1) People who visit retail sites with videos stay on average two minutes longer those that don’t and are 64% more likely to buy something compared to other website. (Comscore August 2010)

2) With proper optimization a video on your website will improve your Google SEO results by 53 times! (Forrester, January 2010)

3) Over 90% of shoppers of a internet based retailer found video to be very useful in their purchasing journey. (Internet retailer 2010)

4) 60% of business people said they would rather watch a video than read text.

5) YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world behind Google and plays over 1 billion videos every day and more than 60 hours of footage is uploaded to the site every minute. The average person watches over 182 of online video every month!

6) By 2013 90% of the webs traffic will be video (Cisco 2010)

7) Video email messages get 2-3 times higher click through rates

Video traffic on mobile networks now counts for over 50% of wireless network traffic.

9) Online video viewers will reach 170 million in 2012!

10) 75% of smartphone owners watch online videos on their smart phones with 26% doing so every day!

When it comes to video production the editing process is where the magic happens. Liquid Productions uses some of the best editing software available and the some of the best editors in the country for all our projects. But what is it?

Post Production is the part of the video production that comes last (hence ‘post’) and consists of getting all of the shot footage off the cameras and sound recorders used and ready to edit. Followed by the actual edit and finally the encode which makes the video ready for whatever output you want it for.
When I say that this is where the magic happens I don’t kid, films can be made entirely in the edit suite and the same is true for the opposite. A bad edit can ruin the flow of the film and make people turn the video off.

What makes a good edit?

Well if by the end of a film you’ve seen in the cinema you say “wow that guy can act” then you’ve also seen a film that’s been edited superbly. It’s the invisible art of the video production world because if it’s good, you won’t notice it. But what makes it good? Aside from avoiding the typical mis-edits like audio not syncing and jump cuts it can be hard to judge what makes a good edit without seeing what’s been left out. We always send out clients a version 1 of the edit for them to send back any revisions. This is a very common practice with all video production companies as the client isn’t usually with us when we edit the film so the only way we can get it to exactly how they like it is to send it their way. A good edit will help the narrative of what ever the video is of flow much better and help the viewer engage more with whats being show on the screen.

What makes a bad edit?

If you begin to get bored, not understand what the product actually is or actually start to notice things wrong with the video ie, poor colour correction, sound not in sync and things like inconsistencies, where for example, the actor would have a glass in their left hand in one shot then it cuts to another shot and the glass has moved to their right hand then you are most definately watching a bad edit. When a company hire a production company to make them a film they expect the film to represent the company in the best possible way. A bad edit can ruin a potential customers view of the company and make them stop watching.

If you’d like to chat to us about our editing services then head on over to our contact page.

So you’re a company looking for a cool video production for your website and you’ve started looking for companies to produce and they’re all asking for a lot more than you anticipated, dismayed you look around the office and ask anyone if they know someone they can ask a favor for. Eventually one of your colleagues says that their friends son does Media at University and will probably charge nothing. You jump at the chance since it’s free and it’ll probably be as good right?

Wrong.

There’s a reason companies such as ourselves charge for our services (other than the fact we’re all viable business and by our very nature we need to make money). We are among the best in the country at what we do and can easily make you the film of your dreams if given the chance. This online video industry is still really quite young when compared to many other industries but due to a lot of weak broadband connection many clients (especially the smaller ones) don’t really see the need for an HD out put as their home laptop won’t be able to deal with it but as the internets getting better and faster perhaps more people will begin to see the quality of a good shot. We’ve heard of people within our industry take DVDs of videos containing work from other people that cost anything between nothing at all and a few hundred just in case the client says “that’s expensive” they’ll then see what videos that cost nothing actually look like.

