We have been working closely in recent months with Sixty Inches From Center an arts organization with the vision of establishing an on-line “place” to get information about emerging and fringe artists in Chicago neighborhoods.

In October Clarion new media assisted on SIFC ‘s “Going Mobile,” a traveling art and media exhibit that roamed around the city in a rented U-Haul truck.

Artists Hebru Brantley and Brooks Golden each created an original work that was attached to each side of the Going Mobile truck.  Inside we installed a projector and built a  screen to display images from exhibits the team documented throughout the day at various art stops around the city.  The Going Mobile truck visited the Hyde Park Art Centers Mischief Weekend and also made stops at the South Side Community Arts Center and the Chicago Urban Arts society.

At each stop SIFC interviewed artists, exhibitors and the public.

We also had a portable photo booth on the truck.  Visitors were invited to have their photo taken in the booth and share a message with SIFC. You can view the video Clarion produced about the event here.   Insert Link to SIFC Post on Going Mobile

We are also helping SIFC continue its mission by assisting on their fund raising.  Go to Indiegogo before Thanksgiving and make a contribution – any amount works, even $5.00 – and Clarion New Media will match every dollar you give up to $1,500 dollars!  These funds will be used for new computers, cameras, and audio recorders.

SIFC is going to continue to grow and Clarion New Media is excited to continue our partnership with two online web series.  Every month Clarion New Media will co-produce with SIFC one of two series. Sixty in 60 is our video series focused on organizations, institutions and special exhibits around the city. 

Next month look for the first episode of our second SIFC series, In the Photo Booth. SIFC will put artists in our traveling photo booth to have their portraits taken and to discuss their work, inspiration, process and their take on the state of the arts in Chicago.  Our hope is to have intimate conversations with Chicago’s emerging artists and provide insight into the creative process.

Many not-for-profit organizations are reaching supporters via the web. Funding new projects and endeavors is very difficult and many new organizations find themselves competing with larger existing organizations for the same donor funds. Clarion New Media works with established and new NPO’s to effectively engage potential sponsors by producing videos explaining the goals and benefits of their organization.

One organization that we are proud to be collaborating with is Sixty Inches From Center (SIFC) www.sixtyinchesfromcenter.org SIFC is an online arts archive devoted to documenting and presenting art in and around Chicago. SIFC focuses on art that is on the outside of the institutional art “Scene”. Nicolette Caldwell and Tempest Hazel co-founded SIFC because of their frustration with the lack of documentation and reporting for art that exists in Chicago.

“We are called Sixty Inches From Center because we document, archive and support art that exists outside the central iconic art institutions in Chicago. With video, audio, photography, writing, projects, and community engagement, SIFC captures and contributes to the most innovative aspects of our city’s peripheral visual culture.”

Sixty Inches from Center strives to present and document art that most citizens would not know or hear about otherwise. Tempest and Nicolette are both art historians who believe that art should be accessible without filter of academia. To do this they have turned to the web. Sixty Inches From Center staff and volunteers scour the city and report on art that happens everywhere. From performance pieces to graffiti art, to gallery openings, to public works, SIFC documents and reports current stories which can be found on their blog while their full site is being developed: http://sifcchicago.wordpress.com.

Clarion New Media has worked and will continue to work very closely with Nicolette and Tempest in many aspects, the first of which was a recently completed fundraising video. SIFC has begun an online fundraising campaigning on indiegogo.com. Indiegogo is a great resource for sponsors to find projects and organizations to contribute to. Clarion New Media produced the video for the online campaign.

When making videos for fund-raising, I find that it is very important to put a face and name to the cause. So when discussing making a video to encourage support, we took a simple approach: let’s just put Nicolette and Tempest on camera and ask them, “Why do we need Sixty Inches From Center?” Nicolette and Tempest were a little nervous about being on camera. Like me, they often prefer to be behind the scenes, asking the question. But after meeting and discussing the process they became much more relaxed.

