by Jorge Parra
Allow this 100 plus pages, from Creative Lab @ Google, to load both images and videos, and take the time to explore them, to find out how the world and all the rules are changing. This is just heart-stopping and life-changing. Go HERE!
[by Gail Mooney]
#1 Reading recommendation:
From Still to Motion by Richard Harrington – Peachpit Press
Harrington has written 27 books on everything from Photoshop tips to Final Cut Pro and other software applications. In his current book “From Still to Motion” he documents a field case study creating a video with the hybrid camera Canon 5D Mark II. This book is a must have for any still photographer who is thinking of moving into motion.
Gail Mooney runs a video production company www.kellymooney.com.
[by Gail Mooney]
Video is the hot topic these days. You’d think it was a new thing. But there’s nothing new about video – it’s been around almost as long as TV. What is new is that broadband has made online video viewing integral to the Internet experience.
In the last year alone we’ve seen an explosion of video viewing and sharing on social networking sites. Advertisers are shifting their marketing dollars to the Web and online ads are booming. Why? Because marketers know that the consumer is going online to see and hear more about the products they are thinking of buying. It’s one thing for a potential customer to see a static image accompanied by text and quite another to see a product in use and demonstrated, or to hear the story behind a company. Online Web videos can be linked and shared and are searchable, providing more possibilities for potential customers or clients to find you and what your company offers.
If you run a video production company, it’s a no-brainer that you’ll want to use video samples to promote your business. But video is also effective for promoting all types of businesses, including still photography. You can import your still images into some type of non-linear editing system like Final Cut Pro, add a narrative track and/or music and create a video promo of your work for online viewing. This promo can also be uploaded to a mobile device giving you the ability to show your work to potential clients in a quick and interesting fashion, anywhere, anytime. Better than your typical “elevator speech” when someone asks “What do you do?”
Another very effective way to market and promote your photography business is to create a behind-the-scenes video. Everyone loves a story and this is a great way to tell people about your company as well as provide more information about yourself and how you work.
Gail Mooney runs a still photography and video production company with her partner Thomas Kelly at www.kellymooney.com. Gail share more on this topic here.
[by Paula Lerner]
Pricing a multimedia project is not unlike pricing a still photography shoot: usage is the key factor. As a parallel example for a stills only assignment, I would price a shoot for photo usage in a hospital brochure or a university view book quite differently than I would price a print ad shoot for a consumer product — different usage requirements fall into different pricing categories.
When writing a project proposal for multimedia, take the usage into consideration when you come up with a base price for the project. Your Assignment Agreement should spell out what usage is included, along with specifics of how many hours of production time, how many iterations of the feature are included, out-of-pocket expenses, and so on. Anything above or beyond that agreement incurs additional charges, and this should be discussed with the client up front. That way if they keep sending you back to tinker with the audio or images, they know that they will incur additional costs and you will be compensated.
Keeping good time logs to track the work you do is important. I use a simple excel spread sheet to log the total hours I’m spending, and what I spend them doing. This serves two purposes:
1. I have records to use to make sure I will bill the client for anything over and above the original agreement;
2. I have good records to use to estimate the next project.
If you are doing your first project and don’t know how long things will take you, go out and produce a project on your own to get a sense of it. Yes, there will be a learning curve and hopefully you will get faster as you get more experience (just like with stills), but at least you will have a starting point.
In addition, it is a good idea to find out what it costs in your neighborhood to job out any piece of the project. This is basic research: make some calls to production houses or independent producers and see what it would cost to hire someone. This will educate you as to what the market will bear in your region, and will help you develop a network of contacts should you need help. Whether you do the production work yourself or hire someone else to do it, you want to make sure there is enough money in your budget to cover it.
[by Jay Kinghorn]
As the mobile phone begins to replace the television and personal computer as the primary screen for interfacing with the Internet, and print continues to decline in popularity, this shift will impact the way photographers create photographs. While a two-page magazine spread can contain a rich array of subtle tones and fine details, the relatively low resolution screen of a computer or a mobile device cannot. To have impact on a small screen, a photograph must be tightly composed, cleanly lit and catch the viewer’s attention immediately.
Unfortunately, these small screens remove much of the subtlety that makes photography such a powerful medium. To bypass the limitations of the small screen, my guess is photographers will adapt to the technological limitations of mobile screens by using a series of images to tell a story, instead of relying on a single, all-encompassing photo.
Photographers who take time to rethink their compositions, lighting and visual storytelling options will be better suited to succeed in all mediums, regardless of the twists and turns technology throws at us.
