The CALL Recruitment Display is a set of materials for a foster and adoptive parent recruitment campaign, made up of display, brochure, fact sheet and story cards, designed to present The CALL and elicit action.

Each item fills a specific function and while all of them are designed to be used together, they can also be used individually to give The CALL maximum flexibility. Because The CALL (thecallinarkansas.org) is a statewide organization with offices in counties around Arkansas, each item in the collection is designed to be customized to reflect the needs in a particular county and to provide local contact information.

The display comes in 3 different sizes to suit different venues. In each size, the hardware is carefully selected to be portable and easy to handle.

The brochure presents The CALL and works well in conjunction with the display or as a standalone takeaway piece. There is a statewide version, as well as county specific versions that focus on local needs.

The fact sheet presents a list of 10 ways to get involved with The CALL on one side and on the other 10 misconceptions about foster care. It has turned out to be a great conversation starter wherever it’s handed out.

Finally there are the story cards. This is a set of 7 cards. Each contains the fictionalized story of a child in foster care (based on real data) on the front and a summary of what The CALL is about on the back, with room to write down the time and place of the next Information meeting. So the cards double as a way to connect people with the lives of children in foster care and as a reminder to bring interested people back for the next info meeting.

These materials were all designed together to provide a consistent look and feel and are now becoming a cornerstone in The CALL’s ongoing re-branding process.

I am thrilled that the judges at MarCom rewarded this set of materials with Gold honors and equally thrilled that the materials fly off the shelves and help people connect with The CALL.

While they were at it, the MarCom judges also reviewed a T-shirt I created for The CALL’s Annual Staff and Volunteer Summit and gave it an honorable mention. I am pleased, especially considering that the design was created literally minutes before it had to go to print for the T-shirts to be ready in time for the Summit. Everyone receiving a T-shirt has been excited about it and we haven’t been able to keep them in stock since the event.

We agreed and went to work. Then things happened quickly and after a few twists and turns, we found ourselves in charge of the whole grant writing process.

The supplied documents turned out to correspond to an old set of grant requirements. New ones were tracked down. Our team went to work doing research, writing, and designing. We visited the key locations. We plowed through reams of scientific studies and collected financial data for health care institutions.

Several revisions later and with literally minutes to spare, we submitted the finished 60-page grant proposal. The grant is still being evaluated and hasn’t been funded yet, so we can only disclose that it is for a multi-million groundbreaking health care initiative in a large US metropolitan area.

We are not sitting still though and continue to work with the non-profit to help them be ready for when the grant is funded. The experience has also provided other opportunities for our team in the area of grant writing and non-profit development…

Great. I know my way around the medical community, but this one I’d never heard of. A few phone calls and emails later, I met with the producer Jaz Gray one early winter morning at Arkansas Children’s Hospital and then at UAMS, following patients around, and interviewing doctors.

Jaz is a young woman who herself has AVM and has been through over 30 corrective surgeries. Now she wants to use the medium of film to bring awareness to the disorder and how it affects the lives of those who have AVM.

Eventually there were two more days of shooting for this documentary, one back at the hospitals and one in rural Arkansas spending a day with a now retired teacher who has dealt with AVM most of her life.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video was actually shot at several manufacturing plants and production companies in New York, Kansas City and here in Little Rock were working on the project. The result will be a video for use as part of this company’s effort to show a major client that not only are they doing an excellent job with the contract they have, but they should also be entrusted with a continued and expanded contract.

The shoot itself was fun, as the plant manager gave me very free range to record anything that struck my fancy on the production line. I found impressive wide shots as well as intriguing details of product, machines and the workers that make it happen.

Driving home from the shoot, I got to thinking about the effort this company is expending to secure future contracts from one client. Shooting video at several locations around the US and having a team work around the clock to edit it for the formal presentation does come with a significant price tag.

The company could have decided to just do a PowerPoint presentation and a quick walking tour of one of their plants. In fact, I am sure they will do all that, but they wanted a video too. Because the video can, in just a few minutes, show what would take much longer to explain and also take the client into places that would not be accessible or particularly visible on a plant tour. Obviously the folks at corporate decided that spending some money to expand their business with this client will be well worth it.

