Goona Warra Winery Video

Finally done and it's a ripper. Now to do more winery's. Anyone out there know of a Melbourne (or thereabouts) Winery that could benefit from a beautiful video made about them?

Songwriting

While I've already entered one song into the Vanda and Young Songwriting Contest I've had a mate contact me to see if we could write one together to enter. With only days to go it will be a challenge, more so since he's in NZ and I'm here in Melbourne! Still, we have a chorus so it can only go forward from there.
Will publish when it's cooked!

Testimonial Videos

I have a few testimonial videos up on the site - this really working well for me. It's simple with regards to filming and video production but extremely effective in that when a client is happy enough with your services to stand up in front of the camera and say so, this is a really powerful message about trustworthiness and the ability to deliver a great job.
I advise anyone with a presence on the net to consider using this simple but effective tool. The videos don't have to be long, in fact more than a sentence or two is overkill. This has the added benefit of being not too expensive to produce. In fact, why not make a morning of it - get a sausage sizzle going, get 3 - 5 valued clients together and celebrate a bit! I filmed mine traveling to the clients offices and it only took an afternoon.
Cheers for now - Brian

Using YouTube to deliver video drafts

We've been doing this for about the last 12 months but I thought it might be worth a mention in this blog.
We utilize You Tube  to deliver ongoing drafts of projects to clients. It's great and makes it instantly available for the client to view the latest changes and come back with more tweaks. Especially good with TV commercials where we're often running up against deadlines and need client approval fast. The trick is to upload the video file and make it unlisted. That way no one can see it unless they have the actual url or link. The file can't be search for or accidentally found either. Once it's uploaded we simply email the link to the client. When we do an update we delete to existing video on You Tube and create another one.
So there you go - instant digital delivery of video files to clients for approval. Don't you just love this stuff!!!

Video shoot at the Goonawarra Winery

Well the Blade and Sony Z1 performed beautifully at the Goonawarra shoot on Thursday morning. First we filmed the sunrise creeping across the vine rows and striking the circa 1860's bluestone cellar building. Then we headed out to where the pickers where harvesting the cold climate pinot grapes in the gorgeous autumn sunshine. I mostly used the Nikon 105mm lens for the vines and the wide angle 28mm for the cellar building shots. With a little color correction and extra saturation in Final Cut the footage is looking stunning. We still have to film the internals of the winery itself and some Mothers Day festivities before the job can be edited but I will post when complete. Fantastic to be utilising this incredible light we have in Melbourne this time of year.

Video Production and the SG Blade

Nearly a year ago I purchased an SG Blade lens adaptor system so that I could use Nikon 35mm SLR lens's on my Sony Z1 HD video camera. The results have been sensational. We've had a little hiccup with some problems but they've been ironed out now and the whole system is turning out some stunning images. It's interesting to observe that the Blade has some issues with light, (you lose about 1 F stop) and you have to manually focus and pay attention to aperture settings. This forces us to be very careful with our setups and lighting - a bit like going back to the old days! Everything has to be done manually. I can tell you it's well worth the effort and a very enjoyable process. You can see more about the Blade at www.shoot35.com and see some of the projects we've filmed with the system at http://www.atractorproductions.com/services-and-examples.php

Filming at the beautiful Goonawarra Winery in Sunbury tomorrow - hurrah! Will post how it goes.

Video production and Panda update

I notice the new Google update is taking effect on search engine rankings in the video production scene. This has to be a good example of the impact that video and video sitemaps has on website rankings. Really, for ANY small business wanting to get their message out there then there is real value and ROI in having quality, profession video produced and resident on your site. At A Tractor Productions here in Melbourne, we work with excellent web designers and SEO companies to help our clients achieve meaningful results. In my opinion, video contributes to this process by giving the whole thing something to hang off - by that I mean that once you have a video produced, then you can blog, newsletter, email, etc... the video out to your database. This in turn increases video views and your contents relevance in Google searches. It drives more traffic to your site and those viewers stay on your site longer - once again increasing your relevance in Google searches and driving more traffic to your site - and so the wheel turns.
Happy Easter!!
bb