The average price of a fairly basic 2-3 minute corporate video is around £5500 so if you’re working with someone that is charging substantially less than that then you will likely not get a good video out of it. We’ve been in talks with various companies in the past who go on to tell us they’ve just got a student to make it and then proudly link us to the video. Not once has the video been close to what we at Liquid Productions could provide. We can understand the reasoning as to why companies go for the student, we really can, it’s almost like getting a great deal for your company as your getting a video much cheaper than you’d expect but in reality your only getting what you paid for.

Viral videos are a fascinating by-product of the modern age we live in. With cheap video cameras and the ability to share whatever you create instantly with your friends it wasn’t going to be long before something like this happened. There are some great virals out there that really defy any sort of reasoning as to why they’re so popular such as the Double Rainbow video

With that many views gained in such a short period of time it wasn’t going to be long before companies wanted in on this. Imagine the power of a viral video production for your company. American body wash company Old Spice did and created this classic advert.

It went completely viral and was shared around every social media site tenfold and led to sales of Old Spice body wash increasing by a massive 107%. 

But how can you make one for your company? Sadly there isn’t a written formula for viral success, if we knew that then we’d all be YouTube partners making thousands of each of the videos we made, but there are some conventions that people have picked up on that a lot of viral videos seem to share, so when thinking about making a viral video production for your company it might be worth following these rough guidelines.

- Don’t just make an advert. Sure you can have the product in the video but it doesn’t really need to be used and you don’t need examples of it being used or a voice over or anything like that. The reason the Old Spice advert worked is because the concept was both clever and the acting was completely over the top.

- Make it funny. The majority of all the great viral videos out there are humorous to some extent. A good example of a funny viral video includes this recent Ecotricity advert

But they don’t have to be funny, they can hold a poignant message like this Israeli advert for the International Alzheimer’s week

It’s been shown that virals that are funny or have a positive outlook have a much longer lasting impact than those that don’t.

- Keep it short. When making a viral video it’ll be very wise to keep the video less that 3 minutes as any youtube viewing persons attention will start to tail off after that and try your best to capture your target audiences attention within the first 5 seconds so that they don’t instantly click elsewhere. People watching videos have a very, very short attention span.

YouTube is still the number one source for online videos with over 60 hours being uploaded every single minute and boasts over a billion views every day. This may seem very daunting as getting your video production noticed amongst all that would be very hard but there are a number of things you can do to increase the chances of it getting noticed. You can and should place it on every social media site you can, get your friends to watch it and in turn, if they like it, they might get their friends to watch it. Go on Twitter and send it to everyone you know, maybe even send it to celebrities in the hope that the moment they tweet it, it then becomes famous. The Double Rainbow video would likely have never been famous at all were it not for American talk show host Jimmy Kimmel posting a link to it on his twitter. It then exploded. The same thing has happened a bunch of times as some videos don’t get big instantly.

There was a great TED talk recently from YouTube themselves about the nature of viral videos. Worth a watch.

Do I need Music for my Video Production?

In a word… YES.

Music is the worlds universal language but in the world of video production music can either make or break the product that you’re trying to sell as a company. It’s a mood maker and it’s also dependent on whether it works going under any speech that may or may not be in your video.

We’ve had clients in the past ask to see their video production without any music on it at all against our recommendations, when they saw it and felt no emotional connection they promptly asked to put it back in. We did our best to not go “we told you so”, we really did. Because music can make you feel something, be it empathy, anger, joy it’s a great tool to use for corporate video production as it can make a potential customer of yours feel more inclined to buy something because the song they’ve chose is great.

There are a huge number of places where you purchase music online for use with corporate film. You can’t use the stuff you hear on the radio or your favourite song as then we’d have to get in touch with the labels that represent these artists and then we’re talking about needing a budget of potentially tens of thousands of pounds for a single song. BBC and ITV can use any track they want because they have licensing agreements with all the big labels, but for a normal video production it’d cost a lot.

