Video Production Best Practices: Affordable Craft Service Thought-starters

April 13, 2014 by smartygirl Leave a Comment

Doug Kreitz, a guest instructor for digital photography and digital video production at the Palo Alto Media Center, can tell you what type of pizza the lighting crew and stars of the Big Bang Theory eat. Kreitz was a VIP visitor on the set.

Photo Credit: Palo Alto Media Center featuring Doug Kreitz

Besides in-field production sound tips about lapel mics versus shotgun mics, I learned so much more than 3-point lighting for interviews. The key? Craft services. As an emerging student producer of videos, your reputation is built on how you treat your crew, how well you plan your shots beforehand out of consideration to said crew, and how you act as an ambassador when talent recruiting and location scouting.

Photo Credit: Renee Marchol CuriOdyssey short documentary with Wildlife Keeper

All that and how well you feed your crew. Beverages and solids are not optional. When crew decline and say that they’d rather just nap like the dead after a 7 hour shoot, as producer it is your duty to follow up and treat them to a lunch to show appreciation. It is manners. Don’t and you are damned because word will get out that you don’t know the industry ettiquette.

Photo Credit: Renee Marchol Royal Pin Donuts Peninsula Personalities documentary short

Doug Kreitz explains that craft services is showing consideration and respect for the camera operators, lighting staff, sound SmartyGirls and assistant production crew Smarty Fellas. It’s not about cost. It’s about hospitality and taking care of your allies. Climbing ladders, trekking through barn spiderwebs, and shooting from multiple angles for an outdoor documentary requires refueling and hydration.

Thoughtstarters:

A cooler of chilled bottled drinks and deli-fixings for a make-your-own sandwich bar. Add fresh fruit and veggies.

Pick up coffee-to-order and 3 kinds of saltenas from your favorite Bolivian pastry shop. Make sure there is a vegan and vegetarian option for non-meat eaters.

Protein bars, bottled water, bananas, apples and home-made PBJ for an athletic event type shoot.

Bring hand sanitizer and you are golden!

Follow all food safety and handling best practices so no friend gets sick from your craft services.

Caution: As producer, conserve your energy for the task-at-hand rather than exhaust yourself being Mr./Ms. Thanksgiving spread (all homemade). On rare occassions, you might want to host a thank you brunch at your apartment. Even the smallest apartment can accommodate the two item hospitality winners homemade meatball subs and Apple Jack (Cheese) Bread Pudding.

Try these budget-friendly craft services ideas for your next 5 hour podcasting work session with audio talent.

Photo Credit: T is for Tabby Guest Podcaster Apple Jack Pudding by SGL Media

Apple Jack (Cheese) Challah Bread Pudding
Cavalier Eric Hero Subs

A sneak peak? Visit SGL Media on YouTube and SoundCloud this summer for its podcast pilot featuring the voice talents of actor Chasya Hill and Guest Podcaster Engineer Tabora Constantennia in “T is for Tabby” for its pilot: An Interview with Tiamat, the 5-headed dragon. Recipes for Roasted Bogmen with Lightly-charred Flowers in a green sauce? Yes, we’ll share that recipe too.

Photo Credit: Cartoon Scrapbook Tiamat from Dungeons & Dragons TV series

SmartyFella Humor: A Business Memo

March 27, 2014 by smartygirl Leave a Comment

At the workplace, you don’t have to create a new variation of The Aristocrats’ joke, in order to entertain. Why not have some fun in the space of a business memo for a mundane request? Our SmartyFella Despite Mike keeps marcom interesting at SGL Media.

Photo Credit: The Least Weird Business Memo Received by Jack Paper at SGL Media

Curious what’s on Despite Mike’s mind? Follow him @FellaSmarty on Twitter before his brain is made into ravioli by Jack Paper.

5 Best: Asshattery Saturdays by SmartyFella Broiled Jeff

March 15, 2014 by smartygirl Leave a Comment

5 Best This Week

1 Sharpening the Saw or Filling the Fruitbowl

Across industries, we hear from top performers what separates the leaders from the wash-outs: take time to recharge. It’s a shame, if we treat our bikes, cars and devices better than we do our own body. Don’t you agree? From Healthcare Software Debuggers to Montessori Program Educators, the same best practice occurs in the top performers in their field. As Asian-Australian Comedian YouTuber MyChonny might say, “Calm your man-boobs, down!”

Impolite? Yeah. But it cuts to the point. No one wins when a leader drops dead from a cardiac arrest while soiling himself/herself in the middle of a regional webcast. Right?

