Category: Mobile Videos

Filmmakers who aren’t afraid to break new ground

While our inspirational documentary film, The Unruly Mystic: John Muir, indie budget pales in comparison to a Hollywood film, Boulder Colorado based Michael Conti Productions decision to use an integrated Adobe workflow with Adobe Premiere Pro at the hub, was a given for this tech-savvy and budget conscious producer, director and editor, Michael M. Conti.

Adobe Premiere Pro was used to edit 21 films that will appear at the Sundance Film Festival this year, up from only 9 in 2014. After pairing up with Adobe After Effects CC, Premiere’s capabilities and ease of use noticeably improved, attracting more and more devoted users.

Case in point:

Gone Girl is the first Hollywood feature-length film cut entirely in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

This final tidbit of news was a welcome surprise to the independent film community.

Much of the visual effects work was done in-house, which allowed the team to work iteratively, in parallel with the editing. For example, Michael Conti could edit in Adobe Premiere Pro while others worked on shots in After Effects. The saved compositions would automatically update in Conti’s timeline thanks to Adobe Dynamic Link. This integrated and interactive workflow kept shots looking cleaner and eliminated distracting back-and-forth discussions so the entire team could focus on the story as it took shape in the edit bay. This streamlined workflow was one of the main advantages for “The Unruly Mystic.”

The process of editing this 105 minute movie with Premiere Pro from the ingest of assets (originally shot on two CANON XF100s), to individual scene editing (taking advantage of sub-clip and bin folders), to combining the multiple scenes in a single timeline (flatten) will be a subject of another post.

Learn more about Adobe Creative Cloud

June 19, 2018
Streaming video services a larger audience

Live Streaming is a powerful way to participate in an interactive manner and broaden the scope of your audience.

A Michael Conti Video Productions has the expanded ability to provide affordable streaming video services anywhere you need to be as long as there is either hard-wire internet or wireless cell phone service.

MCP can also record the video for future distribution like DVD or monetized future viewing. MCP works closely with one of the leading internet providers of streaming video to insure that your channel is properly presented to a regional or global audience. Simple tools allow for real-time statistics on who is watching and where they are watching from. Ability to password and monetize access to the channel being presented. Additional chat and social media tools add to the interactive dialog between live presenters and the net audience during a presentation.

Some of our current work:

“I felt like I was right there.” – online Christ Path viewer.

Dr. Matthew Fox and Andrew Harvey

MCP is providing video and streaming services to Csource Wisdom, who is a resource center for Creation Spirituality education, materials, art and music. Csource is responsible for the online content and video sales for Christ Path Seminars, a powerful three-year series of twelve initiations co-directed by the Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox and Andrew Harvey. Our first event in Oakland, California, had over 180 online viewers during the 12 hours of streaming provided. Online members were able to watch live or after the event as the stream was captured online which is helpful for other time zone. The content can also be provided on other media after the event like DVDs.

Best Practices:

To insure a good viewing experience for the online audience, we conducted an early practice session with the online audience a week prior to the event. Normal problems like avoiding poor wireless connections were addressed like you need to plug your computer into the hard-wire internet connection in the route at home or in the office. MCVP also worked closely with the hosts of the seminar to make sure they were addressing the online audience at various points during the weekend long seminar.

This was not your typical lock-off the camera approach, but a very active hands-on filming to insure the maximum benefit to the online audience.

If you are looking for streaming video services for your next event, retreat or conference, please give us a call at 303-641-7228.

April 20, 2018
Why Online Video Is Vital For Your Content Marketing Objectives

If you feel online video is just another over hyped, passing fad, think again.

Online video is gaining strength as a source for content marketing.

Michael Conti Productions has seen an increase in its video production services as more companies have come to see the value in having a professional do their online videos for them. This same dramatic increase has also occurred for professional wedding photographers after an initial decrease in business as everyone got their own digital camera and started taking pictures at these one off events. The results proved that having a single point of view is better. The important point is that we know the subtle tricks to insure that what we capture provides the maximum benefit for your audience without being distracting from the overall message.

Take a peek at some pertinent data from Software Advice‘s B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Report. This is just one of the survey topics: Percentage of Marketers Using Each Content or Offer.

The graph below illustrates the percentage of marketing respondents that use each content or offer:

The take-away? Most respondents prefer online video over white papers, case studies, even live demos with reps. And you should factor that into your future content marketing strategy.

Marketing automation giant Eloqua and CMO.com (Adobe’s content site providing digital marketing news and insight for senior marketing executives around the globe) also partnered with Software Advice on the research project. Read the blog post with all the details and an insightful video here.

Thanks to Ashley Verrill at Software Advice for this sharing this deeper insight.

So, Why Video?

The web trending towards video is made obvious by much more than the example above. After all, YouTube is the number two search engine in the world. This may lead you to the conclusion that we simply don’t like to read anymore. But the video preference situation we’re witnessing is much more detailed than that. So the question you may be asking yourself (or your boss may be asking you) is: Why video?

For this, let’s reference an expert. A real Ph.D. level expert, Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. — also known as The “Brain Lady.” As a leading speaker, author and consultant to brands like Amazon, Disney, Walmart and South By Southwest, she brings a deep understanding of the psychology of customers and why they do what they do.

She has uncovered four core, very human reasons we are drawn to video:

#1: The Fusiform Facial area makes us pay attention to faces – this is an actual brain function that hard-wires us to use the human face as a gathering point for information and believability.

#2: Voice conveys rich information – yes, the simple sound of a human voice speaking to us has an amazing way of converting information into meaningful content.

#3: Emotions are contagious – here’s a subtle but powerful aspect that we may take for granted. The body language of emotions is an appealing and we naturally love to share.

#4: Movement grabs attention – another trait that runs deep in our collective anthropological DNA is the power of peripheral motion. Since the stone age, we’ve survived by noticing things in motion – looks like we still do!

You can watch Susan’s detailed presentation here.

These are important details to consider when you approach doing a video in-house or seek to hire a professional that is well-versed in capturing visual and auditory signs to help your audience to connect with your message.

The following article was abridged.

February 2, 2018