Online Video production is now employed for many different purposes; however, numerous short format online videos and brand related presentations are usually created in order to accomplish desired business objectives.
Over the years, a number of online companies have emerged offering prepackaged video ads for both online and television placements. Individuals who don’t already have content can build a campaign from scratch using online editing tools and asset libraries. From there, each company also offers a variety of self-service tools and professional assistance to help build a marketing strategy, distribute the campaign, and track it across multiple networks.
Regarding what content works for online video, anything works as long as the people who find it want to watch it and can do so in a reliable, high-quality fashion. But the most reliable/popular online video tends to be the high-quality content that’s already proven popular on TV, DVD, or in the theaters, which isn’t surprising given that success in traditional media means a built-in audience of millions before the video ever gets online.
What’s exciting and terrifying about online video production is that there are endless possibilities, directions, and decisions to be made.
If you want to create a successful online video, find ways to leverage brands, people, or trends that have already proven popular elsewhere.

This Friday, Mihai Draganescu and Joaquin Salim won big at the SCADDY’S.

The two not only dominated by winning almost every possible award, their Rewind campaign won “Best of Show”. The special award was presented by none other than Tom O’Keefe, Draftfcb’s Executive Vice President and Executive Creative Director. But there is more. Draftfcb presented the first ever “Best of Show” Grant to the young talents, inviting them to join their team at the Cannes Festival. “An incredible opportunity” as Mihai and Joaquin call it to be part of the most prestigious Creativity Festival in the world. So incredible that the two didn’t even understand what was going on until after the awards when the judges reiterated, “You’re going to Cannes!”

How did you come up with this idea?

Joaquin: “We were just chilling with beers in an alley way and we started brainstorming. That is what we do all the time. It’s fun, we just love what we

do, we didn’t do it to win anything but I am happy we did!”

Mihai: “It’s funny you know. This wasn’t even a school project. We were just working on our books and wanted to do something cool to put in there. We were all into street art after seeing a movie about Banski and we thought that we can use it to advertise Sharpie”

What were you thinking when you found out you won?

Mihai: “When they called us up for the “Best of Show” award I could not believe it.

I looked at Joaquin and he was ecstatic too. When we went up on stage next to Mr. O’Keefe I thought, “Wow this keeps getting better. We are going to have pictures with him that I can post on Facebook and show to my mom. (Laughing) Then he started talking about the grant and Cannes and going there with their team, that is where I think my brain shut down.

Joaquin: “ It was a big surprise. I don’t think either of us knew what was going on until Professor Shanahan explained it to us after the show. Even then I still couldn’t believe it, before the SCADDY’s Mihai and I were talking about one day going to Cannes with our work. It’s just amazing that we are able to go this summer.“

You guys seem to work very well together; can you tell me about it?

Joaquin: “We are very different but we are both passionate and ambitious. We kind of compensate each other. Mihai is sharp and meticulous. He always digs deep to find ideas. When we brainstorm we always come up with the most insane stuff and often we are crazy enough to make it happen.”

Mihai: “We do compensate each other. Joaquin is the best to work with. He is easygoing and flexible. He is just a fun guy to have around and has a great eye. I always trust him in terms of design and I often ask him for advice.”

Starting from humble beginnings, Joaquin from Venezuela and Mihai from Romania, they both have an incredible drive and have worked their way through college by keeping their scholarships and working hard. Their ambition has always been to be the top tier creatives and they are ready to go as far as it takes to achieve that goal, even if it means as far as Cannes.

It doesn’t happen too often to run into people who strike you to the point where you want to tell others about. That’s what happened to me when I met Mihai Draganescu, a young, talented and funny art director.

Mihai, a Romanian native, moved to Italy at age 2. Recognized internationally on the professional tennis scene, Mihai got a full scholarship at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he is about to get his BFA in Advertising by the end of 2011.

While in school, Mihai has been working and collaborating with more than a few big agencies, such as JWT, McCann Erickson and R+B to name a few.

Admirers asked where the passion came from. He finds it hard to explain. But pride fires him up. Man and boy, he is consumed by the need to prove himself. First against those who try to control him with senseless regulations and against those who try to take advantage of his youth.

His work receives great feedback and appreciation all over the world, which sets up encouraging premises for his future career. Meanwhile, Mihai envisions, draws, shoots, films and art directs his work on which he often collaborates with one of his best friends, another talented art director Joaquin Salim.

Mihai’s humor, versatility, and hard work facilitate his interactions in the advertising world where he considers himself more of a sales man than an artist. And that is because he sells and sells a lot! His first website received over 5.000 clicks in its first couple of weeks of life.

Mihai’s ideas are fresh and innovative and the designs are usually very clean, realistic, yet profound. His typography is dynamic and his copy is often ironic.

Mihai is currently interning at McCann Erickson, in Bucharest, Romania where his family lives.

It’s a bit humbling when I think back to what I was up to in my early 20s compared to where Mihai is at. Mihai Draganescu is an inspiration to a whole new generation of tomorrow’s advertising.