Analogies for non-power tools with serrated edges or Eden illustrations, leave you cold? Okay, imagine a depleted cookie jar. Old school. Thanks, SmartyGirl Kai for this badass example. How can you create that Zen moment to bring back sanity to your schedule? Is it buying resin for your cello? Is it restringing your acoustic mandolin? Not musical? Is it listening to actual tweets from the raptors at CuriOdyssey’s aviary in San Mateo? Like the cabby from the 2004 movie “Collateral” virtual vacation via visualization might be what keeps us from being a reluctant star on Vine having a meltdown.

Think of the cost of not planning ahead to clear your headspace and become a better you. Consequences? Increased turnover of your employees because you douche-out as Grumpy Cat middle manager. Increased health insurance premiums that alert your enterprise to shackle you with a FitBit to monitor the lowering of your blood pressure in 90 days or risk probation. Increased work-life dissatisfaction where you long for a violent, highway speed death just so you have external permission for some hospital rest. Irrational? Yep, that’s the short circuiting of a leader-mind that we all want to avoid.

2 Thought-starters for Refriending Yourself:

1. Notice that Zombie Hunting Permit in the red Honda Fit on California Avenue. Sure, you are waiting for garage parking that does not say monthly permit holders only in San Francisco. However, can’t you afford a chuckle at a bumpersticker? The United States is modded out in white with pinpricks of blood red leaking into Kansas to show the growing biohazard threat of the undead. Come on, now. Laughing with let you breathe through traffic stress.

2. Treating yourself to a Café Au Lait with Almond Milk though it takes 20 seconds more in line and maybe a look of annoyance from your local barista to tailor your drink so you don’t get the squirts at hour 10 at the office.

3. Re-watch a clip of Office Space for retro fax machine murder. Ideation? Maybe. But who actually has an archaic fax in view at the workspace. No fax machines will die as a result of your imagination. Pull on a pair of Harbinger gloves and beat the sh-t out of the standing kick-n-punch weighted bag during your dinner break before you do another 4 hours of overtime.

3 Death Therapy

Memento Mori

This is in no way promoting a nihilistic/fatalistic point of view. We are borrowing from best practices from writers who were English major undergrads, though. After listening to the comedy musical on SoundCloud, consider the ultimate Beginning With The End in Mind: write your novelty obituary. Novelty is the adjective. I remember doing this for sh-ts and giggles in journalism class to learn the format of such announcements.

Remember Corey Feldman in a Disney shipwrecked teen movie? He played a stoner who posited how cool it would be to be memorialized on a funereal page in his high school year book: Killed by Tigers. For those who are participating in Camp Nanowrimo this April 2014, this might be a writing warm-up.

The Editor-in-Chief, Renee Marchol, summons her courage sometimes and gets scary Zen when she says that she feels super-calm before a high-stakes pitch if she pretends that she is already dead and no rejection can hurt her. Too dark and quirky? Maybe, but it works for that boss lady.

As part of the employee selection process, prospective SmartyFella interns screened by Despite Mike, Broiled Jeff and Jack Paper must give a three sentence obit announcement. Example? Jack Paper offers: Jack Paper died at age 77 in an hot air balloon explosion over the Atlantic Ocean doing a piss-poor imitation of the Count of Monte Cristo Edmond Dantes being a showoff. Like the imagination exercise above about murdering the f-ck out of a fax machine, SGL Media suggests that no action be taken by any individual to hasten the real need for an obituary release. ‘Nuff said?

4 Embrace Embarrassment

Haters Lose Their Power

Receive a negative comment or a challenge via a social media share post? Called nutty or something more R-rated? Show that you can take it, and spin that label so that a troll or a new friend knows you are imperturbable. Don’t flame. Instead laugh with him/her.

Think of Pain as an Ingredient for Stand Up

Profit? When something is beyond your control and it hurts, have you considered this as real-life material for a stand up comedy set? Maybe later you can paid to entertain an audience with this story. Something so tragic happen to you that it is out-of-body-experience funny? Go ahead and store it in your comedy writer’s arsenal. When life gives you sh-t, can you make lemonade or even a sh-t salad? No, right? Then turn it on its head and take the power out of the circumstance’s sting.

Comedian Reggie Steele did this especially well when entertaining the audience at Rooster T. Feathers comedy club in Sunnyvale. Can’t share a spoiler but will just hint the word bear makes an appearance.

5 Pursue Alliances

Napoleon Dynamite

Vote for Pedro? Think of creative comrades to join forces during crunch time. Laugh twice as much. Also laughing to yourself seems less creepy if you have friend who also entertains your department with photoshopped pics of Minecraft+Middle Management. Dance with your moonboots in the Town Hall arcade. Have your friend announce this performance. It might draw a crowd faster than #DonutBlitz Thursday.

