Your browser does not support iframes.

We specialize in filming conferences, seminars, interviews, virals, training videos and corporate documentaries.

film your event offers a complete solution package that contains everything from planning and filming to editing and DVD authoring and duplication. We work out the production plans, organize all the filming and carry out the editing, DVD production and web hosting. We can add general shots, interviews, delegate testimonials, slide presentations, graphics, charts, etc. and have a fast turnaround time of any event to your specification.

film your event is a young and dynamic video production company. Our talented team of experienced media professionals have worked for the BBC, Channel 4 and CurrrentTV and won numerous film and documentary awards.

film your event’s services include:

film your event is unique in that we offer a complete package for transmission across DVD and New Media formats. You end up with a professional looking final product in a fast turn around time – All included in the price!

Citizen journalists and those of you who want to be independent filmmakers, let me tell you about an incredible opportunity.  (And give you tips for winning the grand prize!)

You Tube, along with the Pulitzer Center and the Sony Corporation, are again sponsoring Project Report.

Project Report is a unique video contest that drew thousands of entries in its first year.  The sole winner then, Arturo Perez, used his grant to travel to Jerusalem and document the centuries old religious conflicts through the eyes of young people.

This year, they’ve increased the number of “first place” grants being awarded to five.  So this year there will be a total of five grand prize winners.  Each will be awarded $10,000 grants from the Pulitzer Center to make a documentary-style video of international interest.

Additionally, those five, plus five more, will be awarded Sony VAIO laptops and Sony HD camcorders from corporate sponsor Sony.

Here is how the contest is set up. First, you have to complete the assignment they give you:  Produce a video profiling a person you think the world should know about.

Producing a video to enter is a fantastic opportunity by itself if you ask me.  This post contains some top notch tips on how to make a compelling profile video, so keep reading.    

This Profile Video assignment is due by February 28.

All profile videos submitted by the deadline will be judged.  Prizes will awarded according to standards of journalism, visual storytelling and video production techniques.

If your profile video is one of the ten semi-finalists, you win the Sony HD video camera and laptop.    The top five will also be awarded the $10,000 grant and the ability to work with the famed Pulitzer Center.

Click here to read more about Project Report and how you can enter.  This is absolutely an incredible opportunity for some of you who regularly read this blog.  Working with the Pulitzer Center would be one heckuva way to break into the field.

The qualifying assignment they are giving is a perfect test, really.  Profiling an interesting individual is the core of documentary video making.  How well you can do that would say volumes about your ability to tell a more detailed story involving more people.

What Does It Take to Make a High-Quality Profile Video?

Obviously, you need an interesting “character,” but in addition to that you need to produce a visually-rich, personality-driven video that paints an accurate, yet entertaining image.

Good profile pieces often include more than one interview of the person.  If you do this technique, videotape the interviews in different locations.  Also think about using two cameras that are set to two drastically different shots.  For example, you could have one camera on a three-quarter profile medium shot and the second on an extreme close-up full profile.

Not all interviews should be sit down affairs either.  Get them up walking and talking.    Interview them as they work (or play) so you can get a demonstration at the same time.  This technique can take what might ordinarily be a boring talking head and turn it into something much better.

Add Visual Variety

In addition to the interviews, video your person in at least three different settings or activities.  Videotape sequences of them doing whatever activity is relevant to the subject matter.  If the person you are profiling is a mother and that fact is important to the story, videotape them playing with the kids, preparing lunch for the kids, and cleaning up after the kids.

If you get that much visual variety, then edit it together with narration and a script that ties all your important information together, you will absolutely have a top-quality video that just might win a contest like this!

Good luck.  Let me know.

Lorraine Grula

The small but innovative online video service Veeple today announced enhancements that will allow search engine bots to get a much clearer understanding of your video.  This should in turn create benefits for search engine optimization and allow your video to get better results in the SERPS.

In a first for online video, the enhancements announced by Veeple now allow your keywords and video title to become part of the information searched by google and other engines no mater where your video is viewed on the web.

Here is a video by Veeple CEO Scott Broomfield quickly explaining how these enhancements were put into the embed code.

If you read this blog often, you know that I recommend Veeple and use them myself to provide the interactive links I embed inside my videos.  Whenever I make and host videos for clients it is always through Veeple.

In the course of doing this, I’ve gotten to know them quite well and can attest to the fact that they are constantly striving to make their platform more functional and user-friendly.  This SEO enhancement is a big step in the right direction and I applaud their efforts.  They promise that more such improvements are on the way.

One of the most heavily touted benefits of using video online is video SEO.  Often, it’s made to sound that video SEO is easy and just a matter of blasting your video out to as many different sites as possible.

