The Challenge

When a client wants special effects but cannot get to our studios there is only one thing to do. Take the studio to them!

Whilst we would love to take shots in the Arctic or on some South Seas beach paradise we know that sadly the budgets and timescales do not always stretch that far. The alternative is to use a Green Screen and match in stock footage or special graphics to replicate what you would get in real life.

For this project we had to turn an office conference room in Leeds into a full length Green Screen studio so we could shoot a video for later special effects editing.

The client

We often work with agencies on behalf of their clients. They are able to get used to our technical, production and directorial skills in video and audio production. In this case our client was Hampshire based White Communications, who we do a lot of video production work for.

The Equipment

Sony ex3
10 lights of varying sizes from arri 150′s to 2k
Tele-Prompt
Sound equipment
Green screen cloth

Setup

We travelled up the night before and started at 7am in the agencies clients offices by clearing the conference room and setting up the green screen, lighting, sound and then the video equipment. Within 2 hours we were ready.

The result

Within 1 hour of the start we had filmed three verions, full length, mid and head and shoulder shots of the script, ready to be edited and then add in the special background effects. The agency client was then all done.

Within a couple of hours we had cleared the room, packed our stuff up and were on our way back to Southampton.

As they say – all in days work.

For an example of Green Screen in action check out the video on our web site, click here

As part of our ongoing relationship with NHS, we were asked to film a recent Patient Safety conference at the Ark, the NHS Conference Centre in Basingstoke, and to carry out and record some interviews with staff beforehand which were to be used as part of the day.

This material and more will shortly be available on the NHS Patient Safety Federation website.

The Brief was to build a green screen space from scratch in several European cities.  We were to meet certain people in each of those cities and they would perform for us.

But lighting and shooting green screen is an art-form.  Here, Andy on camera and Dave on lights put on a show of their own.  But then, they’ve done it once or twice before.  So naturally it all worked beautifully.

If you want to shoot green screen – call the boys.

Focusbiz produces video material and podcasts it for some quite unexpected organisations! For several years The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists has  used Video Podcasts produced and hosted by Focus Business Communications to keep their wide membership ‘connected’ and up to date.   The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists is the 100th Livery Company of the City of London, and their members are all senior IT professionals who joined the Company in order to give something back to the IT sector and the wider community.

Charles Hughes is the new Master Elect of the Information Technologists’ Company. He has been a Freeman of the Company since 1996, has chaired several committees, and is currently leading the team seeking a Royal Charter for the Company. His theme for the year will be “professional values”.  The is the second video podcast from Charles as he becomes the new Master.

See more WCIT Podcasts

Our challenge this time was to help one guy with a real Passion to start building support for an event that he hopes will take the City of Southampton by storm in 2011.

Into our in-house studio came Neil Maddock, pioneer of Passion 2011 in Southampton.  Using some tricks of television we filmed Neil in the studio as he very skilfully presented his case.  It’s a great talent for Neil to make it look this easy – not many people could sit in front of a camera and be this convincing.

Over the next couple of days Ian Williamson, who’s become a master of special effects, edited the sequence that would promote the Passion and get people involved ready for Good Friday 2011.

Neil will be sending DVDs to churches and organisations across Southampton to promote the event and seek volunteers to get involved.

Nice job to do and a great project.  Well done Neil.  (Oh … and well done Ian!!)

Focusbiz produces video material and podcasts it for some quite unexpected organisations. For several years,  The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists has  used Video Podcasts produced and hosted by Focus Business Communications to keep their wide membership ‘connected’ and up to date.   The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists is the 100th Livery Company of the City of London, and their members are all senior IT professionals who joined the Company in order to give something back to the IT sector and the wider community.

Jo Connell, the current Master, has been in the IT Industry since 1966 when she joined Mars Inc as a trainee programmer. Her career developed with appointments as a Systems Analyst at Aspro Nicholas and a Consultant at CMG Ltd. This Podcast was filmed at the start of her year as Master and sets out her agenda.

On October 21st, Charles Hughes, who has had a 38-year career in IT including serving on the Parliamentary IT Committee, will be installed as Master Elect.

See more WCIT Podcasts

Fred Dinenage presents the case for helping this organisation that supports children with cerebral palsy and their parents. The Rainbow Centre uses Conductive Education to improve the quality of life for the children and their families. This programme, presented by Fred Dinenage, was intended for showing in cinemas. It was made by Focus , in conjunction with The Remarkable Group.

Contact us to discuss what we can do for you.

Focus delivers Effective Dialogues, Better Business, Reduced Costs … and a smaller Carbon Footprint.

Focus studios make extraordinary things happen!  Great audio, exciting pictures, creative post-production.

Our audio studio facilities are used for recording English and Foreign voiceovers for video, reading to picture or wild, or recording dialogue for Podcasts and training.  We edit ‘live’ (using SADiE) at the same time as recording so there’s not a lot to do when the session is over. We use ISDN to record live at full quality from or to another studio. And we often use phone or Skype to connect to clients anywhere in the world who listen in to the session down the line.

