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At 617 we’ve leapt in with both feet to the world of Cinema Production and our clients have been incredibly pleased with the results. To compare what we’re able to deliver today versus a year ago at the same budget is frankly incredible. It’s cost us a tremendous amount of time and resources to fully educate and equip ourselves for this video revolution, but we’ve always strived to be as close to the edge of technology as possible, and in this case it’s paid off quite well.

We’re thrilled to welcome new clients to our family, like North Texas Children’s Anesthesia, for whom we produced the following overview video for their patients:

NTCA – Children Are Special from 617 Production Group on Vimeo.

Another new client in 2010 is East Coast Air Charter, based in Statesville, North Carolina. As part of their online overhaul we produced several videos for their new website. The following is a message from their President.

President’s Message – East Coast Air Charter from 617 Production Group on Vimeo.

We also appreciate serving our existing clients, like Naturally Slim. We produced their latest 7 week online weight loss class, a follow up to their existing 10 week starter program. Here’s a short selection:

Online Training from 617 Production Group on Vimeo.

In 2010 we added the fantastic graphic designer Autumn Musso (autumn@617pg.com) to the 617 Production Group family. Autumn is incredibly talented and is really quite skilled at taking a client’s idea and translating it into something visually beautiful. One of her first projects with 617 was the cover for Stu Schlackman’s latest book, From the Star to the Cross.

We have hit the ground running in 2011, and are excited about what the year will bring! Please remember us for your audio, video, and design needs. We would love to serve you in any way that we can.

Thank you for 2010.

After shooting my video I launched iMovie and it’s fairly straight forward.  You pick a theme (if you want) and start dropping clips in.  You can adjust the length of the clips, use dissolve transitions or each theme has a unique transition.  You also have the option of using theme music or selecting your own music from your iTunes library on your phone.   The editing interface is very simple to understand, there are four buttons around the canvas, return to the main project menu, play, insert media, record media.

Below the canvas on the timeline you have your video clip above your music track.  Clicking on the video clip brings up a window where you can add titles, turn the clip’s audio on or off and edit the location details.

Clicking on a transition brings up options for having no transition, a cross fade, or a theme transition. You can also adjust the duration of the transition in this window.

Once your video is complete exporting is very simple, you can choose to export at three sizes, full 720p at the maximum.  A completed video is placed in your camera roll and from there you can upload to YouTube, send as an MMS, email, or upload to MobileMe.

On the whole iMovie is pretty slick, it does just about what I’d expect it to do.  Though I do have three complaints, or struggles I came across with this test.  Only one of which is iMovie specific but since the camera tool is critical in the process I’m lumping them together.

1. Camera Has No White Balance Options: Sometimes the auto white balance doesn’t work well.  In this piece we were at the Lego Store and the color balance was far too orange.  Even 3 or 4 presets would help greatly to be able to control the image quality.

2. Theme Music Doesn’t Repeat: At least in the theme I used, the music track was one minute long and when it ends it stops, doesn’t repeat.  My original edit was about 1:20 but it made no sense when the music ended with :20 left to go.  So I pulled some clips out to get it to 1:00 so the music would fit.  Even if it wasn’t pretty repeating the music would be helpful.

3. Can’t Upload 720p to YouTube: It appears that uploading to YouTube from the iPhone is 360p and not great quality at that.  I can understand limiting uploads over 3G if necessary, but on WiFi why can’t I upload 720p from the phone?

Here’s the video, edited together in about 5 minutes after shooting.  I’ve posted the 360p upload from my phone version and the 720p version I uploaded from my MacBook Pro after copying it from my phone.

Uploaded From iPhone

Uploaded from MBP (pick the 720p option)

iMovie is available from the App Store for $4.99

Just about everyone by now has probably heard about the stolen or lost iPhone prototype that hit the streets last month, it was full of nifty new hardware and features including a forward facing camera and the new Apple A4 processor, the same one that’s in the iPad. It will be interesting to see how close to a production unit that prototype was and if all those features will be in the latest iPhone.

But other than pure geek excitement over new gadgets, how does this new iPhone impact you even if you’re not an iPhone user?  The world, and media, are moving mobile.  There’s no denying that more and more people are accessing and using data on the go, so if you want your information to be accessible you’ve got to keep up with the changing technology.

In the mobile devices world the iPhone has (as of May 2010) 32% of the web browsing market share.  The only platform with more market share is Java ME with 39%.  But when you consider that the iPhone web browser market share is made up of only one product (the iPhone) and the Java ME market share is made up of thousands of different products running Java ME you can really see the full impact of the iPhone’s popularity.

