What a world we live in! Are we really going down the drain? It certainly looks like it with both Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch vanished and AIG under the patronage of the US government. The good news is that corporate video production can still be green.

If times are going to be tough, video productions should stay within budget. Even ambitious occasions like product launches can be broadly shared without requiring expensive travel. Employees can access training programs in the most convenient setting instead of their time being consumed by scheduled on-premises programs. A video production can communicate only some of the messages. It should not present a large number of ideas and concepts.  Keep the program short and only long enough to carry the message. A shorter program will be more widely accepted and certainly will cost less.

One of the best decisions that you should take is to choose carefully a video company turnkey production early in the process. A company full service should be power, which may carry higher performance in all three phases of the production process: preproduction (scripting), production (shooting) and post-production (published). Ask three companies for proposals and provide the same information to all three. Listen to their explanations of how they generate the productions. It is crucial to have creative and enthusiastic people on your team. Use real people to tell the story. This is important because people like to see and hear real people, not actors. And it is cost effective, too, because usually you don’t pay them where as actors can be quite expensive.

The intranet can be your primary delivery system. Podcasts, and blogosphere are booming and  are all worthy learn about and explore. Apparently, the video is everywhere: in stores, on gas pumps, grocery carts, on planes, in mini-vans, on Segways, and even on iPods and cellphones. So no matter where you are, no matter how you feel, you can still watch a video. And the message, regardless of the medium, is always the same!

The gay community will have its own online TV channel, dedicated to “the life and problems of the gay community” in Romania, on October 1^st, 2008.

The channel is launched by the “Be An Angel” group in Cluj and it will include gay news, gay music, entertainment, and films. The anti-discrimination group “Be an Angel” already runs a co

mprehensive website focusing on entertainment and political issues in Romania. The founders assure its audience that homosexuality is not contagious. It says viewers will be informed but “nobody will become homosexual if you look at our programs.”

Lucian Dunareanu, the president of Angelicus, hopes that the audience will be quite responsive to the programming, hitting 100 visitors by next year. 

Lion Productions is going to Cannes, France, to promote its current projects at MIPCOM 2008. MIPCOM is the world’s largest exhibition and conference dedicated to creating, co-producing, buying, selling, financing, and distributing entertainment content across all platforms.

Lion is looking to sell and develop entertainment content, whether it is a TV series, a feature movie, or short documentaries. Among its projects are “Din State”, a TV series about living the American dream, with its sacrifices and satisfactions, not only from the emigrant’s perspective, but also from average Joe’s. “Din State” is ready for distribution worldwide.

“Spaghetti vs Lasagna” is a romantic, but sardonic comedy about frustration, passion, control, culture clash, and lust. The women’s brain is like a bowl of spaghetti, where everything is twisted and has no end, while the male’s brain is one straight fat, gooey layer of lasagna. “Spaghetti vs Lasagna” is in the production stage.

“Out Here” is a 30 min documentary about what it means to be gay in the US, how open-minded Americans are about homosexuality, gay marriage, gay adoption, and most importantly, the entire emotional process of coming out in different parts of the US. While “Out Here” can be perceived as educational, it is very entertaining; it makes you laugh as much as it makes you cry. It will challenge you. The documentary is ready for distribution.

“Back to the Future” is a half hour documentary about the lives of the Amish people. The documentary is ready for distribution.

Lion Productions represents Romania along with the main Romanian  TV stations TVR, Antena 1, ProTV, Realitatea TV, B1TV, as well as 20 other production companies. 

MIPCOM takes place between the 13-17^th of October at the famous Palais des Festivals. 

The biggest companies use online videos to build brand, maximize coverage, and generate Internet buzz. Video veteran, Douglas Simon, talks about how you can increase your visibility, through corporate online video in an one hour webinar, on Thursday, September 10th, 2008.

PR and marketing professionals who want to discover the latest practices for creating viral video with a “long tail” to build brand and increase impressions can learn practical strategies at the webinar from Bulldog Reporter’s PR University: “Web Video Bonanza for PR: How to Incorporate Online Video into PR Programs to Drive Brand, Buzz and the Bottom Line.” Attendees will come away with actionable steps to create powerful video campaigns that can be posted on the corporate website, YouTube and other consumer-generated media sites.

This exclusive webinar takes place on Wednesday, September 10th, at 1PM EDT with a nationally recognized traditional and Web video producer who has created video campaigns for the nation’s biggest brands: Douglas Simon, President & CEO, D S Simon Productions Inc.