No Foo Fighters for your video production then, unless you have a massive budget

There are however, plenty of great websites where you can buy great sounding music for around £60 per track. Places like Free Music Archive, Soundtrax and Vimeo Music Store are all pretty extensive and although you won’t find the latest tune by Foo Fighters or Rihanna there there’s still a lot of great music for your production. Free Music Archive and Vimeo Music Store also offer the feature to let you search by ‘mood’ as well as searching by genre.

Vimeo Music Store has many tracks from FMA and more

There are even more tracks that are available for use with the variety of Creative Commons licenses. These licenses basically state that a track can be used as long as the person using them states who the track is by at the end of the video and such. Not all of these are available for use for commercial projects but a great deal are which means you can get great quality music for half the price or none at all!

A big advantage of using tracks by Creative Commons artists is that it won’t date the video you’re making. If you use a track that’s currently popular in the charts say then when the video is still being viewed years down the line maybe you’re automatically dating the video you’ve made. You don’t want your potential target audience to think “oh this song is old” and relate that feeling to your video.

If you find that none of the tracks in your search for music suite your product or video then you may find that hiring a composer or musician to create you your own custom piece of music may be the next best thing. Not only will this likely sound exactly how you want it as you can ask them to change bits you don’t like and such but also it won’t date the film either. Bare in mind however that this option is a lot more expensive than finding a track on a online music store.

However you chose to get the music you’ve got to think long and hard about the type of song you need. You’ve got to make sure that if your using a voice over the music track below it doesn’t compete for attention. Make it so that the VO and the background music work together.
Also make sure the music is appropriate to the scene, if your using it for an establishing shot and such use music that suits the type of shot for the type of video that you’re making.

We at Liquid Productions are aware of just how important music is to a good video production and as such have a vast collection of Royalty Free tunes in our archive that we use very often. We also have a number of composers and musicians at our disposal should you decide to go down the custom route for your video production.

“I need a video. How much will it be”

This has to be one of the most common questions I get asked. It also has to be one of the most frustrating questions to be asked.

Yes we have a set price list, yes we have a set crew list, no we don’t have any off-the-shelf video solutions.

Let me paint a picture…

Imagine that you want an extension on your house. Imagine calling up a builder and saying, “I want an extension. How much will it be?” Of course the builder will not know where to start, if he suggests a price straight away then surely alarm bells would be ringing?! He will need to know the size of the extension, number of rooms, number of windows, quality of finish required along with the timescale you require. Without this information he will be shooting in the dark estimating the cost.

This is exactly the same in video. We need to know the number of days filming, number of crew required, lighting details, venue information, actors … the list is endless. One thing I’ve heard a producer say in response to the “how much” question before is this…

Client, “mmmm video, how much does it cost?
Producer, “Do you want the Red Arrows to fly overhead?”
Client, “no”
Producer, “well it’s going to be a bit cheaper then…”

If you require a ball-park guide price from us for your video production then let me suggest that you send us a link to a similar video to what you’re looking for. This will help us narrow down what’s required.

Or you can fill in our quote request form, to start the budget conversation.

Edirol R44 review

I’ve been meaning to review this audio recorder for a while now, but never got around to it.

What is the Edirol?

It is a field audio recorder that can take four XLR / Jack inputs and records high quality audio onto an SDHC card. You can control the four channels level individually and it has inbuilt effects and compression filters.

What’s it like?

We use the Edirol R44 for most of our field recording in the video production world. It can also be used for live band recording, but we’ve never used it for this so I can’t comment.
In the field we often have two radio mics into the unit, along with a boom mic XLR and possibly one more XLR input too. The sound operator can set the unit to have ‘cache recording’ meaning when he hits record, it jumps back 7 seconds, so nothing is ever missed. You can monitor the channels individually, or the entire mix. It’s easy to set the levels and easy to control too.

I can strongly recommend the R44, it has never let us down in over 18 months, and is an excellent lightweight bit of sound recording kit.

Any issues?