Being in an on-camera interview can be very stressful; I have had to do it a few times myself. That’s why when working with clients I first discuss what would they like to say, and then create an outline from that. Using the outline as a guide, I construct questions that take multiple approaches towards the same answer. I prefer this non-scripted approach over a written script because we want the personality and passion to come out, and it’s very easy to get so caught up in a memorized or written script that a personality can disappear. Tempest and Nicolette were naturals who did not need much coaching.

I look forward to continuing our work with SIFC, advising them and their team on all aspects of media creation. If you have the time please go to check out the video on their Indiegogo site: http://www.indiegogo.com/Sixty-Inches-From-Center. If you care to make a donation to SIFC, you can do that on that website, too.

The best way to learn is to do, so Garrett and I each spent some time building little movies with footage from our hard drives.  The purpose was to get familiar with Imovie, but I think the results are kind of funny.  We only spent an hour on these but can you guess who made which video?

The Epic Ballad of the S.S. Awesome. from Andrew Roddewig on Vimeo.

A Fun Weekend in San Fran. from Andrew Roddewig on Vimeo.

For the past year our central focus has been on creating short mini-documentaries for a wide variety of clients. Every job has presented new challenges. The lessons learned and experience gained producing each video have carried over to the next project.

Last month we produced a video for Matter Dance Company. It was our most ambitious and rewarding production to date. It involved shooting their summer show entitled Step Into the Ring performed on June 19th.

Dustyn Martincich, a member of the company, and I have been friends for many years. While I was living in New York, Dustyn invited me to see one of her dance performances. Following the performance, Dustyn mentioned her need for videos of her performances to send to the schools and dance companies interested in her work. But the quality of the videos she was getting was substandard. The camera was typically just placed at the back of the theater and allowed to run. The videos always failed to capture the emotion and technical quality of the dance.

So we began to discuss the possibility of collaborating on projects. Cost, of course, would be an issue. A multi-camera production requires multiple camera operators and a significant investment in post-production editing. Most dance companies are not-for-profit groups and most of the dancers like Dustyn volunteered their talents, time and energy.

During the five years since I had that conversation with Dustyn in New York, I’ve always had the thought of working with dance companies tucked away in the back of my mind.

A few months ago Dustyn called and reminded me of our earlier conversations and said she would be dancing this summer with a Chicago dance troupe. She asked if I would be interested in putting into practice some of the ideas we had discussed. I jumped at the opportunity.

Matter Dance Company was founded by Carisa Barreca, Gail Adduci, and Jessica Hoverson, three talented choreographers and dancers, who have been now bee n working together for over eleven years. This summer Matter Dance company would present Step Into The Ring, their fourth full length dance concert.

Clarion New Media’s plan was to shoot two of theirperformances using two cameras and combine the best shots and clips from the performances into one dvd. We also proposed to post individual dance numbers from the performances on the web.

To keep costs down we used our in house equipment and staff. Garrett Cumber our graphic designer stepped up to be a camera operator for the first time. Garrett has been with Clarion New Media for about a year and has proven himself to be a versatile technician and artist. Garrett typically assists me and other production members with a variety of tasks during our shoots. On past projects he had been carefully observing our camera operations. Garrett’s camera work for the show was flawless and I look forward to having him by my side as a camera operator again in the future.

There are some significant technical challenges involved in any two camera shoot. That is especially true for us since each of our two cameras is designed for a different purpose. This project was a great opportunity for to explore techniques for simultaneously shots using our two quite different cameras.

Our Sony EX3 is our work horse A Camera. It produces a great image, records audio very well, and has all the bells and whistles that a professional HD camera should have. Our B Camera is a Cannon 5D Mark II. Cannon is rapidly changing the video production profession through its line of HDDSLR cameras. The 5D and other HDDSLR’s are hybrids –combining still photography optics and sensors with HD formats. The image quality from the Cannon 5D HDDSLR is superb. Its biggest drawback is that it is not particularly user friendly and works more like a film camera then a video camera. It does not generate time-code, sync with other cameras, or record great audio.