Many companies don’t have have nearly the resources that this corporation does, but that doesn’t mean that a video of the production process or service isn’t needed or a good investment. Because a well-crafted video will convey more, with greater emotional impact, in a few minutes, than most meeting presenters will manage in 20-30 minutes. Even for a small business, gaining just one new client can quickly more than pay for the cost of producing a quality video that tells the company’s story or shows off the product or service. As a bonus, the video can be shown again and again, maybe with some customization for a particular new potential client.

The Empixx Awards is a competition for innovative TV and video production that this year drew over 1,100 entries from all around the US and Canada. The list of clients whose productions were recognized includes top names in industry and entertainment, as well as educational institutions and smaller businesses. I am pleased to say that Southwest Power Pool is in very good company here. Similarly, the production companies represented range from big Hollywood and New York players to much smaller boutique shops and anything in-between.

A unique feature of the Empixx Awards is that all entries receive written feedback. In many competitions, that is not the case. For me as a producer and film maker, that feedback in invaluable, as it gives me insight into what caught the eyes of the judges (good and bad) and lets me evaluate the techniques and production approaches I use for their effectiveness. So the awards process not only gives recognition to work I’ve done already, but also helps me improve my future work. It’s a win-win.

Now for the videos that won:

SPP Team Work is the video that could. It was supposed to be a short video to introduce a team building training. It was created on a really tight schedule (read more here). And it was only supposed to be used once.

Then it was such a success at the event that the client decided to use it for other trainings and events throughout the year.

The Empixx judges agreed and gave it a Platinum award, indicating that it scored among the very top videos in this competition.

An Introduction to SPP received a Gold Award, adding another recognition for this video that encapsulates the who, what, where and why of Southwest Power Pool in 6.5 minutes. This video already received a Gold Award in the Marcom Awards last year.

I am proud and thankful to have received the 2 awards. The awards signify the level of creativity and craftsmanship you can expect from Film & Company LLC. There’s of course no way to guarantee that the next video for certain will be an award-winner, but I will certainly give it the same touch …

It’s been no secret that Flash on desktop computers is a resource hog. Yes, it does cool things, making websites sing and dance. But it’s often more like a carnival show full of smoke and mirrors, than adding real functionality. Sure, it’s cool that I can zoom around a site and get fancy page transitions and all. At least until I try to access that site from a network that is, shall we say, limited on bandwidth. All of a sudden, the dazzling imagery grinds to a halt, unless you consider watching a spinning load indicator to be entertaining. If that is the norm on desktop computers, is it any wonder than the experience is less satisfying on mobile devices where processing power is more limited?

In a world where websites are accessed not only from desktop computers connected to a fast network, but increasingly from mobile devices, it makes sense to create a website such that it displays well on the largest number of devices. Obviously Adobe is finally admitting that the user experience of Flash is not going to be optimal in the reasonable future and so they are pulling back. That has to raise the question if this pull back is the beginning of the end for Flash. I am sure Flash will still be around for a long time, but something has fundamentally changed and I think we will gradually see fewer Flash based websites. Not just the sites that are built 100% in Flash, but also the ones that insist on using Flash as soon as they show an image or a video, but otherwise use html, php and such to build their sites.

It’s been said that we are entering a post-PC world and in it, Flash just no longer makes sense.

I fully understand why studios put trailers for other movies on DVDs. I’ve run across new movies that way myself. So obviously it can be a good thing. But is it good to stick them on there and provide no way whatsoever to get to the main menu without playing all the trailers in real time? No, for so many reasons. Consider just a few: The DVD gets stopped, for whatever reason. Start over, play all the trailers. Power failure. Same thing. I already watched the movie and the trailers and would like to just watch the movie again. Sorry, you have to watch all the trailers first.

Fortunately, there are many DVDs created with either a direct way to get to the menu and the movie, or at least the ability to click through chapters and get to the menu that way. The designers of those DVDs understood the very legitimate need for viewers to be able to bypass the start-up content.

Sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference between a good user experience and one that ends in utter frustration …

The question always comes up when talking about a potential video project. At times it’s even the first question.