The only two issues are the battery life, which I can live with, and the limiter. The built-in limiter is a bit harsh and if you peak a channel it will crush that sound more than it often needs to, so we leave it off. It would also be nice to be able to have one input recorded to two separate tracks with different levels – is this possible Roland?

Overall an excellent bit of kit for your video production kit list.

Black Magic Digital Cinema Camera

This was perhaps the most surprising announcement of NAB. Black Magic Design are well known for their post production hardware and colour correction suite DaVinci Resolve, this is their first entrance into the already very crowded camera market. But what they’ve got packs a serious enough punch for people to really pay attention. Their imaginatively named ‘Digital Cinema Camera’ can record up to 2.5K (so a fair bit more than standard HD, easily enough to correct and alter video in 1080 timelines in your NLE). It can record RAW as a CinemaDNG 12-bit and also record Pro Res and DNxHD so there’s no need for transcoding your footage upon importing. And amongst many other great features it has 13.5 stops of dynamic range, a HD-SDI port, a Thunderbolt port, a large touch screen panel on the back and an EF mount AND comes bundled with DaVinci Resolve. But perhaps the biggest most important thing about this camera is the price.

It’s only £1900!

This thing is going to sell out like hot cakes. It is also going to give Canon and Nikon a bit of a headache. A first look at what this camera is capable of shows it’s at least as good as the new Canon 5DMkIII and Nikon D800, and it’s considerably cheaper than the former. We’re yet to see how it deals with Moire and Aliasing, what it’s like in lowlight, whether it has serious rolling shutter issue and a host of other things but the people that have gotten their hands on the thing at NAB have all reported very positively towards it. We’ve also heard this camera has a battery life of only 2 hours and will take 90 minutes to 2 hours to fully recharge again! Doubtless there will be third party adapters appearing for this thing soon, but the fact that it runs off a built in battery that is unusable for a day shoot adds one pretty massive drawback for us at least.

This camera could potentially be the DSLR killer people have been looking out for or at least the start of something very special indeed. Sony, Nikon, Canon and Panasonic will be watching what happens to this camera very closely.

Watch the video below from DSLR News Shooter as they discuss the camera at Black Magic Design’s stand at NAB.

Canon 1D-C

Canon announced a couple of big cameras a little before NAB and they were ready for being demoed at the show in Vegas. The first up is former concept camera we saw a picture and model of when the C300 was announced back in November. The Canon 1D-C is the first DSLR that people are touting as being video camera first, stills camera second. This is because this is also the first DSLR that can shoot at 4K! When this thing first made its appearance in November some people never thought it would actually see the light of day. Why would anyone need a 4K DSLR? And really, that question does kind of still stand. 4K may be the way the industry is going (not 3D!) but the output for 4K images just isn’t there yet. Maybe if your outputting for the cinemas but in the home or online is a no go. Some say it’s going straight after the RED Scarlet, but it’s inability to shoot 4K at anything other than 24p is a big disappointment and very limiting to anyone in Europe and Asia and our standard frame rate for broadcast is 25p. It does however shoot 1080p at all the standard frame rates you’d expect including 60p and it also has a full HD uncompressed HDMI output. But then there’s the cost… it’s Canon’s most expensive DSLR on the market (by quite some way) at £10,000 this will make it a very difficult camera to really recommend to DSLR videographers… It’s basically the same as the 1DX with more features and a little over twice the price and it seems they’ve taken features that should have been on the 5DMkIII like 1080p 60p and full HD HDMI output.

It will be interesting to see who purchases this camera over say the Sony FS700 and RED Scarlet which are both similarly priced and both getting big 4 and 6k upgrades in the future (respectively).

Canon C500

On the same day Canon also released the EOS C500, which basically is a C300 but with the ability to shoot 4K incredibly well. It can capture 4K RAW as well as 2K with a 12bit 4:4:4 signal placing this camera right up against the big Hollywood cinema cameras like the RED Epic and Arri Alexa, meaning it’s likely going to be priced at around the same amount as those two. It also features a 120fps ‘slow motion’ mode which films at 1080p. Ergonomically it’s exactly the same as the C300 bar a few more ports on the right side, making this camera an ease to use on the set as well.

