We're Shooting CEOs!!!

Okay, actually the CEOs in the CEO Club Of Boston are  really nice folks. Led by Chairman Fred Greene, the Club allows CEOs to share their insights with one another in a safe and nurturing enviroment. Member Jeff Starfield, CEO of CDWorks contracted us to videotape the 10th Anniversary meeting. Our CEO Geoff Briggs videotaped the event, liked what he saw, and soon joined the Club. Productive Media now provides all of the audio and video recording services, and also provides Audio/Visual support in the form of projectors, wireless mics, knowledge, and whatever else is necessary. The CEO Club of Boston is a terrific, well-run forum for CEOs to share truly inspiring thoughts and opinions, all while learning something new.

Boston: A Great Place to Study!

Our friends at FLS Boston Commons routinely ask us to provide their exchange students with a little video reminder of their experience in Boston. Often this is a dance performance, but we're always open to help with anything else.

When FLS VP Michael LaRiccia asked us to produce a quick and informative video that showed parents of prospective students how effective and enjoyable it is to study at FLS, we jumped right in.

After a short meeting with Michael to tour the facilities and to find out what was special about FLS Boston Commons, Editor Tara Neves and Producer Geoff Briggs put together a timeline a script for a two-and-a-half to three minute long video, ran it past Michael, got a few minor changes, and then produced everything with a one-day shoot and two-day edit.

The result covers all of the points that Michael wanted to hit, without bogging down or going into information overload. Michael was very pleased and so were we!

Cry Havoc, and Let Slip Our Inner 15 Year Old!

Every year our senior digital media specialist, Seth Wereska, endeavors to do the impossible. He tries to produce a marginally professional promotional video of a charity fund raiser gala.

We know. You're thinking: "Really, that's not so hard."

And we'd agree, except this gala takes place over the course of about 14 hours and travels over 3 miles on foot . .  Oh, and it stops at 15 or so bars. 

The Hancock Street Pub Crawl was started ten years ago by a group of friends after one of their children was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect. Initially it was held to raise awareness, but now it benefits Little Hearts an organization that offers community, support, advice and advocacy for children with congenital heart defects and their families. 

Seth got involved 7 years ago, first as a crawler, and now as their resident videographer. Each year we put together a video that explains what the crawl is, while commerating the event for vetern crawlers and recruiting new ones. 

Crawl videos have helped to swell the event to having over two hundred fund-raising participents.

It's Easy; All they want it perfection.

We go back a long way with Christine Lee Halbig who now hails from the Boston University Health Policy Research Institute and is working with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  She is helping to revamp a website and wanted to incorporate much more video content,  and to include more extemporaneous answers that were excised from video interviews. So she's been criss-crossing the country setting up video crews at the locations where her interviewees were already meeting. 

In Boston we were happy to be her crew. 

The nice thing about knowing somene for the better part of a decade is that you can speak your expectations plainly. Christine made her expectations clear with one simple statement: "I was promised perfection."

I suppose that might seem like a tough standard, but we've been doing almost this exact shoot for the last fifteen years. These days most of the projects we work on are multicamera, live streamed, or part of a show with multiple video roll-ins, a live audience and several video projectors. There are a lot of moving peices (and a lot of last minute changes). While we generally get it right, those gigs can really keep you on your toes.

Christine's statement reminded us that we were back in the the comfort zone of a single camera interview in a mostly controlled setting, with a director/interviewer and plenty of time to slow down and approach things in a more craftsman-like manner. It was really quite nice. 

Did we acheive perfection? Well the audio guy stopped the interview a couple of times due to sirens in the back ground, and he did complain about the air conditioning system; and the Director of Photography would have liked it if there was more available power for lights. But the important thing is that only our staff was complaining.  The footage looks and sounds great.  Darned near perfect!

Asperger's Association of New England's first live webcast.

AANE is a leader both regionally and nationally in fostering awareness, respect, acceptance, and support for individuals on the Aspergers and Autism spectrum, and on a recent weekend a part of that fostering of  involved a live web presentation given by Professor Liane Holliday Willey.  Productive Media was glad to be able to enable the AANE's first ever live web event. We brought our custom encoding rig, a wireless microphone setup and an HD camera to their offices, and with a minimum of disruption we were able to capture and share Mrs. Willey' story for the paying attendees who could not arrive in person.  We also were able to archive the recording so that the AANE can post it to their website in the future.

We're always happy when we can help another good organization get started in the live internet event space.