Typically in multiple-camera shoots, both cameras are the same model. That assures both consistent image quality and ease of synchronization in post-production.

Our Sony EX3 and Cannon 5D not only look and function quite differently but also cannot be automatically synced. To overcome the sync challenge Garrett and I installed a time-code application on our I-phones. Since the cameras can’t sync time code, but our I-phones can, we visually slatted our shots with our I-phones which then stayed in sync via bluetooth. This worked great in post-production. We were able to create aux timecode for each camera and sync them easily.

The challenge of different “looks” was also easily solved. The Cannon 5D’s sensor is very sensitive to colors, so I did a few chip chart tests and created an image profile for the 5D that closely matched the EX 3. In post-production just a few minor adjustments made a near perfect color match.

A more difficult challenge was selecting the right codec to conform the two types of formats. We decided to try the AppleProRes 422 codec. That did not go as smoothly as our sync experiment. AppleProRes 422 codec is the highest quality compression available. Although the image quality we got was amazing, the file sizes became difficult to manage and the conversion times extremely long. It took a couple of all nighters to get the footage conformed, but once that was done the actual cutting was very easy.

Shooting and editing the multi-camera performances was very rewarding and we are already looking for more opportunities to utilize this technique.

I am proud of the work we did for Matter Dance Company and know that the extremely talented performers and dancers now have a record of their efforts that properly portrays the high quality of their work.

Below are our two favorite performances. The first is titled Without a Net and features my friend Dustyn in a solo performance.

Choreography: Tara Madsen Robbins
Dancer Dustyn Martinich
Music: Blow Up Hollywood

The second is titled Sonata for Strings, features most of the troupe, and is choreographed by Jessica Hoversen, a founder of Matter Dance Company.

Sonata For Strings from Andrew Roddewig on Vimeo.

Choreography: Jess Hoversen

Camera Garrett Cumber/ Andrew Roddewig

Editor: Andrew Roddewig

Produced by Clarion New Media

For: Matter Dance Company

“Protect Me From What I Want” is part of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s MFA final exhibition. The exhibition is on display from May 1st through May 21st at 33 S. State Street, 7th Floor. The gallery hours are Tues-Sat 11am to 6pm.

“SAIC’s Graduate Exhibition features work by the next generation of artists and designers. More than 120 students completing master’s degrees exhibit their work in art and technology studies; ceramics; fiber and material studies; painting and drawing; performance; photography; printmedia; sculpture; sound; and visual communication design.”

Our two new horses were Jake and Casey. Although Jake was a little stubborn, the day was an overwhelming success.

We were also very fortunate to have great weather and great locations for the remainder of our shoot.

A large portion of the weekend was spent filming smoke that will be composited into shots later. To create a wide variety of smoke that was controllable, we shot in miniature with a fast speed camera and replaced smoke with dry ice. Here is some raw footage of my favorite smoke blasts:

For the next week, I’ll be cutting the footage together and compositing the smoke with other shots, while Joseph and Sarah shoot aerial photography in Ohio. Look for more updates then.

The project is tentatively titled “Protect me from what I want.”
Sarah and Joseph work in a wide variety of formats and styles. They are very well known for their installation work and “Protect Me From What I Want” is an installation that incorporates many formats and mediums.
http://www.sarahandjoseph.com/

Sarah and Joseph asked me to collaborate on the video portion of their installation. After a long discussion with them about their objectives in the project, I became very excited to collaborate.

I don’t want to give away too much information before the project is complete, but instead write about some of the obstacles we faced in our first weekend of production, and share some scary and fun stories from the weekend.

The project involves two elements (horses and smoke) that are notoriously difficult to work with in film productions.

