Here you can see our Behind-the-scenes pics, and also learn tips about using video successfully in your business.

Video Production in Miami Beach: A Historical Voyage

April 25, 2017 By John Craven

UPDATE: This video won Alban Communications an award for Innovative Marketing at the 5th Annual City National Bank Better Beach Awards!

This video production in Miami Beach brings to light the history of Isle of Normandy & Miami Beach through old photos and stunning aerial landscapes. Alban Communications hired us to cover a boat tour sponsored by Iris On The Bay and is about showing the beauty of the Isle of Normandy in Miami Beach.

Dr. Paul George is known as THE historian on Miami and Miami Beach culture, historical events, and architecture. He was the tour guide for this boat tour.

The Challenge:

Along with Dr. Paul George’s words, we needed to capture this video as a live event, so we couldn’t get any b-roll before and after the boat tour. The footage could only be captured during the event. As with any small video production in Miami Beach, we needed to make it seem like we covered every angle on and around the boat.

The Solution:

Going into the boat tour with a good plan of attack was pivotal to covering every angle. For this shoot, we had two crew members. The cinematographer and the drone operator.

For the cinematographer, we did a little research on the pre-planned area the boat will be sailing. We also focused on the style and content of shots. We made pre-planned decisions like the camera height/angle, how wide, and lens choices.

For the drone operator, we again looked to the pre-planned area where the boat tour would be sailing. We decided what were the most prominent areas of the island and making sure to capture the boat in every shot no matter how wide or close. Taking off and landing from a moving boat is also an added difficulty.

In the edit room, the client and I thought the video needed more emphasis on the history. All the footage came out fantastic, but the video needed an extra push to really capture Dr. Paul George’s words.

Historical photos brought the past into the present, and we used the motion graphics to animate all of the historical photos that really brought the photos to life. The historical photos were curated from Florida Memory and the City of Miami Beach Historical Archives.

Video production in Miami Beach should tell the “story” of your property and match your brand. How do we do this?

Let’s Chat

Creative Video Production Services: The Documentary

October 8, 2015 By John Craven

Content is king, so getting creative video production services is a necessity to keep showing fresh content to viewers always looking for something interesting. Depending on the subject, the documentary could be a great tool.

In this case, ‘Ride With Heart’ is the name of a metric and half-metric century cycling event that helps raise awareness for Heart Disease. But ultimately this documentary is the story of 4 inspiring cyclist and their experiences with heart disease.

The Process:

After I decided on the concept of the documentary. Which was about 4 cyclists participating in the event. We began to look for people using a simple questionnaire asking about their experience with heart disease. I assumed the search would be a little tedious, but actually found people who were eager to share their experiences. For me it was really inspiring, because with all of the interviews came a message of hope and perseverance.

The challenge came when organizing the multi-day shoot with the 4 participants, choosing the right locations, and finally the editing. Each interview was about 30-45 minutes long. To piece them together into a 10 minute documentary is like putting together a puzzle without knowing the image you’re putting together. The hardest part was leaving out some great comments that didn’t fit into the overall story.

The biking community in South Florida is filled with positive people who want to give back. One of the ways they do this is by attending charity events like RIDE WITH HEART. From the subtle to the immediate, heart disease affects 49%* of us in some way.

The Conclusion:

I discovered 4 people who are passionate, proactive, and inspiring. Life is short and it is stories like these that remind me to make the most out of every day we have here.

A special thanks to Michael, Melissa, Jorge, Alex, and Kerry whose participation made this film.

Interested in coming up with some creative video production services for your business?

Let’s Chat

Classical Piano and Violin | Live Recording Video

August 7, 2015 By John Craven

I was approached by the classical piano and violin duo, Tomas and Tao, to create 4 music videos on Mozart’s sonatas, and a Kickstarter video to raise funds.

Tomas Cotik on the violin and Tao Lin on the piano are some of the best musicians in their field. Their commitment to perfection with each piece is wonderful and very moving to experience in person.

The Problem:

Our goal with a music video like this is to recreate the experience in real life. But for Tomas and Tao this was a unique challenge because we only had were 3 static shots to choose from. So how can we make every edited minute seem fresh and unpredictable?

Filming at All Saints Episcopal Church offered amazing acoustics for the final mix and made for some pretty dramatic lighting options.

The Solution:

While watching Tomas and Tao play the classical piano and violin, sometimes blending and sometimes contrasting their sounds, I began to think of each piece as a story.

I imagined the stories based on the tone of the piece. And imagined that each instrument was a character. The personality of each character and how they dealt with each other was how I made the decision to edit. As a result, I used these “beats” to help me decide what is the best shot to edit to.

What story can you imagine watching this video?

Behind The Scenes Of A Promo Video

October 2, 2013 By John Craven

The making of the promo video, “Life Intertwined,” was a lot of fun. It was also a lot of work that involved multiple rewrites, a storyboard, 5 days of principal photography, scouting for 5 locations, casting 6 actors, and executing 10 motion effects. All of this we did on a limited budget. But pushing the boundaries are fun!

Below, I uploaded some of the content that shows us at work behind the scenes. You can watch the original video here. Enjoy!

Since we knew the edit would be focused around the client as the narrator, we started creating the script by focusing on the narration. Above, you see notes and scribbles. The client and I went back and forth 5 or so times until we came to a tight narration that efficiently communicated the ideas he was trying to put forth.

Download (PDF, 36KB)

After the narration was locked down, we focused on the visuals and created a script. As you can see, we wanted to visualize Chris’s words by incorporating a hardworking man and his family. We hoped this would signify the importance of wealth management to the viewer.

To help visualize the script, we made a storyboard. It’s not the most detail oriented, and it is kind of funny at some points, but this is a great tool to start getting an idea of script’s pacing.

Once the script was locked down, we crewed up, scouted the locations, casted the actors, and finally got down to shooting. It was a fun shoot. We were able to work with some great people, and shoot at some exciting locations that included a huge warehouse (+/- 40,000 sq. ft.) and a sailboat.

The Crew (Nico Gomez, Clapper/AC/Grip, John Craven, Producer/Director, Mike Bajer, AC/Cameraman, Vincent Hogan, Producer/Director of Photography) setting up a scene with actress, Jeanne Tidwell, and actor, Vince Casademont. Photography by Richard Rawson.

Make-up Artist, France Tasic, fine-tuning the make-up before a shot.

France Tasic preparing the actress, Melia Morgan, for her scene.

The one and only, actor, Joey Myers.

After we completed principal photography, we edited the footage, following the storyboard shot by shot and ended up with a roughly 3 minute edited piece. After taking out a few scenes and some shots, we eventually got it down to just under 2:20.

Here is a shot that not many people notice, but it took a lot of time. We couldn’t find a good set of blueprints that we could license, so we ended up buying a blank blueprint roll and overlaying the diagram onto the blank sheet. Rotoscoping hands is a tough thing todo!

The info-graphics of numbers and stats that we incorporated into this film (Designed by Nurge Media and Animated by Beverly Rosenzweig) were to contrast the main character’s scene at work and at play. It was important to get across the idea that the main character has a busy life and show how important it is to hire a wealth management professional.

Above, you can see the stages the design went through to get to a final look.

That is it! Hope you enjoyed. I am looking forward to providing more behind the scenes content in the future.

To watch the finished video click here.