Statistics provided by www.netmarketshare.com

All this to say that when you’re developing media for your website, we feel it’s critical to ensure that it will be accessible and play on devices that have dominant market share.  It just doesn’t make any sense to not have your video and audio as compatible as possible with as many devices as possible, yet many content producers are still publishing media in formats that just don’t work on devices like the iPhone and the iPad.  Believe me, this isn’t just an Apple fanboy talking, this is someone that is looking at the marketplace and realizing if you don’t make it accessible you could be missing out on potentially millions of viewers.

So, we will be watching the keyonte tomorrow with great interest to see what the latest tech looks like and how we can best keep up with distributing video content to these devices effectively.

Stay tuned for more!

Basically the new plans are:

$25/month – 2GB data (additional gigabytes available for $10)
$15/month – 200MB data (additional 200MBs available for $15)

If you currently have a $30 unlimited account (like existing iPhone owners) you can keep the unlimited account even when extending your contract. So you’ll be able to upgrade to the new iPhone and still have unlimited data for $30/month. iPad users, you can be grandfathered in as well, but don’t go too fast. I’ll say more about that in a minute, and the purpose for this blog post. I really don’t have any problem with the new rates, for people on my family plan like my wife and mother in law this will actually save us some money as they will be just fine with the $25 plan, and perhaps even the $15 one. So for our situation this looks to be a very slight decrease in our monthly rate. My iPad is WiFi only so I don’t have data rates with it.

But let’s talk for a minute about those that DO have a 3G iPad and why this change is really a pretty jerky thing to do, no matter who’s behind it. When the iPad was announced Steve Jobs said that they had a “breakthrough deal” with AT&T for providing data on the 3G iPad. Two plans were announced, 250MBs for $15/month and unlimited for $30/month. Decent enough prices, but the real killer part of the deal was no contract required, you could pay month-to-month only when you needed it. So sign up for unlimited this month, skip it the next, use it again when you’re on vacation the following month. That part was huge and a real selling point for the 3G iPad. That changed today, only 35 days after the 3G iPad was released.

Current iPad users can keep those existing rates (particularly the $30/month unlimited one) but ONLY if you keep paying for it each month. If you ever don’t renew one month, you’ll lose the ability to get the unlimited data rate and be forced to use one of the new rates. So essentially that “breakthrough” part of the deal, being able to only pay when you wanted service, is gone. Users are now forced to keep paying each month if they want to continue the $30/month unlimited plan. That’s the part that should burn people up, particularly those that bought the 3G iPad based on the “breakthrough deal” Apple and AT&T were offering. I saw Apple and AT&T because even though it’s AT&T’s service, it was announced from the Apple stage from Steve Jobs himself.

The reason I wanted to write this post is I had a friend call me up and say he had just heard about the changes and wanted to find a 3G iPad right away so he could get in on the old unlimited deal. He didn’t understand right away the particulars I described above, he thought if you just purchased one prior to June 7th (when the new rate changes go into effect) that he’s be grandfathered in. So I wanted to be sure my clients and anyone that reads this understands the difference.

To be clear: In order to keep an unlimited data plan on the 3G iPad you must never stop paying $30/month for that plan.

To me this feels like a bit of a betrayal, and I’m not sure where the anger should be directed. Only a month after the 3G iPad was released the terms of service have changed, that just doesn’t feel right. It’s AT&T that’s made the change, so we can clearly be upset with them, but what of Apple’s role in this? Were they unaware of this change? Did they know yet didn’t alert the public, continuing to promote the “breakthrough deal”? As I think through this I’m forced to conclude that one of two things must be true:

1. Apple knew about/endorsed the price change and that makes the original deal really fishy.

2. Apple has no control over price changes and AT&T kind of just gave Apple the shaft.

In either case I can’t see how we can trust ANY discussion of service costs from Apple Keynotes going forward. Which really makes me uncomfortable.

I just can’t imagine that Apple had any control over this, it just doesn’t seem like their style to bait and switch customers like this. In fact, at the time of this writing, the Apple website still lists the old rate plans on their site. Had this been a coordinated effort you’d assume they’d update their material in conjunction with the press release. So if Apple is powerless over data rates it would seem to indicate to me that whatever agreement Apple and AT&T had is approaching an end. Add to this speculation AT&T’s new smartphone early termination fees are increasing from $175 to $325 per line. A clear attempt to try and keep people from switching carriers. These signs seem to be pointing to Apple being free from AT&T and able to offer on multiple carriers, but who knows when that might happen.

But I wanted to at least try and make it clear for anyone currently with a 3G iPad or considering getting one, what the real deal is.

As many of us will be relaxing, grilling, swimming, and enjoying time with our friends and families today I hope we will all take a moment to consider the price paid that has given us that freedom.

Here’s a video created last year for Memorial Day that we really like.  We didn’t make it, but thought it worthy to share.