Both the C300 and the 1D-C are scheduled to appear near the end of 2012 though it’s likely the latter will appear first as the C500 is still in development as of right now and only a prototype model appeared at NAB.

RED Dragon Sensor

RED didn’t have any new cameras to announce (they’ve got the high spec market fairly well covered) but what they did announce was fairly special in of itself. Their new Dragon sensor (they always come up with the best names) is an upgrade that Scarlet and Epic owners will soon be able to stick in to their RED cameras. Why would they want to be able to do that you ask? Well how does the ability to shoot at 6K at 85fps or 5k at 120fps sound? Or how about the added 15 stops of dynamic range? It’s slightly larger than it’s current sensor the Mysterium-X and apparently the low light abilities of the camera will be improved which is great for RED as Sony and especially Canon seem to be far ahead in this respect, for example the C300 can happily film at 20,000 ISO and produce completely usable shots.
However, and I’m sure most RED users are used to this already but it will cost a small fortune. At £3000+ this is a fairly pricey upgrade and Scarlet owners won’t get it until at least 2013 which is a fairly long wait. But the thing with RED’s is that they have an ‘epic’ (pardon the pun) life span. People are still shooting on the REDOne quite happily and why not? It’s a great camera! All the REDs will still be in use for many years to come and this Dragon Sensor is only going to lengthen their lifespan.

There was a tone of other news and big releases from NAB this year but we found these 4 to be the most interesting. If you found any of these products interesting or you feel there’s something that we cruelly looked over then leave a comment in the comment section below!

In the mean time we’re gonna leave you with a lesson in how NOT to shoot film at a filmmaking and broadcast conference. So much moire it’ll hurt your eyes…

Having a video production made for your company can be a daunting thing. You’re essentially dipping into a world your not used to and all these new words and phrases will be flying about and you likely won’t be certain as to what any of them mean. Well, we’ve created this handy guide just in case you were to ever get a little lost on set while we create your video production.

- “Action” This is a fairly obvious term that I’m sure you’ve all heard at some point in your life. This essentially means everything on set is good for the actors or your companies representative (if your making doing corporate piece to camera) to start performing their scene in front of the camera.

- “Cut” Again another well known phrase within filming. This means that the director is happy with whats been recorded and has told the sound and camera crews to stop recording.

- “Take” A ‘take’ is the version of the scene that is being filmed. For example if various takes were performed incorrectly or the director thinks they can be done better then he’ll cut it, then go for another ‘take’. For the opening scene of The Social Network director David Fincher made the actors perform the some shots 99 times in the strive for perfection. It’s not likely we’ll do that many takes for a single bit we can’t make any promises . Numbering takes with the clapperboard also helps immeasurably in the post production of these films. You can easily sync the audio up with video as well as helping the editor organise the footage.

- “Rolling/Speeding” This means the camera has just started recording. We tend to record 4-6 seconds before actually saying “action”. This is a bit of a leftover from the days of film as film cameras would need to get up to speed before you can play out the scene. These days with digital cameras it’s not entirely necessary but we do it anyway just to make sure the camera is in fact recording properly.

- “Quiet on set” Often said before take is being shot this means that everyone on the film set needs to be dead silent, there’s to be no talking, no mobile phones ringing (even on silent), and everyone must stay still until the director says “cut”.

- “B-Roll” This is footage that is shot for the purpose of being used as cutaways and to fill in transitions between scenes.

- “Depth of Field” This is the area in which objects are in focus. A deep depth of field means object in foreground and background are both in focus whereas a shallow depth of field gives a very limited area thats in focus. This style of filmmaking has been revived quite significantly since the arrival of the big sensored DSLR cameras. Check out the pictures below as examples…

- “Pan” This is when a camera is recording and is being moved horizontally.

