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Bring Your Brand to Life with 360 Matterport Tour Expertise: AB3 Visuals
Matterport is a renowned brand for its innovative technology and avant-garde immersive 3D models brought into the application to enhance collaboration and accelerate project management. Our team at AB3 visuals add their difference through their Matterport virtual tour expertise to deliver its advantage for businesses.
If You Truly Want Your Brand To Shine, You Need To Invest In Quality Video Marketing
It is quite surprising to observe that a lot of businesses make the mistake of focusing too much on creating just ads. While ads are important, it is essential to understand that in today’s competitive business environment, developing valuable content is more important. By all means rely on creative blog posts, infographics, and other media to attract the attention of your target audience and make them aware of your unique offerings.
Florida Kite Racing League St Petersburg Florida Foil Regatta
Definition: Regatta
Venice? Who knew?
The Breakdown
Recently Aaron & Vanessa McClearnon of *Elite Watersports asked me to film and edit a promo video for the *Florida Kite Racing League. The bi-annual Foil Regatta, as it is known, is a kite board/hydrofoil racing series held each Spring & Fall in the St. Petersburg FL area. This time around we were at the North side of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay.
Event Details:
40+ Racers
7 Sponsors
Need to capture facts about the race and event
2 hosts for commentary
First race begins at 10:30am sharp
Drone - GoPro - DSLR
"What am I filming?" is the question I ask myself. In this case, action sports over the water with some audio commentary. I will need to rely heavily on aerial footage while at the same time mounting GoPros for a chest cam, forward front board cam & reverse front board cam. Plus DSLR to capture the commentary/hosts and beachside event coverage. Naturally the night before the event I was charging batteries and clearing memory cards like I was preparing for the apocalypse. I knew I was stretching myself too thin with this many cameras rolling. So I invited Tim Johnson, a local drone videographer to come out and alleviate my aerial responsibility. Tim and I worked together on the previous *Spring Foil Regatta event and I knew he was more than capable of handling this event with me.
Tim piloting the DJI Phantom 4
Mother Nature is a...
RAW Footage
My crew and I arrived at the North Skyway Pier by 9am sharp. Immediately we realized that we would be filming eastward over the water. AKA - directly into the sun. AKA - silhouettes in an overexposed background. So what now? I can't make a video where all of my shots are washed out. So I knew I was going to rely heavily on Tim's footage and the GoPros to capture the action. But I didn't spend all this money on my DSLR equipment for nothing. I put the sun behind me and focused on the smiling spectators, preparing racers and faced my camera North to capture some of the practicing surfers.
Our next issue was that the race itself was extremely far out into the Bay. Meaning even if the sun wasn't a factor, the DSLR wasn't going to cut it. All of the racers were just ants on the horizon. Additionally, Tim was at maximum range with the drone. With 18 mph wind gusts we couldn't afford risking losing signal over the water. Especially with 40+ racers extending out 100ft of ropes each. We needed to get closer to the action...
The little kites in the distance are the actual race.
Fortunately Vanessa hooked us up with a boat to put us right in the middle of the race. That should solve our issues, right? Now we can position the sun behind us. As well as keep us in range with a strong signal for the drone. Well, almost. We beat the sun but now the waves were knocking us around like a piñata. My DSLR footage was a mixture of sky then water with a series of blurs between the two. The drone might be in the sky but the pilot has his thumbs on the controls. Tim persevered and I switched from videographer to photographer. Amping up my shutter speed of course. And I couldn't have been happier with our results!
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BTS shots!
We wrapped up the 7 hour day by filming our two commentators. Shout out to Vanessa & Kevin, they did fantastic jobs. Informative, direct and to the point. I wrote a storyboard of suggested key points I'd like to see them cover. By sending this to them 4-5 days in advance is helpful for so many reasons.
It gives your talent time to prepare which makes them more comfortable in front of the camera.
Eliminates a lot of "uh's and um's" during the shoot.
Gets their head in the game with ideas and things to add.
Plus it's appreciated and displays professionalism.
Kite Boarding Success!
BIG THANKS to Aaron & Vanessa from Elite Watersports for hosting such a remarkably well run, organized and most of all FUN event! All in all we ended up with 156GB's of footage from all 4 cameras combined. Which resulted in a lot of time spent in post production. I think the end result was well worth it though. Looking forward to working more with these folks in the future. Maybe next time I'll find myself up on a board ... you never know ;)
Sincerely
Anthony Bove III
Preparing to Make a Promotional Video
I was recently contacted to build a short promotional video for an upcoming event. This blog is intended to help those who are ready to get their feet wet in this world of media creation. Here are some key pointers to getting started to avoid some very costly & timely mistakes later...