In the 1950s, as a direct reaction to the film industry’s perceived threat from television, Hollywood invented a number of large-format processes designed to make the big screen even bigger. VistaVision, which was developed by Paramount in 1954, involved a camera system that involved transported 35mm  motion-picture film horizontally through the camera, exposing 24 8-perf frames per second, rather than the standard vertical 4-perf configuration of traditional movie cameras. VistaVision was used on a few features, including John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), but by the 1970s, VistaVision had largely been relegated to background-plate work ad in recent decades, barely even for that.

Recently,  VistaVision has been used in different commercials and short films, mainly because the large frame offers advantages even for projects finished in high definition by delivering to the telecine bay a negative with greater resolution and more color information, than images shot with a standard 35mm camera.

Producers have combined VistaVision’s significantly larger negative area with Vivid’s properties to manipulate the colors individually or collectively without building in noise.

What shape is your business in? Has it traced the arc of the wider economy and spiraled down? Or have you taken these unsteady times as an opportunity to develop new relationships with clients who may not have  considered working with you in the past? If you are an audio post pro working out of a project studio, you may feel that you have little in common with major industry players. If so, you might be surprised to find that some of the most well-known mix topic engineers in the industry are taking advantage of relatively inexpensive tools, such as Steinberg Nuendo 4, operating out of their home studios just as you do.  So for smaller shops, this economic downturn might be the perfect time to start thinking bigger.

Nuendo is a fully mature product capable of handling any assignment you’re likely to throw at it. Installation on either Mac or Windows machine is straight-forward, and the authorization process -which, uses a dongle, just like Avid is painless. Nuendo 4 can handle QuickTime movies on both the Mac and PC, and DirectShow and DirectX Video on Windows machines only. A variety of codec’s, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and WMV, are supported. Nuendo 4 shines when it comes to synchronizing external playback devices.

Nuendo 4 handles surround-sound flexibly. Hit the Input tab and you’ll see the options laid out.  Multiples surround formats, with a maximum of 12 loudspeaker outputs, are supported.

In these times you have to be able to work fast if you want to make money. Nuendo 4 is extremely well laid out and its many features are easy to get at. The workflow is very good. “I don’t think that this platform has any real competition, particularly in its price range.”

Today home video penetration is huge and reaches out to a larger set of audience. Also, with increase in the standard of living along with awareness, the indulgence element is getting diversified. People are not interested in watching only films. Shemaroo Entertainment Pvt Ltd decided to launch an alternative content division which will cater to various kinds of audiences ranging from children, philosophy, and literature to fitness and health, and is kick-starting it with The Osho Talks series.
Shemaroo has signed a multi-year license deal with The Osho International Foundation under its alternative content segment “to bring to today’s generation Osho discourses” through the home video format of VCDs and DVDs titled Osho Talks on the Shemaroo label.
”We are thrilled with the response we have got for our new division of Alternative Content and after the success of great videos like Shilpa’s Yoga and The Secret DVD, we promise to provide much more best selling content in these genres,” said Hiren Gada, director, Shemaroo.
Watching these talks in the comforts of your home, at your time and will, makes OSHO TALK Titles more appealing. Shemaroo has treated this whole series of OSHO TALKS with lot of care and considered packaging, presentation and execution so as to bring it out in the right manner to its audiences.
The business of alternative content is an unexplored territory and Shemaroo aims to make it big in this area. He intends to expand the market itself by creating newer avenues to explore and lead the industry to newer horizons.

Democrat Barak Obama is the first African-American president of the United States of America and the 44th commander in chief. On Tuesday November 4th Americans demonstrated that they can change the direction that their country has been taken in the past 8 years.
Barak Obama is the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win a majority of the popular vote, a vindication of his “50-state strategy” that even members of his own party once viewed as quixotic. Before the end of Tuesday, America that had been solid red in the recent elections has undergone a dramatic change where all 50 states have become one, where it has become the true United States of America!
Today, there are more democrats registered than Republicans.  Republicans have dropped from 37 percent of the electorate in 2004 to 32 percent today, as the number of Democrats and independent has increased.

“Change has come to America” said Obama in this acceptance speech last night! But he also acknowledged the tough climate of the task he faces. “For even as we celebrate tonight,” Obama utters,  “we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.”
Obama is a charismatic leader whose appeal transcends partisan politics. Obama has built his support on a “three-legged stool” made up of African-Americans, Hispanics, and young voters of all races.  In North Carolina polls show 73 percent of 18-29 year olds voted for Obama, even though McCain was stronger among every other age group. In Virginia, too, Obama was ahead with every age group except those 65 and older.  There are 1.6 million more Hispanic voters this year, including a half-million newly naturalized citizens and they chose Obama over McCain by a margin of 2 to 1. And so New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada, Ohio, and Iowa voted for Obama. States like Virginia and Indiana had not voted for a Democratic president since 1964, which means that Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 has become a Moment in History!
In his speech, Obama also reached out to McCain’s supporters: “I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too!”
The Election 2008 embodies the American dream! In his acceptance speech, Obama mentioned 106 year old Ann Nixon Cooper from Atlanta, born a generation past slavery, at a a time when she could not vote because she was black and woman.  Ann Nixon “through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.”