That’s too simplistic of course.  It takes more than saturation to get the search engines to rank your video.  You Tube videos are apt to rank high, but that is the power of You Tube.  Any benefit your website gets from that comes in the form of a backlink from an authority site and the bit of traffic you’ll get that visits You Tube first and finds your video so compelling they click through to your site too.

What about a video on some other site, like your squeeze page?    If you embed it from You Tube onto your squeeze page, the search engines don’t have a clue what it’s about.  They just know it came from You Tube.

What Veeple has done is add the keywords and title to the embed code for the video.   So no matter where you embed it, that information travels with the video and is searchable to the engines.   This will no doubt help your video stand out from the zillions of other online videos.

Soon, Veeple hopes to make all the internal links within the video searchable too.  That will really be incredible.  Once that happens, saturating the web with your video containing backlinks to your site will truly be the SEO boost that many just long for today.

Andy Jenkins sure knows how to make a video.

Go watch the second installment of his pre-launch campaign for his upcoming product, “The Video Boss.” Even if you have absolutely NO PLANS to buy the actual product, you want to watch this video both for the rock-solid content and to analyze it as a pre-launch marketing video.

He’s getting thousands of views and people are actually watching it, they aren’t clicking out after a minute or two.

Andy’s video goes against the grain by being nearly 20 minutes long.  It works because it is infused with so much personality and true content.   The content makes it worth watching and his personality makes it entertaining to watch.  The perfect formula.

In this video, Andy goes through the entire process of making a simple marketing slide show video out of either Power Point or Apple Keynote.  He really packed this video with real advice, it’s not just a sales pitch disguised with a few common sense tips.

Andy covers scriptwriting by demonstrating how to take a very boring list of product features and turn it into compelling sales copy.  Then, he shows how to add emotional appeal with simple visual elements.

I really enjoyed watching the video and it is obvious to me that Andy Jenkins is a master visual storyteller.  Nothing about his videos are complicated.  There is absolutely nothing from a technical standpoint that makes these video superior.  What makes them stand out is the way Andy writes and reads his copy.  He is NOT adlibbing and he freely admits that.  Just like I always advise, Andy writes out a script and practices it multiple times before recording anything.

As he writes, Andy polishes his copy with delicious words and clever jokes.  It flows, but does not drag.  That is the result of copyediting and deleting extra words.

He reads it all with tons of confidence and personality, freely laughing like it is the most spontaneous thing in the world but of course it is all planned, rehearsed and staged.  That’s video making!

There is a lot we can all learn just by following Andy’s example.   These videos are proving to be so popular there’s no doubt that by the time he launches Monday Feb. 15,  lots of people will be so impressed and excited they’ll fork over the $1,997 fee.    Wow.  Nearly 2 thousand bucks.  That’d sure buy a lot of one-on-one consulting time with me….  Just a thought!

Thanks for reading video production tips.

Lorraine Grula

If you’re interested in video SEO, have a seat and watch this free webinar.

Produced and hosted by Ooyala.com, an online video publishing platform, the webinar features talks by three experts:

1. Video SEO expert Mark Robertson of Reel SEO.com
2. Pete Kocks, President of the video search engine Truveo
3. Sean Knapp of OOYALA.

It runs around 50 minutes and I found it quite informative. Each of the three experts provides a unique perspective.

I originally saw this webinar for free over at Mark Robertsons site, Reel SEO, which is always a wealth of information about Search Engine Optimization as it relates to video. Mark is the first of the three experts to speak.

Of course I had to laugh at the host who apparently had no idea her mic was picking up so well when she was not speaking! Well, I had to forgive her because she sounded so young and the Mommy in me won out over the hard nosed professional.

At least for the first few minutes. So… other than the young dunderhead who needs to learn at what the phrase STONE COLD QUIET means, this is a great presentation!

I appreciate the ability to embed it on this blog so my readers and I can both learn more about how to optimize our videos for the search engines.

Thanks for reading VPT

Lorraine Grula

I swear, this man is good!

Internet marketer extraordinaire Andy Jenkins has put out the third in his four-part pre-launch video series and I loved watching it.  It’s all about how to rank well in the engines, record super-sweet voice overs like Andy, where to get kicking royalty free music and how best to post to video sharing sites.

Andy’s videos are always highly entertaining and informative.  He exudes personality.  The way he writes his scripts, reads them, then adds the music and visuals all boosts the emotional appeal of the video.  His unique style shines through and that’s what makes it entertaining.