Understand the Depth of Your Project
*Greg Hastings, paintball video game entrepreneur, is running a display booth featuring his video game franchise at *PAX South on January 27/28/29 2017 in San Antonio TX. There will be 5 other paintball superstar personalities in addition to himself as well as LIVE Broadcast event coverage from **Behind the Bunker, a live stream weekly show covering anything Paintball. In addition to the superstar lineup, Greg has brought on board several great sponsors to support this event and add in some great prize give aways. And if that's not enough, Greg will be hosting a tournament live at the event, winners receiving prizes. As well as declaring the Grande Prize Winner from his franchises weekly competition, Friday Night Fights. If you're saying to yourself "Wow, that's a lot of things to highlight" you are right.
Questions to Ask
Your client may or may not know precisely what they want. This is where collaboration comes in. You need to ask some key questions like:
Who is your target audience?
How long are you envisioning the length of the project?
What is the overall message you want the viewer to walk away with?
Will all media/content be provided?
What is the deadline?
Some people will have a very specific vision in their head and others will leave that up to you. But by asking the right questions you have already begun creating a storyboard in your head. Find what is missing in your story board so you can figure out how much to allot for filming and/or editing. In this case, Greg was extremely specific as far as the information that MUST be delivered. The message? Come Meet Your Paintball Hero at PAX South in San Antonio TX January 27-29, Presented by Ultimate Paintball.
Don't Be Afraid to Say What You Expect/Need
You are the video expert. You are the one who needs to inform your client what YOU need to make their dream a reality. They are the expert in what they do which is why the two of you must fully understand each other in order to provide you with what you will need to make this happen for them. Things you may need are:
Is there power on location?
Is the location Indoor or outdoor?
Forecast; rain/wind/sun/clouds etc?
Internet access?
If interviewing people, have your client contact the camera personalities ahead of time to prepare them on their subject matters. That eliminates a lot of "uh's and um's" during the shoot.
Make sure when working with logos that they are provided to you. Googling leaves room for a lot of guess work. As well as low resolution issues. Having to re-finalize and upload a project is both time consuming and a pain. So get these nails hammered down the first time through.
Every video is different. All of the above mentioned play a factor depending on you, your abilities and your equipment. Don't be intimidated to speak up for both suggestions AND limitations. In my experience a client usually perceives the direction as professionalism. In this case there was no need for filming, just editing.
Organization is EVERYTHING
Greg reached out to all of his partners and collected all of the promotional material for me. Each superstar sent me photos of themselves. Greg sent me logos from the sponsors as well as his own. It is imperative that as the content comes in you file it immediately. There can be many hands in the media pot and things can get "lost" very easily. Creating a pyramid of organized folders is a great way to keep things easy to reference.
Now Roll Up Your Sleeves
Time to put on your thinking cap and get your hands dirty. At this point you should have everything you need to create something great. Whether it be filming, editing or both, this is your starting point. Ready. Set. Go!
- Anthony Bove III
Have you seen our STORE??? Decorate your house or office with everything ABIII
*Greg Hastings: www.GregRedHastings.com
**PAX South: http://south.paxsite.com
***Behing the Bunker: http://behindthebunker.com
Playing with Bokeh
With the holidays quickly approaching, I decided to get a little crafty to kick off Halloween. I read an article in Digital SLR Photography magazine about how to shape bokeh. I decided to give it a shot and was surprised at how easy it was providing you have the right equipment. Once I set everything up I was amazed at how the PacMan Ghosts came to life on my camera's screen. Here's how I did it:
You will need:
black card stock
cutting knife (exacto)
LED lights
scotch tape
lens with a very low aperture (f/1.4)
1. Using your lens' UV filter, trace a circle in the card stock. Then draw whatever image you would like to portray in your photo in the center of the circle. Ex - ghost, heart, Christmas tree, etc. Next cut the object out of the card stock and place it over your camera lens and secure it by fastening it in place with your UV filter.
2. Next, using the scotch tape, fasten your lights to a flat/clean surface. This may take some adjusting to get it just how you want it.
3. Place your subject a few feet in front of your lights. The idea here is to provide enough distance to establish a rich depth of field with the lights once your focus on your subject.
4. Next set your camera to your desired settings. You want to expose for the lights. I used an ISO of 640, F/1.4 & 1/125.
5. Hit your subject with a torch light (or other as I did) and start taking your photos.
Tips: Make sure your camera is secure. A tripod is always a good start. Also, remote release or self timer is great to have. Lastly, GET CREATIVE AND HAVE FUN!