Forrester Media's Atlanta Video Production Blog

A weekend of infomercials and training videos

It was a busy weekend for Forrester Media. On Saturday, we worked with a repeat client on an informercial that will air domestically and in Canada and Europe. The daylong shoot involved a sit-down testimonial and supporting b-roll, all recorded on the Panasonic P2 Varicam (AJ-HPX2700). After the shoot, the files were transferred to an external hard drive that the producer carried on the flight home.

 
The P2 Varicam is a bit of an expensive camera ($39K body plus a $20K wide angle lens), so we rent these cameras when clients need a specific look or format. With the red-hot Atlanta TV and film industry growing daily, rental houses have most every camera manufactured, making them both affordable and accessible for rental (I should mention one of the first HD cameras I ever used was the DVCPro HD, tape-based Panasonic Varicam). While I can't begin to count the number of times I've shot on the Varicam, I know that I've spent more time behind the Sony HDCam F900, which many would consider the competition to the Varicam. Enough of cameras, back the the weekend.

On Sunday, we spent the day working on location with another regular client on a training video for Cisco. This shoot included 4 actors portraying Cisco employees and clients and the topic was a good one...'the cloud.'

We continued the shoot on Monday in our studio with a hosting segment shot on our studio green screen. We used our teleprompters on both shoots, allowing the talent to focus on delivery of their lines rather than worrying about memorized lines.

If you've never used a teleprompter, it's a wonderful tool on most any production and the cost is, in part, offset by allowing the production to move quicker than if the talent had to memorize lines.

This week is loaded with additonal projects including a live satellite media tour from the Atlanta Motor Speedway and covering an event at the Chick-Fil-A College Kickoff at the Georgia Dome on Saturday.

Our updated website features new services, design

Our newly updated website went live last week, features a complete makeover and includes some newly listed services. While we've been providing many of these web-based services for some time, we had not been actively promoting them. I'm happy to say 'now we are!'

The overall includes several other changes including a detailed listing of our equipment on our new camera crew page. We work with out-of-state producers every week, so it just made sense to include a comprehensive listing of our equipment, which I'm sure you'll find will be more than sufficient for most productions. Anything we don't own, we can rent from our local vendors.

Our newly-listed services include video encoding and video SEO (Search Engine Optimization), video hosting and distribution and social media integration. We offer consultation for clients needing to venture into new marketing or advertising channels, develop a concept or creating an in-house video department, to name just a few recent projects.

Since many clients come to our studio, we created a mobile version of our website. Now clients en route to us can simply type in http://www.forrestermedia.mobi in their smartphones and have easy access to directions and contact information. If they are using a smartphone and they visit our regular site, they will be automatically redirected to the mobile site.

For our primary site, (www.forrestermedia.com) we chose a clean, easy-to-navigate format that can be viewed easily on any iPad or other tablet device, as well as laptops and desktop computers.

Please take a moment to visit our new site, watch our videos and review our information. Then feel free to call, click or visit us! Now more than ever, we are delivering our clients a Higher Definition of Video.

 

Search Engine Optimization Myths Revealed

As the video and online worlds merge, it's important that clients treat Video SEO as important as standard SEO. Speak to any web person and they'll have a list of SEO do's and don'ts. I came across this article by Brad McCarty on The Next Web last evening that addresses some of the most common concerns on SEO and while not addressing video, it's still a good read.

In fact, we use SEO techniques every day when we work on our websites, forrestermedia.com and atlantabroadcastcenter.com. Utilizing SEO with video increases your visibility to search engines and ultimately, your customers.

You can click on the photo below to be taken to the article.

 
After working on our sites for the last several years, I can say there's no magic elixer to instantly get to the top of the search engine results page. It takes constant work, refining strategies and techniques. Since Google is the 600-pound gorilla in the SEO room, most of my attention is focused on their ever-changing requirements, though I also feel it's a mistake to ignore Bing, Yahoo and other search engines as they can also provide valuable results. Some days I feel I'm as much a web person as a video person and these days, that's not a bad thing.

A new solution for video hosting

Until yesterday, if you wanted professional video hosting, odds are you chose one of two popular options. The first was paid hosting, usually through a vendor that charged at least $99 a month, plus possible bandwidth fees. The second option was YouTube or another free hosting site.

I'm pleased to say today you have a third option: Vimeo. Never heard of it? Well, that doesn't surprise me. Prior to August 1st, it was a site primarily intended for content creators, not the business world. They have wisely chosen to embrace business by offering a 'Pro' package that offers just about everything a small business would want for their video hosting. Generous storage and bandwidth come with the Pro package, enough to hold hours of content (50GB) and serve the majority of small businesses (250,000 plays annually = 684xdaily).

For $199 annually, it's a deal that's hard to beat. Add the fact that you don't need to load a player onto your website (just cut and paste a short piece of code that includes the customizable player) and that the service detects the playback device (it plays on everything) so you never disappoint a viewer, makes this an even better deal!

 
 With each account comes a settings page where you can manage videos, decide on embedding options and view detailed analytics.

There's no reason why any small business shouldn't consider Vimeo as an affordable, quality option for video hosting. Of course, you do need a video to host and that's where Forrester Media comes in. We do business videos every day and could produce one for your business for less than you think. Give us a call to learn more about our services and discuss Vimeo as a hosting option for your new video.