Beware the Unscrupulous Demo Makers!!!

If you’re an aspiring actor/actress or some other in-front-of-the-camera type hoping for your big break, chances are no matter how talented you are, your film or video production experience doesn’t necessarily match your on-camera skills. This can make you vulnerable to those within the film/video industry seeking to prey upon those with these dreams to make themselves some big money. Watch out! If somebody says they will do your “demo” DVD for an outrageous amount of money, don’t do it!I have had many actor/talent friends who’ve practically bankrupted themselves because some unscrupulous production person or company impressed them with the bells and whistles of “network quality” video. Here’s the scoop! If someone is looking for an on-air personality or actor, they are presumably the...

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Hire a video professional

As a teacher, I often tell my students that film or video is basically the same, whether you’re a professional or an amateur. “The professionals, especially in Hollywood, just have bigger toys.”As a video professional however, I’m at the same time disturbed at just how easily video can be shot, edited and uploaded by amateurs to a video sharing site. Is this because I am part of a business and hate to see potential clients go “out the window?” I can honestly say the answer to that question is “no”. What bothers me about this situation is the client becomes a victim! What do I mean by this? Well, those who dabble in video, both shooting and editing have access to equipment that years ago would have been impossible to even imagine. They can produce special effects in both sound and video. That’s...

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"What is Video Editing?"

By Leonard Aaron Caplan"This video has to be edited!", "We can do it in post!". Those two statements are very common in our video/film/digital industry. Yet, there are people who continually ask the question, "What is editing?". For me, who have been in video since 1979, this is akin to asking the question, "what is "the"? We all know it, use it and recognize it and its results, but we'd be hard pressed to define it in words.Nevertheless, I'm going to try. For one thing, editing is the process of putting something into a logical, storytelling, attractive order. You can edit writing, as I'm doing in this piece. As I go along, I read it back and either add, delete, correct spelling, etc. In editing film or video there is a lot more involved. In shooting a movie for example, the "raw", unedited...

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What Will Play On What? And What Will Not??

by Leonard Aaron Caplan Normal 0 0 1 116 662 Melrose High School 5 1 812 11.1282 0 0 0 Too often we find that people are confused about Blu-Ray, HD and what can or cannot be played on a DVD or Blu-Ray player. For those of you also wondering, here’s the scoop. Blu-Ray is the current standard format for high-definition video. HD-DVD, the competing high defintion format put out by Toshiba, was soundly defeated in the market some time ago and Toshiba stopped making those player entirely. So what we have left today are Blu-Ray and regular DVD. A regular DVD can be played on a DVD player as well as a Blu-Ray player. BUT…..a Blu-Ray disc will not play on a regular DVD player. If you by any chance have one of those left-over...

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What About Editing?..............Editing? By Leonard Aaron Caplan

POTENTIAL CUSTOMER-"Hey, will you tape my (fill in the blank....................{wedding, birthday party, anniversary, quincenearo,etc."ME-"Sure, when is it?"POTENTIAL CUSTOMER- (gives date) "How much?"ME-Oh,,,about (I give the price)POTENTIAL CUSTOMER-"What? I can get my nephew for free! Why is shooting a ______________so expensive? It's only a few hours!"ME- "What about editing"?POTENTIAL (confused) CUSTOMER-"Editing??"This little fictional dramatic exchange is an example of something very common in the world of videography. The potential customer forgets or doesn't realize that a video needs editing to look and sound good!In 2009, we've all grown up and are used to video images telling a story, having a main character or characters to identify with, camera angle changes, music as a theme...

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Learn from the 'Net! It's Free and Easy!

By Leonard Aaron CaplanThere’s a new learning phenomenon on the internet. Well, maybe not new to you or most people but definitely new to me. And that’s YouTube Tutorials! It’s amazing how anytime you might have a question about Photoshop, a non-linear video editing program, or basically any program, it’s a safe bet you can find the answer from some generous, knowledgable amateur. Results vary, of course from the 13 year old computer geek with the squeaky voice who knows everything about everything you could want to know about how to chroma key a weather map, to the mature, professorial grey haired type who SHOULD be able to give you the answer you want to know, but really only says a lot of nothing! These tutorials are mostly unsanctioned by the companies of the software...