Animals are always slightly unpredictable. The biggest lesson I have taken from my past work involving snakes, wolves, birds, cats, dogs and Grizzly Bears (but never horses, before now) is expect things to take longer than planned. I learned a new lesson about filming animals this past weekend — the caliber of the animal is best judged by the caliber of the trainer.

We had made arrangements with a ranch in a remote area of Wisconsin, and I went ahead to scout the ranch location and meet the owners. The 40-acre ranch was reported to have plenty of trails, a diversity of locations for shooting, and, of course, horses.

But as we discovered, the physical condition of the ranch — and the horses — were less than ideal. The horses were skittish and the ranch was disorderly and strewn with trash. Despite my better instincts, we decided to continue with the shoot thinking we had no time to find another ranch.

We began shooting at sunrise the next morning. The scenes we had scheduled involved Sarah and Joseph leading their horses through fields and woods as they search for something. We had two horses. Sarah’s was a painted horse and Joseph’s a white. As soon as we left the gates of the ranch to go to our first location, Joseph’s horse tried to dart back to the stable but we were able to keep her under control and walk her up the road. That did make us nervous about her and we took extra care with her.

Another mutual friend, Kelsey Byers, who owns her own horse outside Chicago and was assisting on the production as still photographer, had volunteered for the project in part to coach Sarah and Joseph with their riding. Kelsey soon was working as a combination “wrangler” and horse whisperer, working with the horses to keep them calm, a difficult task. The white horse even bit Kelsey as we moved to the first location. But despite these signs of trouble we continued on.

We shot during the sunrise and had no serious problems until we needed a shot of Sarah and Joseph on horseback. We were all a little nervous about Joseph’s horse but after saddling them up, Kelsey led the horses down the trail until they seemed comfortable.

The horses were warmed up and ready so we rolled the camera and got a take of Sarah and Joseph on horseback. They walked down the trail and were turning around out of frame when suddenly I could hear on the microphone the sounds of Sarah’s horse darting off.

We helped Joseph dismount his horse and then pursued Sarah and her horse down the trail. We were worried that Sarah’s horse might throw her on the steep and muddy trail ahead. Luckily the horse just wanted to return to the stables. We found Sarah shaken but safe.

After collecting ourselves, we went back to the ranch and reported the incidents to the owner. “Well I thought the painted one would be ok,” was his reaction to our story.

So we decided to cut our losses on the horseback shoot at this ranch and return to the farm where we were staying to regroup and rethink our filming strategy. I spent the rest of the day working with our hosts Rita and Lester Kibler (Joseph’s aunt and uncle) to find more reliable horses (and ranch owners).

Rita and Lester put us in touch with some friends who owned a few horses and that afternoon we drove out to meet them. The owners were very excited to meet us and invited us into their home to discuss our movie and needs over drinks. After explaining our film and intentions, we went to their stables and arena where we were introduced to some gorgeous and perfect horses. So we decided that we would return and work with these horses in the following weeks. We also agreed that the owners would come with us on the shoot in order to make the horses more comfortable.

With the horse arrangements settled, we planned for day two, our smoke day. An important element to the movie is smoke on the horizon. Sarah and Joseph have done very creative work with colored smoke on some of their past projects. For this project we needed to create both black smoke and blue smoke.

Working with smoke, especially in large quantities, in film productions is difficult. Ideally wind speeds must be below 5 mph. This shoot also required a pillar of smoke and that type of shot wind direction must be considered when choosing camera placement. The smoke day went much better than our horse day. We were able to manage all the conditions necessary to get some good shots.

Despite the initial setback with the horses at the first ranch, I am excited to return next weekend and complete production. We are pleased with the footage we have so far.

Photos by Katrina.

After meeting with Derek and John we decided the best way to illustrate the ease of the program and benefits was to go and film with some businesses that have recently taken advantage of the program.  Derek and John suggested a variety of businesses to help demonstrate the range of the program.  We were very lucky that the owners of these businesses were available on short notice to be interviewed and were glad to allow us to tour and film their businesses.