Wrapped up in all the cleverness, Andy manages to pack  a ton of outstanding content and useful tips into the video.  Like the others in this series, part #3 runs about 20 minutes but it is absolutely worth watching.  It is a very tight 20 minutes, Andy does not ramble at all.  (That is because he writes his scripts ahead of time, then copy edits them carefully to hone his word choices and get rid of all the fat.)

No doubt most viewers, getting slowly pushed further into buying mode, think if his free content is this outstanding, how much better the paid content must be for his Video Boss product. That of couse is the entire point of a prelaunch video campaign!

Wouldn’t you agree that this is one of the best ways to pre-sell people?

In a web full of  content that pretends to be good but really isn’t, Andy’s pre-launch videos reaffirm that it is possible to produce a marketing video that is both highly informative and fun to watch.  This series has been much more informative than most.  Most marketing videos IMHO are more full of hot air, rambling promises and bragging.

Andy has been a popular and extremely successful internet marketer for quite a while.   His advice and techniques are highly valuable, which is why I pass them along!  That, and of course I am an affiliate too.  Uncle Sam, are you happy now?   I would not recommend the product if I didn’t trust Andy.  As a former member of stompernet, I can attest that his paid stuff is premium quality.  Of course I have not had a chance to review this new product, no one has. But there’s no doubt in my mind that it will be excellent because Andy is a master visual storyteller plus an outstanding marketer.    He knows way more than I’ll ever know about marketing online!

Most of you will not be able, (or probably even need) to actually buy his upcoming $2,000 product (OK $1,997) but these prelaunch videos are fantastic in and of themselves so well worth watching.

If this high end price tag fits with your budget, go for it!  You will no doubt learn so much as to make that fee really worth it in the long run.  Andy Jenkins is deserving of the title Video Boss. He himself has generated a bloody fortune with online video!

Thanks for reading video production Tips.

Lorraine Grula

Webcams: tiny, inexpensive wonders that plug directly into your computer and are a breeze to use.  There are lots of reasons why everyone should have a webcam in their arsenal of online video production equipment.  Even if I were lucky enough to have a dozen different video camera for my very own, you can bet your bottom dollar that at least two would be webcams.  (I have two computers).  If I were unlucky enough to only have one video camera, it would probably be a webcam.

I love webcams.  Not because they give the most incredible, high def resolution image.  Nope that’s not the reason.  It’s because they are:

• Brain dead simple to use
• Dirt cheap
• All-in-one camera/mic
• Barely needs any light
• Records instantly on your hard drive, no capturing!
• Helps you look ten years younger!  HUH?  (Gotta watch the video to get that one!)
• Tiny and fits anywhere

Webcams are the simplest, cheapest way to enjoy video.  With a webcam, you can take it out of the box, plug it in to your computer and be recording video of yourself within minutes.  You can edit that video or upload it to the web straight out of the camera.  You can also use a webcam to stream video live on the web too.

In order for you to get the best video possible out of a webcam, I made this video tutorial to show you the best practices for webcams.  You’ll see why just a tiny bit of light is needed, where to put it, and how to use a stack of  dusty old videotapes as a tripod.   You’ll also see a side-by-side comparison of webcam video quality and a more expensive and more complicated to use mini DV camera.

Even though the difference is indeed great, watch the tutorial to see how I spin lousy resolution into a benefit of the webcam!

Thanks for reading VPT

Lorraine Grula

As far as pre-launch video marketing campaigns go, the Video Boss series has been awesome.  Andy Jenkins knows how to make a persuasive video.   Go watch the the final video in his four-part video marketing campaign.

Of the four videos, this one is by far the most sales oriented.  That certainly makes sense if you think about the purpose of each video in a four part campaign.

The first one was to convince you that online video marketing, and Andy Jenkins, were the greatest things since sliced bread.

The second one had much more practical content and was designed to convince anyone who doubted it that Andy’s videos are top-notch.  It covered the basics of video making.

The third video was also full of practical content but the subject moved on to using video as a marketing tool.

The final video contains the most sales pitches, since he has theoretically won you over with the first three videos.

That would be the stratagy at any rate.

As I said in my email, if anyone of you buys Andy’s product through my affiliate link, then I will add a bonus of three hours of free consulting time, a $450 value.

I have no doubt Video Boss will be a fantastic product.  If you are to that level in your business and can make a commitment to spending the time necessary to fully digest the product, then the $1,997 fee would probably be dwarfed with the money you would subsequently make.

If however, you are not ready to completely dive into online video marketing at the moment, then perhaps you should opt for something less expensive, like a few hours of consultation with me!

Thanks for reading video production Tips

Lorraine Grula