0 for Business. It sounds good in theory, but how does it translate for specific business needs?

Julie’s a Realtor®, so the first thing to tackle was pulling in the MLS listings for her area. No biggie. Basically, it’s a snippet of code you can include in a web page along with a unique ID. See it here.

Next, we bolted on a WordPress blog with an old-time theme by GetTemplate. Don’t forget Askimet for security and Google XML Site Map for search. Naturally enough, realtors have a lot to talk about and share, so we re-published the blog on the home page as html using Feedburner.

ADVANCED WEB 2.0 FOR REALTORS

Here’s where it gets interesting.

• Del.icio.us Feed

Julie’s all about knowing the area. The best restaurant - ask Julie. A place to hike? Julie. So how could we build a links page that would be easy for a busy realtor to update? The answer: set up a del.icio.us site for Julie, grab the feed and re-publish it as her Community Info page.

Kudos to George Gumpert for nailing this down. We really love this feature - Julie’s already using it to help differentiate herself from her competition.

• Web Video Testimonial

We used our favorite MiniDV camera for web video, shot outside and plugged in a mic we borrowed from the band. Video can be so much more persuasive than text on the page - see the video for yourself.

STUFF FOR EVERY BUSINESS

• Google Analytics - Every website for business should have Google Analytics. It’s free, it’s fascinating, it’s vital.

• SEO - it pays to get it right with Meta Tags when it comes to the relevancy with your page text. We like SEO Analysis Tool by SEO Workers.

There ya have it - the birth of a new empire. Thanks again Julie!

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

The first thing to consider is features – what do you need for video blogging and what’s extraneous?

FEATURES

From our point of view, two features are paramount:

• Digital connectivity
• Microphone In

By digital connectivity, we mean the ability to connect the camera directly to your computer. Generally speaking, Firewire or USB 2.0 are the standards. These come in a variety of flavors (4 pin to 6 pin for example) but all are pretty much equally effective. The key here is to make sure your computer can handle the output from the camera. USB 1.1 is too slow.

Microphone input is the other key feature. Most cameras come equipped with an integrated microphone, but, for our money, this feature leaves a lot to be desired. The camera mounted mic picks up too much ambient noise. It can also pick up the noise of the camera itself including the sound of a tape drive or the mechanical noise of zooming. Some mics even pick up the sound of your hand on the camera.

A few cameras have an accessory shoe, but we prefer a standard audio jack (usually a miniplug). The accessory shoe limits your options and adds cost.

FORMATS

As has been true since the dawn of video cameras, a bewildering array of formats exist in the marketplace. Here’s a condensed run down of formats on the market that make sense for web video:

• Mini DVD
• High-Def
• Mini DV

MINI DVD

Mini-DVD records picture and sound on small format DVDs. The main advantage of this format is that you pop the DVD out of the camera and stick it in your computer. Voila! All your footage is instantly available and can be accessed randomly. But mini DVD has three disadvantages in our opinion:

1. Pretty short run-time in high quality mode, sometimes as little as 20 or 30 minutes.
2. The quality is the worst of the three camera types under consideration (about as bad as VHS)
3. DVDs have questionable longevity. We’ve experienced a flaking off of the emulsion on DVDs in as little as six months. Scratches and fingerprints also compromise the discs. Put it this way – how many bad disks have you gotten from Netflix?

Old skool Hi-8 cameras and Neolithic VHS-C cameras still exist in the marketplace, but those won’t connect directly to your computer. You’ll need a digitzer (sometimes called an Analog to Digital converter). Once again, we’re talking additional expense and hassle, so these formats aren’t ideal for video blogging.

HIGH DEFINITION

No doubt, these cameras are great. Some record on tape, others directly to a hard drive. In the high-def arena, you’ll find a dizzying assortment of recording formats including different aspect ratios (like 16:9) and capture modes (780i and 1080i). Picture and sound quality are generally stellar, but we found two drawbacks for video blogging:

1. HIGH COST – these new cameras are also the most costly on the market. Expect to spend at least $1000 on a high-def camera.
2. OVERKILL – for video blogging, you’ll be shrinking the picture down to a smallish window (320 x 240 or smaller), so all that great picture info is really a waste.

MINI-DV

MiniDV is a tape format. It captures standard definition (NTSC) on inexpensive tapes which are slightly smaller than a credit card (but wider of course). This is our favorite format for video blogging. Here’s why:

1. CHEAP – Mini DV cameras start around $300
2. ARCHIVAL – MiniDV tapes last a long time. When properly stored, the media should be fine well into the next decade of longer.
3. SMALL – Our new miniDV camera is slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes.
4. LONG RECORDING TIME – miniDV tapes come in lengths of up to two hours.

WHICH CAMERA TO BUY

Unfortunately, most manufacturers have been getting rid of the audio-in jack on consumer cameras in favor of flashy features no one really wants. The only cameras still sporting a mic-in jack are made by Canon.

Fortunately, Canon has good lenses, solid construction and long experience in the field. We ended up buying a ZR-800.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

BUY A LIGHT – the low light performance of most consumer cameras (including ours) leaves something to be desired. We suggest buying an inexpensive light on a stand that plugs into a standard wall socket. Camera-mounted lights make an ugly picture, so place your light above the subject and about 45 degrees off access for a nice shot. Soften up the light source with an umbrella of diffusion material. Spun glass is nice. Just remember to use something heat resistant.

MICROPHONE – for interviews, we recommend a lavalier. That’s the little mic that clips to a necktie or blouse. One with a hard wire can be had for about $100. A wireless system costs about twice as much.

Happy video blogging!