I was also fortunate to be able to hire a great crew for this project.  Erik Anschicks was our principle photographer.  Erik and I cut our chops together working on horror movies in Georgia and Tennessee.  I love working with Erik, since years of crew experience allows us to have a shorthand with each other that makes filming fast and efficient.

I also hired Mike McGrath to do our location sound.  Mike has worked on many major productions in the city and I like to grab him for our shoots as often as possible.  Because we were shooting in so many difficult sound locations I needed someone well experienced and who I could trust to manage the audio.

The locations we were using are probably the worst imaginable for a sound recordists: a laundromat, a factory and a bar.  It was a challenging situation every day and Mike handled it like the professional he is.  And of course we had Garret Cumber, our “Do Everything Man” of Clarion New Media.  Garret is my “go to” on just about everything and I would be lost without him.  From driving the van to logging the footage to taking behind the scenes footage for this blog, he’s a man of many talents.

We shot footagewith Derek and John here at our mini-studio where we laid out the essential topics to be covered in the video.  Shooting in-house is a great way to keep production costs down because it can be done with much less support crew and our time becomes more flexible.
The important factors to cover were: SBIF is for small businesses; it is easy to apply for the grants; funds are used to make permanent improvements to a building, and; it is a grant rebate program. The trick for this video was to do this in a manner that was fun and engaging.

Mike, Erik and Andrew shoot inside Eye See Ravenswood

Our first testimonial shoot was with Dr. Andrea Stein, owner of Eye See Ravenswood.  Dr. Stein used to work for a large chain of eye stores but wanted to have a closer relationship with patients.  So this year she opened her own store at 4735 N. Damen to provide full service for her patients and their families.  Apparently some eye care services don’t serve children, but Dr. Stein does, even if she has to stack phone books.
To get footage of Dr. Stein at work, I sat in for an eye exam as Erik rolled the camera, documenting the process.  I had a lot of fun with Dr. Stein who was very kind even though I am the worst patient she ever had.  I don’t sit still and am easily distracted.
When Dr. Stein moved into her current storefront, there was nothing there but three walls and a drinking fountain.  With the guarantee of a SBIF reimbursement she was able to renovate the whole place by building examination rooms, putting down new floors, adding new lighting and shelves and a installing a kitchen.

Our second shoot was with Lallita Fields, the owner of LP’s Wash-O-Matic at 8923 S. Cottage Grove.  That address has been a laundromat for over thirty years.  Recently Lallita decided to buy the space next door and to add four large washing machines. The adjacent store was not built to withstand the heavy commercial washers, so Lallita had to have cement platforms poured as well as three-phase electric and new plumbing installed.  Lallita qualified for an SBIF grant and was reimbursed a portion of the costs to improve her new space.

Lallita and I had fun hanging out while the guys set up for her interview.  Thanks to Lallita I now understand why I am supposed to separate my whites and darks and medium loads.  According to her, this will keep my socks from turning gray.
Lallita also showed me her brand new Dexter washing machines.  They were refurbished recently and are “the Cadillac” of washing machines. The SBIF grant could not be used for the washing machines (they’re not permanent improvements) which was an important point we needed to make about the program.  Those Dexter machines were pretty impressive and Erik took some great footage of their shiny stainless steel surfaces.

I was very excited about our visit to Laystrom Manufacturing.  I love industrial machinery, welding and big lasers. Bob Laystrom took us around and showed us their latest automated laser cutting machine. I don’t know much about how it works, but it looks really cool.  Bob showed us a few of the different things Laystrom Manufacturing makes, from components in cell phone towers to special heat syncs for lighting in tents in Iraq.

Laystrom decided to do some green improvements to their over 100 year old building, including new boilers and windows.  They were able to take advantage of the SBIF grants to complete these tasks.