In this 90-minute interactive call, Simon will reveal hard-won best practices–from technology requirements, practical first steps, and secrets of killer online content, to cost-saving production tips and viral distribution techniques. The conference will also give public relations and marketing professionals inside tips, techniques, and skills for measuring video’s value and proving it to management. Here are some of the practical and immediately applicable techniques attendees will cover in this webinar:

·      Convincing Data: Stats and changing online viewership behaviors that prove the opportunity–and help sell web video to management and clients

·      How to think strategically about incorporating streaming video and Web 2.0 tools into traditional communications plans

·      Ten essential questions every PR agency or in-house communications department must ask–and answer–before jumping into web video

·      Practical Case Studies: Concrete examples you can take to your execs to show how web video targeted to consumers can build brand and the bottom line

·      The talent and technology you must have on hand to ensure success–a checklist of off-the-shelf hardware and software necessary to launch your streaming video efforts

·      Production Checklists & Guidelines: What qualifies as web video–and how to make sure your campaign uses the most popular formats and delivery methods

Attendance at Bulldog Reporter’s PR University webinar costs $299 per telephone site. Participants in the 90-minute call will be able to pose specific questions for the panelists at several junctures during the discussion. Attendees of PRU University webinar receive one credit toward PRSA accreditation maintenance. Registration also includes an up-to-the-minute conference manual and a full transcript. For more information on taking part in the event, phone toll free: 1-800-959-1059.

The 2008 Primetime Emmy Engineering Awards Academy of Television Arts & Sciences was celebrated on Saturday, August 23 at the Renaissance Hotel in Los Angeles. 

The Philo T. Farnsworth Corporate Achievement Award was given to Burlington, ON-based Evertz Technologies Limited, a design, manufacture and marketing company for video and audio infrastructure.

The Philo is an award to honor the company whose contributions have significantly affected the state of television technology and engineering over a long period of time.

Content creators, broadcasters, specialty channels and television service providers utilize Evertz’ technologies to support complex multi-channel digital and high definition television broadcast environments.

The award was presented to Evertz’s vice-president of engineering, Alan Lambshead, and the company’s vice-president of sales in the United States, Joe Cirincione. 

Whether professional or just amateur, Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Edition software has everything  you need to produce high-quality movies, corporate videos, wedding DVDs, and more. Powerful tools for video compositing, color correction, and surround sound mixing help you get feature-film results in your home studio. Vegas Movie Studio Platinum software also features advanced editing tools such as:


• HD video editing: HDV and Sony AVCHD


• 5.1 surround sound mixing and encoding


• Direct export to Sony PSP™ (PlayStation®Portable)


• Advanced 3-wheel primary color correction tools

The software is very easy to use, simply drag and drop your clips on the timeline and get to work to create movies and slideshows with effects, transitions, titles, and credits. Make changes and see the results in real time, you can even work simultaneously with standard-definition and high-definition video in the same project. Also, powerful tools let you author DVDs or burn movies to Blu-ray Disc™.

Sony AVCHD Support for HD Video EditingEdit Sony AVCHD. There are very few software products that can offer AVCHD editing and Vegas Movie Studio Platinum software has it and edits in a matter of seconds.

Video Restoration Tools
Advanced color correction tools enhance washed-out footage, make specific colors stand out, and balance differences in video due to camera setup or lighting. Image restoration tools remove red-eye from photos.

What’s New in Version 9.0:

* Updated New Project and Make Movie Wizards.


* Improved native HDV.m2t playback performance and improved memory handling for HDV longform projects. (Vegas Movie Studio Platinum only)


* Sony HDV true progressive 24p support. (Vegas Movie Studio Platinum only)


* Import from Memory Recording Unit. (Vegas Movie Studio Platinum only)


* Import from AVCHD camcorder. (Vegas Movie Studio Platinum only)


* Support for editing files recorded with Sony AVCHD camcorders. (Vegas Movie Studio Platinum only)


* Support for Sony Cinescore™ Studio music-generation plug-in.


* Single-monitor full-screen video preview.


* Burn timeline to Blu-ray Disc™. (Vegas Movie Studio Platinum only)


* Upload to YouTube.


* Added support for reading 1920×1080 AVCHD video. (Vegas Movie Studio Platinum only)


* Smart rendering support for MPEG-2 video.


* Support for opening MJPEG-encoded AVI files (such as video recorded with a digital still camera).

* Support for opening and rendering FLAC files.

* Support for LPEC files imported from Digital Voice Editor software.

* High-quality H.264 AVC/AAC import and export (including HD support).

* Templates for Sony WALKMAN® and Apple iPod®.