When 617 was started I can remember the excitement of finally scraping enough together from our first meager projects to purchase a Canon GL2 camera and the new Adobe Production Suite.

It was a corner turned and I can remember holding that camera and just feeling like I’d arrived. Of course even at the time it was a low end, barely professional camera, but it represented video production and I was proud of it. We made some great products with that little camera, it served us well for about a couple of years.  We’d rent other gear when necessary for projects, but it was a good workhorse camera.

In 2004 the very first HDV 3CCD 1080i camcorder was released, the Sony FX1.

We’d made a decision at 617 that it would be one of our goals to always be on the front edge of technology, maybe not to always utilize what the latest and greatest product was, but to understand it thoroughly so that we could be in a position to know if it would work well for our clients.  Looking at this camera, and the new world of HD that was opening up, we knew this was the future.  HDV was a brand new video format, with a new way to edit and required some fairly significant upgrades.  The interesting thing is that we knew we wouldn’t be delivering anything on HD for quite some time (turned out to be several years actually), because there wasn’t a good distribution method for HD material at the time.  But we recognized that our clients would be best served by shooting in HD right away, so their material would be future proof when HD distribution became more accessible.

We used the FX1 for several years on many projects, and it never failed us.  It’s a solid piece of gear, which is even more impressive considering it’s the first of its kind.

It was during our time with the FX1 that something called cinema adapters started showing up, becoming very popular.  Basically it was a system that allowed you to use 35mm camera lenses on regular video cameras to achieve some more cinematic visuals.  We jumped in, purchasing a RedRock Micro M2 unit.

The M2 was super cool and you could get some great looking shots with it, some incredible depth of field.  The problem with these adapters is that they were a pain in the rear to use, and they sucked up light like nobody’s business.  You had to basically light people on fire to be able to get a good image.  But, it allowed us to get visuals we never could before on a sub $100K camera.  Exciting times.

We later upgraded once more, this time to the Sony Z7U.  Another HDV 1080i camera, but this time we could shoot 24p (which is the rate film is shot for motion pictures) and had interchangeable lenses on the camera.  Another step for us.

The Z7u is an incredible camera, it produces some gorgeous images.  One significant reason we went with the Z7u is its ability to record on both tape and compact flash cards.  The industry was starting to move to solid state recording (no tape) and as always we wanted to stay as up to date as possible.  But in looking at the solid state recording we had a few misgivings.  We just didn’t feel comfortable trusting our footage entirely to a digital recorder, it just didn’t seem like the technology was there yet.  So we choose a camera that allowed us to record in both formats, on the card for ease of transferring and editing, and on tape for backup.  This system has served us very well, and yes we have had to pull from the tapes once or twice when the cards wouldn’t cooperate.

Enter the DSLR revolution.

Next Canon releases their DSLR line of cameras that can shoot 1080p video, most notably the 5DMII which was used to shoot the season finale of House this year.

I won’t go into all the incredible details of these cameras, but believe me when I say that it’s a HUGE change for the industry.  Perhaps the biggest game changer I’ve seen in my 15 years of working in video.  The beauty of these guys is that we can shoot with the same 35mm lenses as the cinema adapters above, but without the loss of light and labor of making them work just right.  These cameras are amazing and we are in love here at 617.  We’ve begun shooting with them as part of our regular rotation and the images we get are just incredible. We picked up the Canon T2i (a little brother to the 5DMII) and have quickly gotten up to speed on how to best use it.  Now that we’re sold we will be adding to our DSLR arsenal over the next few months.  While these camera bodies are relatively cheap, it takes a lot of gear and good lenses to be able to shoot good video with them.  Not to mention learning a different way to shoot, all of which makes us feel like kids again and it’s just wonderful.

So what’s the point of this lengthly blog down tech-memory lane for 617?  It’s probably interesting only to us, but the point is simply this.  We’re always going to keep an eye out on the edge, we’re always going to be seeing what the latest tech is and evaluating if it makes sense for our clients.  The equipment will change, and gear will come and go.  But talent remains and that’s why we work hard every day to learn something new and to improve on our skills.  So that when the next greatest thing comes along, and you can be sure it will, we will be there to make it work for our clients.  And we’ll love doing it.

The only thing that’s consistent in this industry is that things are always changing, we’re just lucky we love change.

Here's what the old site looked like on the iPad

We have moved to a more interactive style which will make it easier to keep updated and to share current project examples.   The goal is to make the site more web social, both with blog posts and sharing new examples of media and technology.

So thanks for stopping by, we’re pretty basic right now but will be adding more features and client examples over the coming weeks.  Everyday we are looking at media solutions and are always staying ahead of the curve of media technology.  It’s our goal with this site to keep you as up to date as possible with what is out there and how it can help your organization.