all posts tagged “productions”
The Tools of Our Trade (analog version)
Posted by: leelefever on December 12, 2007- 4:00pm
Categories: art, Behind the Scenes, lesson, ourwork, paperworks, productions
Like our videos, the tools we use to make them are quite simple. Below is a quick tour of some of the non-electronic elements of our productions...
The photo below represents a near-complete selection of the tools we use almost everyday to create illustrations and videos. You can view the photo below with "notes" on Flickr.com.
Because neither of us brought video production/scripting/storyboarding experience to the table, we've tinkered our way through and created a couple of resources that help. One is our thumbnail storyboards. Once a script is written, the first draft of visuals are done on small squares. This one is from Blogs in Plain English.
Of course, we couldn't do what we do without paper. We go through more of it that I would have ever imagined. It's nothing fancy - just HP inkjet paper. And yes, we recycle the waste.
OK, this is a electronic, but still fits. We couldn't be as productive without coffee and have fallen in love with our Keurig coffee maker. It makes a consistent cup of great coffee or tea anytime.
I see this as one of the iconic tools we use - a traditional paper cutter. Sachi is better than me with the scissors, but neither of us can cut a straight line. This does it right.
I spent too long with my art supplies spread all over the house. Finally I invested in a toolbox. Now it's like my own portable bag of tricks.
You might have noticed more color in the videos. We invested in some Tombo watercolor brush pens that I love to use. We have a set of color pens and a set in shades of gray. Inspiration from Nancy Margulies.
This looks kind of gross, but it's putty and we use it in almost every shot to stick paper to the white board.
Of course, Amos is a part of everything we do (see photo above). One hair at a time, he appears in every video.
We're very big believers that we don't need big investments in production to make our videos. We'd rather invest our time in developing what matters most - the script.
Investing in Paperworks Videos
Posted by: leelefever on July 9, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: business, home, lesson, paperworks, productions, video
If someone told me back in March of this year that we'd be making videos as our full time job in July, I would have said it was preposterous. What do we know about making videos? Such is the current state of affairs - we're booked through the summer doing paperworks videos on commissioned basis and feel 100% confident that this is the right direction for us.
Of course, having people paying us to make videos means we have to learn fast and make some investments in our equipment and software.
It was obvious with the RSS video that we 1) had little idea of what we were doing and 2) lacked any real hardware for making videos of reasonable quality. The RSS video was made with 75watt desk lamps, a built-in microphone, Windows Movie Maker and our Sony Handycam - and it shows.
Since that time we've been learning on a need-to-know basis. For instance, in between the Wiki and Social Networking videos, we made the switch to a Mac, Final Cut Express (video editing software) and GarageBand for audio. We also got a professional microphone and preamp. This was all-new territory for us both.
Since then, we've been focused on two important and difficult aspects of video: light and sound. Like most other situations, we tinker until we find something that works.
As a case in point, we became more educated about shadows recently. Creating enough light is easy, but the right kind of light is quite hard and we've declared war on shadows. 2000 watts of lighting makes a lot of shadows. We recently experimented light deflectors made out of posterboard and aluminum foil to help diffuse the light, but the war wages on.
Audio - I never knew it could be so hard. Here's a valuable lesson we learned: If you record something in a sitting and then, a couple of days later, try to re-record a section and add it to the original, it won't sound right. Consistency is the holy grail and until just recently, we had no way of creating a consistent sound. Now, thanks to some creative uses of bedding, we have our very own sound studio. Maybe one day we'll have an uber-studio like Jay.
 It's tiny and stuffy, but it works quite well for us. It reminds me of building forts in the living room when I was a kid. Remember how the forts would get all stuffy? It's same feeling.
Common Craft Video Productions
Posted by: leelefever on June 12, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: business, paperworks, productions, show, thissite, video
Common Craft (the company, not the blog) is in the midst of a change. It appears that we're becoming, quite fortuitously, a video production company.
This is our story:
As many of you know, Sachi and I traveled around the world in 2006. Along the way, we started making short videos and fell in love with putting our work on the web. Towards the end of the trip, we started to think about how we could use short videos for Common Craft. In October of 2006, an idea was born: we would make video reproductions of our Technology in Plain English blog posts.
After we came home, we created a shabby studio in an extra bedroom and I started video taping myself in front of the whiteboard, working through ideas like RSS in Plain English. It wasn't working - I felt like just another talking head. We needed something different.
Sachi came up with the idea of pointing the camera straight down at the whiteboard and using my hands to tell the story using simple language and tools. Soon after, our minds ran wild with ideas and we started thinking about the first video, focused on RSS.
We made some mistakes, but that video was our first indication that the soon-to-be-named "Paperworks" format works. The RSS in Plain English video has been viewed over 100,000 times and translated into 16 languages in the first two months after production. Our second video Wikis in Plain English was also well received.
For the second video, we added a section to the Common Craft Show page that says:
We Need You. We're looking for sponsors and opportunities to create videos for specific purposes. Interested? Contact Us.
Soon after the wiki video started making its way around the web, we started to get emails and calls. The more people we talked to, the more we realized the business opportunities. As I write this, our schedule is filling up with videos that we will produce on a commissioned basis. Suddenly, we have become a consulting *and* video production company - and we love it. This could be a big part of the future of Common Craft.
To provide a little more information on our process and goals, we created a page for Common Craft Video Productions - the newest addition to the two-person Common Craft empire. Now more than ever, we see that Common Craft is whatever we want it to be.
Oh, and one final note: we will continue to make our own videos for the Common Craft Show, but our "productions" will be separate.Â
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