Our last shoot was at the newest watering hole in my own neighborhood of Logan Square: Revolution Brewery.  Owner Josh Deth told us about the challenges of restoring a historic warehouse.  It turns out that Josh has done a lot of the work himself. As he puts it, “If you don’t have skin in the game, you are not really playing.”

Revolution Brewery is located at 2323 N Milwaukee Avenue, and since opening last month they have not been able to brew fast enough.  I tried a few of the brews myself before we came to shoot and I’m not surprised that the demand is so high.
Josh had been dreaming about this place for nearly a decade. For him, it was a matter of finding the right place.  Josh found that place in a bricked up warehouse.  The warehouse required a gut rehab and construction took over a year.  The SBIF program was a significant part of Revolution Brewery’s financing strategy and helped lower the costs of a very expensive renovation.
That’s what is so great about the SBIF program: it eases the costs of large projects that might not get done otherwise.  Small businesses are the backbone of the economy and we all benefit from their success.
Overall this was a great shoot and we had a great time meeting everyone.  Look for the video at Somercor

There are some pretty simple reasons why this ratio is so high.  First, there are far fewer videos on the internet than text pages.  Second, Google gives higher priority to videos then text when “ranking” search results.  The reason?  Some say it is mostly due to Google’s ownership of YouTube.

Although a video on your site is by no means a magic bullet to the top of the search results page, it certainly helps. Videos should be an important component of a robust SEO campaign.

Videos are a superb way to engage website visitors.  They can also be a great way to get visitors as long as you keep a few simple measures in mind.

The very best way to have videos increase an entire site’s SEO is to coordinate the video with the rest of your website’s message.  As a video producer I like to talk with our client’s marketing director and webmaster in planning the message and content of our productions.  If you are already actively strategizing to select key words to get on page one of a website search, for certain keywords, I can make sure the videos support that strategy.  The worst thing you can do when adding video to your website is add one that has nothing to do with the “metadata” of your site.

If I confounded you with the term “metadata” then I apologize.  I was a little confused the first time I encountered that word.  So here’s a basic summary of what metadata is.

“Metadata is data about data.”  Basically, it’s information that search engine bots read in order to understand what is on your site.  Users of your site won’t see the metadata on your site but the search engine will.  It is a big contributor to how your site gets ranked for search requests.

When adding a video to your site it is important to make sure the metadata on your site includes the following:  H1tags, a meta description tag, and meta keyword tags.

H1 tags are titles that describe your video using relevant keywords.  These headings help search engines categorize the content on the page.  Meta description tags are typically two to three sentences long and are used to group related titles together to boost the strength of the page during a search.  Meta keyword tags are three to five words that best describe the content on the page.  They should focus on a key topic or category for each video page.  This is all done by your webmaster when creating or tweaking your website.

When we host videos for our clients on our media hosting service, we include tags in the video player’s metadata.  This includes the video name, video description, and video tags.  The video name should clearly express the subject matter and unique characteristics.

For example, let’s say the hypothetical “SuperCorp Company” just won the prestigious (but fictional) National Excellence Award.  SuperCorp asks us at Clarion New Media to create a website video informing their customers about the award.  A video entitled “Our Award” is less likely to boost search results ranking than “Super Corp Wins National Excellence Award.”

Video descriptions describe the contents of the video.  This is a great place to include many of the keywords that your potential clients may be looking for.  An example of a robust description, again using SuperCorp and its National Excellence Award could be the following: “SuperCorp the largest supplier of super in the Midwest has received the National Excellence Award for outstanding performance.”

Video tags are single keywords that are relevant to the content of the video.  They are the least effective way to increase SEO but still helpful.  The tag should include as many relevant keywords as possible.

A lot goes into effective search engine optimization, and this is just a summary of some of the simpler tactics.  Many companies are now specializing in strategies to boost their clients’ positioning on a search results page.  They, like us, understand how videos can boost SEO and know the importance of coordinating video production with content tagging.  Of course Clarion New Media is always available to discuss this with you further.  Call or email us.