- “Tilt” A tilt is where the camera is recording and is looking up and down. Quick note to all filmmakers out there… never get this mixed up with ‘Pans’. It’s wrong, you can’t pan up or down.

- “Soft” To call a shot soft means that it’s out of focus and will likely be re-taken.

- “Voice Over” This is when there is some form of narration over the top of the footage. In our line of work this very popular amongst product videos more than most of the others but can be used for anything!

- “Talking Head” Essentially this is just another term for an interview with a person. They’re called Talking Heads and we’ve made several ‘Talking Head’ video productions over the years. This is the kind of footage that would work well with B-Roll.

- “Dolly” A ‘Dolly’ is the name people in the video production industry have given to the tracking system we use that creates great professional looking tracking movements. It’s essentially a tripod with the camera on top attached to some tracks and then moved along. [show example]

- “ISO” The ISO value is a measure of the sensitivity of the cameras sensor to light. The lower the ISO the lower the sensitivity.

- “Noise” This is a term that is used when the camera is using high ISO’s to see better in the dark and a digital grain comes over the top of the frame. It happens when the camera is trying to pick up on signal and image data that isn’t there.

Are there any word you’ve heard whilst being on set for various shoot and you’ve got no idea what it mean then leave a comment in the comment section below and we’ll try to answer it for you!

It’s been a couple of weeks since our last video and Aprils Fools day has passed, this odd event on the western calendar is quickly become a time where all the biggest companies and websites in the world try to out do each other in terms of how many people they can actually fool. I think Google where the big winner this year with their whole host of great ‘pranks’ and videos all of which can be seen here. Our favourites were the 8-bit google maps and the ability to try out their ‘multi-task‘ feature which is pretty funny.

But among the rather large amount of April Fools gags we did find a lot of really great videos online that we thought we’d share with you.

Invisible T-Shirt

Another great April Fools video conjured up by a good friend of mine. A great idea that managed to get very viral in a matter of hours. We love how convincing some of the members of the general public are (and that some people actually thought this was real)

Dramatic Surprise on a quiet square in Belgium

We love a good Viral video here at Liquid and this one is probably one of the best we’ve seen. Definitely worth a watch even if it’s just for some of the general publics classic reactions during this one. Wouldn’t be able to get away with this kind of thing in the UK thats for sure!

Hunter and Bears birthday party

THIS is how you do interactive viral videos. Tippex have done it before to great success and this is a continuation of that. Some brilliant ideas and some really funny moments, but you’ve got to press one of the buttons at the end of this video to enjoy it.

Largest Rube Goldberg machine

A massive, incredibly impressive machine that in no less that 300 moves can blow up a balloon. Reminds us of the OK Go video for ‘This Too Shall Pass‘

Titanic SUPER 3D

James Cameron has recently re-released Titanic in the cinemas ‘re-imagined’ in full 3D. We’re not the biggest fans of 3D as we mentioned last year in our blog here. This video however parodies the ‘immersiveness’ of  3D as well as parodying other directors like JJ Abrams for his over use of lens flare and Michael Bay for his over use of explosions. A very, very funny video and well put together.

90 Seconds with a Sony FS700

Sony revealed their new Sony Fs700 camera a couple weeks ago to a stunned videographer online audience, we wrote about it here and were very, very impressed. In this video cinematographer James Miller get the chance to have a play with one on Londons iconic south bank.

Stop motion dubstep

A video for Dubstep producer Benga that utilises stop motion animation and 960 vinyl records to create the tracks waveform. It’s immensely clever and as one of the comments says below the video “I wish we’d thought of that”.

Rest

A great take on Zombie films. This tells the tale of a fallen WW1 soldier that awakens and makes his way back to America to rest in piece with his wife in the ground. It’s a bit weird but very sweet. Cinematography and colour grade is fantastic as well.

Glassboy

A creative advert to get driver to slow down on the roads in order to save lives.