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The Business Side of Video-TV to the Web, How Advertising/Sponsorship is Changing

Recordable video has been around since the 60’s, beginning with Kinoscope, which was more film-like than video and today we preserve our memories via harddrives. We’ve talked about how one day video will be available primarily on huge servers, YouTube being the most popular “world-server” today.What does this mean for the business side of television? The traditional system of selling ad time for commercials seems to be giving way, or at least making room for a system of posting a video online and simply having clickable boxes or banners take you to the advertiser’s website.Is this good or bad for the video business? Looking at it one way, less commercial production means less video contracts for production companies as computer/web technology merges and in some cases takes the place of video...

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What Makes an Audience Care?

What makes a good film or video? What engages you as a viewer? What separates the good from the bad or mediocre? Before we answer that, first, another question. What makes a good movie? Film analysts have found that it's not the special effects, car crashes, shock value, violence or sex that makes something we watch good or bad. It's two very simple things. 1. the story. 2. the characters.An example of what I'm talking about is the second Tomb Raider movie. Nobody went, despite the action, special effects and the star power and sex appeal of Angelina Jolie.The movie disappeared very quickly! Why? A horrible script and not a real human being the audience could root for!Ok, that's a movie but you know what? The same thing applies to every kind of film, video, webcast, etc. If someone's taping...

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Camcorders: Is Bigger Necessarily Better? By Leonard Aaron Caplan

When it comes to video cameras is bigger necessarily better? Whew! I’m glad I avoided that somewhat sleazy cliché, “does size matter?” lol. Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll ask this question. When you see a videographer at a wedding or other event, are you more impressed by a cameraperson with a huge camera or conversely, if you see someone with a very tiny video camera, are you disappointed? If you think a larger camcorder is “better”, you’re not alone. When most of the video world was analog, the larger cameras meant three tubes or later on three chips which definitely meant better depth and quality of image. This was true of tapes as well. One and two inch tapes were professional quality, U-Matic ¾ inch industrial, Betamax and VHS ¾ inch for consumers. When everything...

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The Incredible, Shrinking Video Storage Problem!

In the 1980s, consumer videotaping became the norm, with VHS defeating Betamax to nab the lion’s share of the video market. For the first time, people could tape their favorite TV shows or movies and watch them later.Flash-forward twenty odd years, and you most likely had a basement or attic filled with space-smothering tapes, no doubt some unlabelled, most you probably haven’t watched or even looked at for years. The solution? Copy your tapes to DVD!In 2009, despite the innovation and growth in popularity of Blu-Ray,the winner over HD-DVD in the high definition war of 2007-08, it’s safe to say the DVD is still king of visual digital media-for the most part.The question is, “what will we choose to watch and store our videos on in five, ten or even twenty years?There are mp3 files, which can...

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Video as an Afterthought...

We get calls all the time from people who want a 'rush' job! Whether it's taping a commercial, an industrial video, wedding or quinceañero, preserving home movies on tape or DVD, some people always seem to want their video "yesterday", if you know what I mean! The reason for this is obvious. Video is an afterthought! We're video people of course, so it's particularly difficult for us to understand how people's special message or unique keepsakes, could EVER be considered last!! We got into this business to help people get their message across, to preserve and enhance a memorable event, to tell stories and yes, to create works of art!Some people just don't realize the importance of video! No, wait! They DO realize its importance, but only at the last minute after they realize what they'll be...

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Common Courtesy in Business

It seems to be a trend that a client, whether corporate or average consumer will request a quote for whatever video service they want or need and then..................they disappear!!! I wonder if they would do the same if they realized how much time and effort it takes to get price quotes from vendors on video equipment, tapes, lights, studio rental, etc.? Of course, everyone has a right to choose whom they want or don't want to do business with. That's not the point! The point is an all too rare thing is our society these days called "common courtesy". If you don't want our services, at least tell us asap! Don't leave us hanging and make us keep calling, wasting money, time and energy that could more productively be used to pursue other prospec...

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The Cutting Edge!

Welcome to our first blog! At Higher Dreams Productions, though we specialize in video production, we try to stay at the cutting edge of all forms of communication. I guess you could say that blogging is our latest method of keeping our clients and colleagues up to speed on what we're doing.A short history of video since the 1980s can gain us some insight on where we're going and why. In the 80s and earlier, video was video, audio was audio, print was print and that's all there was!With the advent of computers and the Internet of course, all that changed! All of us video people had to start re-educating ourselves in the 1990s to use non-linear editing systems, digital "camcorders" (a word that never existed before!) and eventually high definition, "streaming" video, ipods and webcams came...

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