Samsung, well, actually whoever their production company is, has the cool viral video of the day with their Samsung Omnia (i900) Unboxing video:
I have no idea if the phone lives up to the video, but the production on this little gem is seamless. Nice job.
In a big boo-hiss development, the i900 runs on a Windows Mobile OS. Oh well, the viral was cool.
A couple of recent things have got me thinking about specialization. (Wow, what a lofty first sentence.)
The July issue of EventDV magazine arrived on Friday, with perhaps the most memorable cover story I’ve seen in quite a long time: “Brian MacKenzie: Unicycling Glidecam Videographer.” Now, I’ve been at this video thing for a while, but I’ve never put those words together in one sentence. Talk about a specialist.
What struck me as I read the article, was just how matter-of-fact it is to him. Here’s a guy who just combined two of the things he does, that’s about it, but to us uninitiated folks, it seems like such a far-fetched combination, that no one could possibly put them together successfully. Well, he has, and seemingly quite well. Brian’s website is http://www.balanceproductions.ca/, if you’re looking for a Unicycling Glidecam Videographer.
The second thing that got me a-thinkin’ was a brief conversation with Tom Clifford (aka Director Tom,) who called me after I congratulated him in a blog comment on his new blogging gig at FastCompany. Like most conversations with video guys, the conversation turned to: “So what are you shooting these days?”
I told him about an ongoing project we’ve been doing for the Dome-Tech Group and one of their clients, Columbia University on their newest building Studebaker Hall. We’re documenting all of the building systems (HVAC, Fire Control, Building Management System, Plumbing, etc.) with reps from the installation companies for future reference; so 10 years from now, when a new boiler tech starts, he/she has access to just how each system works as-installed.
Tom seemed genuinely surprised when he said he’d never thought of that as a use for video before. (I’m paraphrasing) I suppose that’s one of our specialties here at Brunswick Media Services, but it never really struck me as anything out of the ordinary. For the most part, we do industrial & corporate video, which means on any given shoot, we’ll be crawling around a manufacturing facility taking shots of machines in action… a la Dirty Jobs, but without the slick on-camera hosting. So it was pretty natural for us to move into this kind of video: we know a bit about the machinery, we know a bit more about the video, voila: our specialty.
Sure we’ll shoot just about anything our clients need, but we’re at our best wearing steel-toe boots, and proper PPE with some Super-Axe-Hacker cranking away in front of the camera.
So what’s your specialty?
Playing catch-up here lately. Here are a couple of fairly unrelated things I’ve come across for your weekend (and beyond) reading:
I can’t imagine how much time and thought went into this piece, but if you’re even a little bit interested in adding viral video to your marketing mix, this is a must read for trying to understand just how big a topic this really is.
Alltop gathers the RSS feeds from the top blogs on a given topic, and presents them on one page. Topic areas range from the useful to the absurd, but it’s a quick way to scan the top blogs out there. In particular, I’m a big fan of the Small Business, Marketing, and Ireland topics. Give it a try, you may find your new favorite blog
Back to work, have a good one.
Steve Hudgik over at The Safe Workplace Blog pointed me to this campaign from the Workers’ Compensation Board of Nova Scotia , Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Worker’s Compensation Board of PEI (Prince Edward Island for us Yanks). The campaign has 3 videos (titled Bucket, Ladder, and Nail) produced by The Extreme Group, one of which (“Nail”) won a Bronze Lion at the 2008 Cannes festival.
From the Extreme Group’s website:
Extreme Group, along with the Workers’ Compensation Board of Nova Scotia , Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Worker’s Compensation Board of PEI have taken home a Bronze Lion in the Product and Service, public health and safety category for their “nail” television commercial at the 2008 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. This is the first time a Nova Scotian agency has taken home one of these prestigious awards.
Aside from being visually compelling (in as much as a spot about a bucket can be visually compelling) the spots are effective, direct, and flawlessly produced… everything a safety spot should be… and I wish we had a hand in them.
OK, here’s where you can take a look at the videos:
http://www.extremegroup.com/work/42
or
http://www.worksafeforlife.ca/doit.php?cat=Advertising
Congratulations to the Extreme Group folks.
We’ve been using a great service called HitTail for the last year or so, which gives you a basic idea of where people are coming to your website from. It keeps track of the words and phrases people search for when they come across your site. One of the top phrases people search on is “Video Production Rates.” Lately though, I’ve seen that phrase replaced with “Cheap Video Production” or something to that effect.