Deter Predators in Nature

The lone zebra is easily spotted by lionesses to cut along the lines. Right? However, it’s harder to differentiate where one zebra starts and where the pack ends when they are zigzag cocktail partying together at the water cooler. How did Don Quixote get away with tilting at windmills, at least for a short everyman’s story? Because of Sancho Panza. Think Harold and Kumar for a pop culture example. Stepbrothers also comes to mind. As strutting with confidence ready to f-ck sh-t up!

Photo Credit: Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas

Sources

Secondary Research

YouTube MyChonny

YouTube The Brothers Riedell

Step Brothers (2008)

The Artist Way by Julia Cameron

Camp Nanowrimo by Nanowrimo

Roxanne (1987) starring Comedian Steve Martin

7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey

Primary Research

1-1 Interviews with Comedians at Rooster T. Feathers (2013)

1-1 Interviews with Badasses (allies of SGL Media) (2014)

SmartyFella Humor: iCan Produce Digital Media Spring 2014 Contest

February 8, 2014 by smartygirl Leave a Comment

Miranda Sings is a YouTube Channel produced by a singer-actress and her creative buddies to parody web celebs who use poor production value without apology. You might be a fan of IndyMogul, one of the many YouTube Channels that provide DIY instruction for creating amateur digital shots with a few pro tips.

Photo Credit: SGL Media Production Student Renee

What’s the secret of special effects, proper lighting and clean audio? Following best practices such as: avoiding video editing transitions that draw attention to itself, compensating for harsh shadow on a subject’s face, and selecting the right mics when shooting raw footage in the field.

SGL Media is expanding into podcasting and YouTube entertainment DIYs. Our roll-out will be gradually over 2014. We accept mp3s and video files content of 2 minutes made by our readership via Dropbox. In other words, send us a Dropbox link to your final product.

Our Editor-in-Chief, Renee Marchol, is being mentored by Palo Alto’s Media Center as a production student.

What are a handful of YouTubers or podcasters who have your respect? Eat Your Kimchi, PBS Idea Channel, and It’s Okay to Be Smart are three of Renee’s favorite shows last year on YouTube. Much like the Summer and Autumn Fitness Challenge, our editors participate along with our blog’s readership. We wouldn’t ask of you what we are unwilling to do ourselves. Yeah, we’re legit like that.

Photo Credit: PBS Idea Channel via YouTube

For our Editor-in-Chief, her day job as a web marketing writer (i.e. corporate blogger) puts her in work teams with audio and video experts regularly. After all, content is not just through reading but viewing still images and listening to the soundtrack that accompanies dynamic video. Right?

Therefore, heeding the call of Wired’s Clive Thompson, let’s create some quality content across social media together! That’s right, it’s publishing after all. Yup. You tweet, right? Do you do it regularly? Do you express a point of view and respect your followers by entertaining them? Well, I hate to break it to you but you’ve been publishing digitally.

What’s makes publishing quality different from the alternatives?

1. If it’s blatant advertising, it will tell you so. None of that pretending-to-be-objective.
2. Someone is responsible for updating it regularly. An intern, friend or hired guest will show up to deliver content as expected monthly. A coordinator ensures that this happens.
3. The tone is consistent. Think of the Oatmeal with a slimmed-down Blerch. No way, right?
4. It obeys journalism rules of giving credit. No stealing. Stealing is d-baggery.
5. A group of decision-makers weigh-in on drafts of posts before it airs. Friends who love us will tell us when something is a very bad idea.

All that throat-clearing to lead up to the contest!

What’s this season’s creative challenge? SGL Media is hosting a comedic digital short. The prompt? What if you were given a tin can on a cotton string as a prop? How might you and your friends build a 2 minute story around it? Combine donuts and teleportation. Why donuts? Why not? Our editing team loves donuts. Renee has a weakness for pink sprinkled cake ones.

Photo Credit: SGL Media iCan Spring Film Contest Pink Sprinkled Cake Donuts

Pop a mini eclair in one can and have your friend receive it in the next town or overseas. The iCan phone: I can teleport that.

Photo Credit: Production Student Renee at Royal Pin Donuts in South San Francisco Owner Kim & Regular Ted

This contest is in line with business entrepreneurs, web creatives and stand up comedy.

Note: SGL Media is not assuming any liabilities for user generated content. SGL Media hosting is limited to selecting the winner of the digital short contest and airing the film across its sponsors social media networks including its YouTube partners. SGL is unable to assist with location waivers, talent permissions, equipment or travel expenses. Instead, we are encouraging readers to team up with existing student production crews, volunteer directors and local businesses for venues. Contest deadline: April 2nd. Winner and 2 honorable mentions will be announced May 7th!

Special thanks to Royal Pin Donuts for allowing permission for Palo Alto Media Student Renee to shoot her humor documentary this week at your location with your team of early-risers.