The video studio is great for shooting voice links and presenter pieces.  It’s soundproof and therefore QUIET, so no interruptions from phones ringing or people talking in the corridor, the things that drive clients mad when we shoot interviews in their’ boardrooms. But it’s not big – just right for a piece to camera or 1×1 interview.

It may not be huge but we have green screen (or Blue or Black or White) and that means the studio can be as big as you like and become anywhere you like – New York, underwater, the moon … you get the idea.

There’s a lighting grid and talented lighting guys who can make you look great on camera.  Green Screen techniques rely very heavily on good lighting.  We normally use Arri or Kino Flo lights.

Built-in Autocue makes it easy for even quite inexperienced people to amaze everyone with confident pieces to camera.

Oh … and to bring ideas to life we have really nice creative people behind the cameras with years of experience and real talent (but don’t tell them I said that!)

Contact us to discuss what we can do for you.

Green Screen – Autocue – Lighting – Sound proof – Air conditioning – Cameras – Voiceovers – Live voice editing – Presentations – Interviews – Media training – Viewing rooms – Control Room – Vision mixer – Encoding for DVD, Web, Podcast & PowerPoint: Virtual Studio.

Focus Studios … Bringing your ideas to life.

]]> http://www.focusbiz.co.uk/portfolio/our-studio/feed/ 0 http://www.focusbiz.co.uk/portfolio/portfolio-mithril-racing/ http://www.focusbiz.co.uk/portfolio/portfolio-mithril-racing/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:59:12 +0000 Ian Williamson http://www.focusbiz.co.uk/blogtest1/?p=876

These guys are definitely Licensed to Thrill! Enjoy this piece put together for the client by one of our producers Andy Goode. Another great use of video on the web to show what printed brochures couldn’t.

Everyone knows what a ‘Jimmy Jib’ is … at least everyone in the television industry. When we try to describe it to a client they find it hard to appreciate why we should spend their budget on one! So we put this together to show a Jib at work and the talented guys who operate it. A perfect example of how to use video to demonstrate a product that you can’t easily describe otherwise!

TV presenter Iolo Williams meets Colin and Mandy Powell who run this fantastic 5 star B&B in Mid Wales. Incidentally, they have the three minute Podcast running on their own website, possibly a first in the B&B sector. Originally as part of a DVD promoting the town of Llanidloes in Mid Wales.
www.grandstandbandb.co.uk  www.llanidloes.com

BT Intelligent Solutions

We are enthusiatic evangelists for the use of video in websites as a very direct way to help people understand the message.  And it’s just more interesting than a page of words!   Best practice in our experience is to give users control and this is what BT have done.  It is a very positive experience.

You can now view the debates on the NHS South Central website.

Want to know how we did it?  We used three Sony 500 series camcorders, two operated by camera operators Andy and Bob, the third camera was locked off at the back. Like all professional cameras each camcorder produces frame accurate timecode, so to ensure they were all synchronised and to prove we didn’t miss a single work they were all locked to the same time-of-day timecode.  At the back of the room our Datavision vision mixer was supplied with SDI feeds from all three cameras, whilst at the same time we recorded all three video streams on the camcorders for back-up.

The vision mixer was operated by our director, Ian, who switched the cameras and directed the camera operators over talkback.

All too often sound can become the poor relation on a job because nobody wants to pay for a sound operator.  That makes no sense at all because in most cases audio is even more important than the pictures, and that’s certainly true on this occasion.  Colin, the sound guy, mixed the audio from the chairman and four experts, as well as from two radio microphones which were given to the members of the audience who wanted to speak.  That audio went to the PA system as well as to our recorders.  The director checked the audio and video feeds which were recorded to DVCAM and DVD recorders.  That’s in addition to the back-ups on each camera.

The Chairman of all the debates was Peter White, who hosts BBC Radio 4’s ‘You and Yours’ as well as being the BBC’s Disability Correspondent.  Because he is visually impaired we provided him with a radio ear-piece fed from a radio microphone through which he was kept abreast of the next person in the audience to ask a question.    He handled it all amazingly well of course.  The debates were occasionally fiery, with passionate speakers on both sides.  It actually made very entertaining television – although that wasn’t the main point!

After the debates all the equipment was packed up and taken back to the studio.  It had taken four hours to rig and check, making sure all the cables were safely fixed down and not going to trip up members of the audience.  Four hours to rig but only a little more than one hour to take down and pack into the vehicles.

Back at the studio we encoded the finished programme in four half-hour clips to widescreen .wmv files with an optimised data rate using Adobe Premier and Canopus Procoder.  To prove that not one second was lost from the debates the actual time of the recording was displayed on the screen, together with the client’s logo.  It’s always nice to know the client is proud enough of our work to associate with it!

But do we want Fluoride in our water?  That’s a very good question!