Budgets for theatrical movies cover reams of paper. Even a detailed budget for a much smaller production can go on at great length. There are so many items to include: Preparation, location scouting, script research and writing, talent, makeup, crew, camera(s), lights, travel, food, lodging, film or other recording media, editing, computers, music, narration, graphics, stock photo and video, distribution media and copies. And that is just a partial list. Not every production needs all of those items, but the point is that it is very hard to give a $$ number when what will go into the video hasn’t yet been determined.

You may have heard people mention numbers, like $3000 per finished minute, or was that $2000 or even $1000? Actually, those numbers can be helpful in finding a ball park figure to base further refining on. Certainly there is a difference between what can go into a video that costs $3000 per finished minute to produce and one that can only cost $1000 per finished minute.

Part of what I provide my clients when we talk about a potential project, is my experience at bringing excellent value to the production at a reasonable cost. I look for the very best use of the client’s budget.

It is important to not stare blindly at that per minute number. Consider how the video will be used. Is it going to facilitate sales to the tune of $10,000 or $1,000,000? How long will it be used? Is it for a one-time event or will it be the face of the client company/organization for years to come?

In conversation about the potential project, it is quite helpful if the prospective client, knows the scope of his/her budget. It is a very quick way to break the whole process when client and producer have wildly divergent ideas of what this project should cost.

Ultimately, creating a good video has a lot to do with vision — shared vision among all the involved. Only then can we together tailor a project that will truly deliver a video that meets the client’s communication needs at a reasonable price.

Some would, I am sure, prefer to leave that out until later, and that may be fine if you are George Lucas or Peter Jackson. For most indie movies, cost is always an issue and so the trick is to tell a compelling story in a way that doesn’t kill the project over locations or other production realities. For instance, chase scene with car crashes on major freeway in a metropolitan area is really not going to happen. But you could cover attending an opera by having your characters conversing outside the building, while opera music plays on the sound track (Annie Hall did that and did away with needing interior shots and a large audience of extras, not to mention performers).

After I finished the script, I talked with my friend about the story, its highs and lows, and potential production issues. Since the script is in revision 1, there is still plenty of time to address those pitfalls long before the story is set in stone. By having that dialog now, the script (and eventually film) will end up stronger in the end.

What’s next with this project? The script is now going back to the writer for draft #2. Maybe in a year or so, it will be in production. Time will tell if the schedule holds. With some refining of the story and the right locations for the shoot, the potential is there for a great indie movie.

It started with a phone call. Southwest Power Pool had a training event on teamwork coming up and no video to kick it off. Could I help? BTW, the event was less than 2 weeks away. No, there was no footage recorded. But I could find stock footage, couldn’t I? With a military theme? And one more thing: An aircraft carrier. Because of all the teamwork involved in getting planes into the air in that tight space. Plus those jets catapulting into the air look really, really cool.

Can do.

From the client’s draft, I wrote the final script and contacted a narrator I knew would be perfect for this project. He recorded from his studio outside LA as soon as the script was final.

With notes about what type of footage or shots I needed, I set out to scour the internet for stock footage and images that fit the bill (and the budget), as well as my own archives. I knew I had footage of fire trucks rushing through Manhattan in there.

But what about the aircraft carrier? I found some stills. Then I hit jackpot. Via a Swedish company I found footage shot on a US aircraft carrier that showed planes taking off and the flight deck crew and pilots interacting. I ordered the footage. The download would be available within 24 hours. It wasn’t. Time ticking away. Several emails to the guy in Sweden, 7 hours ahead on the clock, finally got us past several IT issues and the footage finally downloaded.
Monday morning. The event is Wednesday. Client gets to review. A few changes: Can we replace some of the images with less military images? Sure can. New images are downloaded and dropped into the animations.

Tuesday rolls around and I deliver the final video in several formats to make sure playback at the event will be smooth.

After the event I learned that the video was very well received and helped kick off the event in style. If that was the end of the story, life would be good. One more thing though: The HR department liked the video so much, they will use it at other events and trainings throughout the year. Score.