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Nov 09
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Kerry Livgren – Musician of Faith

By Faith Filmmaking

During the shooting of “The Imposter,” I had the unique privilege to spend some time with musician Kerry Livgren.  And for those of you who don’t know who this is– Kerry was a key member of the super group Kansas with such hits as Carry On Wayward Son and Dust in the Wind.  During his time with Kansas, he got saved.  The video below is the interview I did with him about his experience. Kerry is the genuine deal.  There’s no game playing.  He truly walks what he says he believes.  Few people do that in the church.  And as an update– some of you have heard Kerry suffered a stroke.  This is true and happened about a year and a half after filming “The Imposter.”  It’s a miracle he’s even alive, but he’s back in his studio, crafting musical…

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Nov 07
Love1
Shooting actor demos

Demo Shooting

By Seminars

LATEST NEWS!! Taking registrations for slots on FEB 7  to shoot actor demos.  CLICK HERE to register. When I was casting Rising Stars, I came to realize that local actors have some serious challenges to overcome in landing roles. The biggest is a bias towards LA/NYC actors. Another, is that a lot of local actors just don’t have any good material for demo reels. One problem is that often the micro budget indie that they get to act in– they get promised a DVD but in actuality rarely ever get one.  The filmmaker gets too busy and just can’t or won’t pop out the discs for their actors.  Another problem is that they just don’t have anything that can showcase their skills in front of a camera. I decided to offer a service– I would write an original little scene,…

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Nov 01
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Corporate Video & Film

Corporate Video & Film — Viral Videos

By Tips/Techniques

The corporate film and services has been changing as the technology evolves.  Here at Serendipitous Films, we’re seeing a large increase in the short corporate video, mainly for the web.  Viral videos– an unknown term in the 90’s– is fast becoming the highest demand video.  In addition, we’ve seen a  sharp increase in the “home page” video.  Usually a short, two minute or so video about the company and it’s product or services. The Viral Video can be broken down into three types– Humorous, Touching, or Sensationalism.  For the funny video– it needs to be incredibly humorous– the type of thing people instantly click to forward. to their friends.  The Touching video pulls at heartstrings.  The Sensationalism video is some jaw-dropping, I-can’t-believe-that-just happened type video. In Hollywood, the saying goes “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”  And it’s true.  Comedy…

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Oct 31
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Dan shooting with DSLR on jib

Review of the SmallHD DP6 Monitor

By Reviews

When shooting with the DSLR’s, a monitor is probably the first most important accessory you’ll need (other than lenses).  Especially with the Canon 5D and 7D, due to the LCD screen being fixed on the back of the camera body.  I’ve used Ikan, Marshall and Zacuto.  But a friend in the industry recommended SmallHD. What I like is that this monitor is true HD– many of the others are still using a 800x something.  And one telling thing– the client the other day, over my shoulder, looked at the image ais that what my video is going to look like?”  She was amazed at the image. So here’s my video review of the SmallHD monitor.

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Oct 27
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Video Production Services Industry

Adapt or Die in the Film & Video Production Services Industry

By Tips/Techniques

Serendipitous is a turn key production company in film and video for corporate, commercial and feature productions.  Check us out by clicking about us and look at our recent work.  If you need a bid, give us a call at 817-371-9222 or fill out our form in the contact section. The film and video industry has been changing dramatically.  From the early 1900’s through to the nineties, film production remained essentially the same.  Video started changing with the advent of VHS and beta in the late seventies and early 80’s.  And it’s amazing to see companies that fail to adapt to the changes of the industry simply die.  Big companies. Take Blockbuster.  They were king.  Unstoppable.  When Netflix started because a savvy computer program didn’t like that he had just gotten slapped with a late fee from Blockbuster, Blockbuster ignored…

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Oct 25
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Editing in studio

The Corporate Video Interview – Pt. 3

By Tips/Techniques, Uncategorized

I’m editing a series of videos for a Fortune 500 global company.  They had crews from around the world shoot these.  I’ve seen some really good stuff, and some not so good.  So in today’s blog, here’s some problems to avoid. Shooting subject against a window might look good to your eye, but is a very tricky lighting situation.  There can be a difference of 5 or more stops between the ambient light on your subject and what’s outside that window.  So if you expose for the subject, the window is blown out.  If you expose for the window, your subject is dark.  With good lighting, you can get the exposure of your subject even with the outside exposure.  With this big editing job, I had about ten interviews sent in against windows.  One was lit nicely.  Half weren’t lit…

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Oct 24
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Corporate Video Interview

The Corporate Video Interview — Pt. 2 SOUND

By Tips/Techniques

Serendipitous Films, in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, produces corporate video, commercials, music videos and feature films. This is the second part of the series on t corporate video interview. Now let’s talk about sound in the interview. At the non-professional level, sound is simply taken from the mic built into the camera. At almost no level is this sound good and acceptable. So you get into a quiet room. You still contend with air conditioning noise, fluorescent lighting hum, and whatever other ambient sound. I don’t know of a single instance where this sounded good. Next up is to put a decent shotgun on the camera. Still not so great. If it’s all you can do, get close to the interviewee. I was recently sent on a shoot where I was told by the client to simply have a…

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Oct 21
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Lighting for the corporate interview

The Corporate Video Interview, Pt. 1

By Tips/Techniques

One of the mainstays of corporate video production is the interview.  Also the mainstay for documentaries– they have a reputation for being on the dull side– unexciting… static.  It’s not always this way.  And some of the most engaging videos are full of interviews. Interviews are used to help tell the story.  Sometimes, they can be used as a substitute for a narrative– the pulling out of soundbites, linked together, tells the story without a script or narrator.  Or sometimes, interviews are used to help accentuate the narrative. First, let’s start with the mechanics of the interview shoot.  Most likely you’re interviewing a person who is not a professional actor.  In the corporate world, people will have different levels of experience with being interviewed.  Often, people are nervous.  They want to make sure they say the right thing.  Jobs have…

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Oct 10
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Greenscreen in studio

General Rules and Guidelines for Corporate Video Productions

By Tips/Techniques

Caveat– all rules are made to be broken from time to time.  But to break a rule in art, I believe you need to know what the rule is, versus it being an accident.  So here are some random thoughts about corporate video: Easiest way to price a corporate video is by the “finished minute.”  This means that if you want a five minute marketing piece for the web, the simplest way to quote it is $x times 5 minutes.  Standards for simple video might be in the $1K range.  I’ve had some videos in the $7K and $8K range.  Usually the shorter the video is, the higher the price per finished minute will creep up.  For example, if you price a video out at $2K per finished minute for a 5 minute video, and then decide to just cut…

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Oct 08
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Importance of Depth of Field

By Tips/Techniques

A quick way to make immediate impact on the quality of your picture taking or video making is to narrow your depth of field.  In this part 1 we talk about what DOF is and why it’s important.  In part two, we’ll discuss how to implement it. Depth of Field is the difference many times between something that looks cinematic and something that looks amateur.  There are times to have a large depth of field, but better production value often means a narrower depth of field.

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