The Best Editing Goes Unnoticed

                     

Editing is the critical lynchpin of video production.  Academy Awards are even given for editing - that’s how important it is.  Would you be surprised if the main goal of a professional editor is for their work to go unnoticed?  Well it is.  If the editor does their job well, the viewer becomes so engrossed in the story that they don’t even notice when a close up happens, or a wide shot stays wide, or a cutaway gets inserted.  It just seems natural and what you expect to see.  That’s an editor’s goal … make it natural.

Sometimes the difference between a good video and a great video comes down to a single frame, which in video is one 30^th of a second.  It’s amazing what can happen in that short time:  a person’s eyes can twitch, a head can turn, a breath can be drawn, bodies can move, backgrounds can change, a word can start, etc. etc.   If any of these actions are left untreated it will hurt the quality of your video.  It takes a skilled editor with a keen artistic sense to work their magic, remove these offending points yet still keep the story on point.  Therefore, editing is a true art.

David and Kathryn Seay are video producers in the Dallas Fort Worth area.

www.davidseayproductions.com

Sound Design for Corporate Video

There are 2 parts to every video:  What you see, and what you hear. 

In our video production practice, our clients are keenly aware of the visuals and help make critical nuanced choices when selecting fonts, colors, transition effects, motion graphics, etc.  When all that is complete we often hear “I love it! Let’s compress it and get it on our website!” Not so fast.  We’re not done yet.  There is the other half of the video that’s been neglected.  The sound.

Have you ever seen one of those “behind the scenes” documentaries on filmmaking where they show a scene from say, Jaws and take the music out?  If you haven’t it is the strangest thing to experience.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2K-YedETiI 

Without the music track, it looks like a couple of guys out on the boat.  Add in that famous music and suddenly the hair on the back of your neck stands up and you are on the edge of your seat and scared to death.  With your company video it’s unlikely you are trying to scare anybody like that, but the point is clear:  What you hear is just as important as what you see. 

Here is a side-by-side comparison of a corporate video with sound design and the same video without:

Without Sound Design: http://youtu.be/p6j-rdKAPb8
With Sound Design:  http://youtu.be/txA8HSx1dpM

Listen carefully and take note (pardon the pun) on how the music builds and crescendos at just e x a c t l y the right time.  Also pay attention to the visual effects and what you hear when you see them.   Kudos to Johnny Marshall for creating such a killer sound design.  www.marshallsounddesign.com.

Sound designing your next video is a smart move.  It’s the best way to turn a good video into a great one.

David and Kathryn Seay are video producers in the Dallas, Fort Worth area

davidseayproductions.com

5 Common Sense Sales Tips

                      

Sales and marketing can be a complex puzzle to put together, but follow these simple, common-sense steps and you will be well on your way to increasing sales and earning life-long customers.

1.     Know your customers and provide what they want.

2.     Be a low-maintenance vendor … do what you say you will and don’t bother your clients with a million questions.

3.     Be helpful … understand your customer and come up with ideas about what will help them, even if it does not involve you or your product.

4.     Embrace new media and social media … they are the new ways to help you move your brand forward.

5.     Keep the customer’s needs before yours … if they get what they want, magically you’ll get what you want too.

We put these concepts into play with our video production business.  As a result, we have customers that we’ve worked with for years.  If you do these five things and nothing more, I think you will be miles ahead of your competitors and well on your way to a having a healthy, successful business.

David and Kathryn Seay are video producers in the Dallas Fort Worth area.