The theme for this year’s Channel O Music Video Awards was “Uniting Africa Through Music” and Africa’s leading music channel has gone to extra lengths to ensure that this year’s event was bigger, better, and more spectacular than ever.
And it really was a spectacular show on October 9 at the Big Top Arena, Carnival City, Johannesburg! Performers from all around Africa came together to entertain the continent and they were duly rewarded! The Channel O MVAs recognizes excellence and contributions towards developing music on the continent.
Top Nigerian artistes who won laurels at the event include: Ikechukwu (Best Male Video), P Square (Best Duo or Group) and (Video of the Year), M-Trill (Best African West), and KC Presh (Best Hip Hop Video), Lizha James (Mozambique) – Best Female Video; Buffalo Souljah (Zimbabwe) – Best Newcomer and Best Ragga Dancehall Video; Lady May (Namibia) – Best Dance; Gal Level (Namibia) – Best R & B Video; The Dogg (Namibia) – Best Kwaito; Freshly Ground (South Africa) – Best African Southern; and Witness ft Fid Q (Tanzania) – Best African East.
The two VJs’ that hosted the big event are the effervescent Kabelo “KB” Ngakane, who has been with Channel O since 1998, and his chic co-host Nonhle “Diva” Thema.
The Channel O music Video Awards are distinctly African and the winners are entirely chosen by the viewing public across the continent and not by a panel of judges. This means that fans really can make a difference between artists being a nominee or a winner and give countries the chance to fly the flag high for their own nominees.
The Channel O Music Video Awards are also the first Pan-African television awards ceremony to celebrate distinctly African music.
Jimmy Dludlu paid tribute to his friend and mentor, George Lee Larnyoh, who received the 2008 Special Recognition Award on September 16th.

The electronics powerhouse NEC Corp. has introduced NEC MultiSync E221W,  the first model in a new series of displays for small businesses, designed to perfectly meet the needs of the home office and SMB sectors.

The 22″ display equipped with a high quality TN panel that offers unusually high viewing angles also features an ergonomic design and multiple interfaces, such as DVI-D with HDCP. Equipped with an integrated Carbon Footprint meter that shows the quantity of CO2 emissions that can be saved over the running time of the device, the NEC MultiSync® E221W offers an extensive range of features at a good cost-performance ratio whether for traditional office applications or for internet use.

In order to cut carbon dioxide emissions, the monitor’s power consumption might be reduced by switching to EcoMode, where the brightness of the display is limited to no greater than 60 per cent of its maximum, and power consumption falls from a typical 40W to 28W.

With a modern and elegant design, the NEC MultiSync® E221W features clear lines and rounded edging. The narrow bezel, another features of the display, is advantageous for multi-monitor applications, as several displays can be perfectly aligned alongside each other without any distracting gaps appearing between the displays.

With its high viewing angles, an excellent view of the screen is guaranteed from almost any perspective, even for multi-monitor solutions, the ergonomic features, such as the flexible positioning of the display with height adjustment of up to 50 mm, ensure a productive working environment. 

In the mists of a global economic crisis, technology continues to evolve, and here we are projecting images through a wall of water. 

The technology that uses water to create a thin, suspended layer of dry fog that enables projection of images that appear to float is gaining rapid acceptance in the live-productions industry because it offers an interesting alternative to high-resolution projection and display to staging designers and event organizers.

Using a laser, a video projector, or lighting fixtures with gobos as a projection source, makes images appear to float in front of the audience. The water screens are creating a thin film of water ideal for rear projection of video, lasers, gobos, and other lighting effects.

The system utilizes a combined water collection trough and nozzle system to create the water screen that can display high-resolution projected imagery. Water is recycled via pumps from the ground-level channel to an extruded aluminum box section “nozzle,” through which the water drops under little or no pressure from a series of small holes in the nozzle’s bottom surface.

Basically this technology is reconstituting a virtual image using an array of hundreds of thousands of tiny point sources. This unique projection surface also gives the illusion that the image is floating in mid-air. It’s actually a very high-resolution playback system. There are 1,700 jets per every 10ft. section of screen. To scale, then, there are actually more ‘pixels’ than in any high-resolution monitor.

Thanks to the unique visual experience of glimmering, rushing cascades, along with the rippling sounds of falling water, water walls can be used onstage, mid-room, or on a back wall as projection screens, or in a trade show booth. This way you can easily have a waterfall dumping 200 to 300 gallons per minute from the ceiling.

One live-event application of the water screens is at corporate functions where executives wish to make a dramatic entrance. For example, lets create a 30-ft. water curtain, by linking three 10-ft. nozzle sections together, each with its own pump supplying water. When operating together, the water appears to fall as a single uniform water curtain. One nozzle, however (the center one, for example), can be shut off independently, revealing a product or person behind, while the water continues to fall on either side of him.

But, doesn’t technology cost? So are the water screens, a seven-foot section with a screen, ejector, tank, hose, water pumps, and filtration system can add up to nearly  $20,000 or more. Nonetheless, water screens are becoming increasingly popular at corporate meetings, church services, and orchestra performances.