SolidLine Media Writer

The 82nd Annual Academy Awards are this Sunday night. If you’re like us, you can’t wait to root for all of the movies you didn’t see this year!

Just kidding, our staff tries to get out to the movies as much as we can, but with a crazy production schedule, it makes it hard sometimes.

We thought we would do something different with our Oscar predictions this year. We asked a few of SolidLine’s youngest members to pick some of the categories, because after all, our toddlers know about as much of the SLM staff!

Here we go – I’ll label each category with who picked it and a short reason why. Then, I’ll give a long-winded “Thank You” speech for reading the entire blog. Feel free to cue the “Get Off The Stage Music” whenever you like!

BEST PICTURE: Up (Picked by Spencer Vass, son of Executive Producer Greg Vass)

Sure, “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker” are heavy favorites, but Spencer is going for the upset. Why? Greg Vass explains…

Spencer was asked multiple times about his favorite movie and each
time he responded with “Cars.”  When asked if he liked Up, he said
“How ya doin?”  Then we asked him “Do you like the movie with the
balloons?” and he pointed up in the sky, so I guess it could be Up In
The Sky or just Up…I think given the fact that he is 2 we will go
with Up…

BEST DIRECTOR – James Cameron for “Avatar” (Picked by Hayden Kromm, son of SLM Creative Director Michael Kromm)

It’s the biggest moneymaker of all-time. “Avatar” is sure to rack up some Oscars over the weekend. Hayden Kromm thinks James Cameron will be King of the show again. How did he come up with it? His father Michael explains…

I just read them off and that is what he picked. He also mentioned something about big blockbusters – not sure what he meant.

Good enough for me!

BEST ACTOR – George Clooney “Up in the Air” (Picked by SLM Executive Producer Greg Vass)

Jeff Bridges appears to be a lock to win the award, but Greg is putting his brains to work and picking the Clooney upset. Why is this?

I am a bit perplexed as I have seen none of the movies.
But I feel that its going to go to George Clooney…mainly because he
used to be on the show Roseanne.  I also cannot pick Morgan Freeman
because we asked him once to narrate a video, but he wanted (Marcus note: I have removed the financial figure out of respect for Mr. Freeman. Let’s just say it you would need a VISA card with no-limit to afford him).

BEST ACTRESS: Sandra Bullock “The Blind Side” (Picked by Creative Director Michael Kromm)

Sandy Bullock is the favorite to win, especially after taking home the Screen Actors Guild award. Michael never gave me a reason for picking Sandra, but rumors around the office indicate he was pretty burned “All About Steve” wasn’t nominated for anything. Maybe his dream will finally come true.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Maggie Gyllenhaal “Crazy Heart” (Picked by SLM Art Director Mike Petrik)

Never mind Mo’Nique has won every award out there, Petrik is going for the total upset and picking Maggie Gyllenhaal. But don’t worry, he has a great reason for doing so.

I didnt see any of these movies this year.  Isn’t Mo’Nique a washed up R&B artist from the late 80′s?  I guess I missed the boat on who Anna Kendrick is.  Vera Farmiga should get some sort of award for her role in Orphan.  Did Orphan get any Oscar nods?  I’ll have to check TMZ’s back log.  But I’m gonna go with Maggie Gyllenhaal, because she was good in Donnie Darko.

Great pick, Mike!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz “Inglorious Basterds” (Picked by SLM Production Coordinator Ed Boe)

Ed didn’t have to elaborate on his pick. Christoph Waltz was eerily delicious in “Inglorious Basterds.” It’s his year to take home the trophy. Fellow nominees, we hope you enjoy your gift basket. Thanks for playing.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: “The Princess and the Frog” (Picked by Molly Petrik, daughter of SLM Art Director Mike Petrik)

We have a war among the toddlers. Spencer Vass likes “Up” for Best Picture, but Molly Petrik doesn’t even think it will win Best Animated Feature. In fact, she’s going with a 2-D winner! Why is that? Mike explains…

I decided to Google the title of the flick, and show her the first image that related to the title on Google images.  Keep in mind she hasn’t seen any of these.  I started at the top of the list with “Up.”  The first image I came up with was that chubby boyscout character floating away, but you couldn’t see the balloons.  Molly seemed bored and asked to see Elmo instead.  Next, I Googled “The Princess and the Frog.”  As I was saying it out loud, she said “ribbit ribbit,” which probably means, “The Princess and the Frog should win best animated feature.  It really is a renaissance type of film for Disney.”

Good pick, Molly!

Now, to the boring stuff. I pick the rest of the technical categories. CUE MUSIC!

BEST ART DIRECTION: “Avatar”

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: “The White Ribbon”

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: “The Young Victoria”

BEST DOCUMENTARY: “The Cove”

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: “Last Truck: The Closing of a GM Plant”

BEST EDITING: “The Hurt Locker”

BEST FOREIGN FILM: “A Prophet”

BEST MAKEUP: “Star Trek”

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: “Up”

BEST ORIGINAL SONG: “Crazy Heart”

BEST ANIMATED SHORT: “French Roast”

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: “Miracle Fish”

BEST SOUND EDITING: “Inglorious Basterds”

BEST SOUND MIXING: “Avatar”

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: “Avatar”

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: “Up in the Air”

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: “Inglorious Basterds”

Having an Oscar party? Download your own printable ballot HERE.

When the SolidLine Rig is on the road, short of the occasional narrow street, or low lying tree, we are kings of the road.  At 50 feet long, and 13 and a half feet high, SolidLine floats on a cushion of sleek technology wherever we go, and talk about arriving in style.  Let’s put it this way, when we arrive at a job, EVERYONE knows it.  Once we stop moving, however, the biggest challenge can sometimes be finding a parking space.

Here we have the SolidLine Truck parked outside of the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, CO

Sometimes, we have our pick of the litter in terms of places to park…

The crew taking a break and enjoying the scenery at a rest stop in the middle of Utah.

Other times, it can be  a pretty tight squeeze.

This time parked at the somewhat busier Lambeau Field, in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

During the logistics planning portion of the Pre-Production phase, half of the battle is figuring out a spot to park the truck where it will be easily accessible, out of the way, secure, and out of harms way.  This can be a complicated proceedure especially if our location is in a major metropolitain city…

We've parked in some of the largest metropolitain areas in the United States including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando, and Denver.

…in a very rural part of the country where, perhaps, the roads are narrow or in some cases, non-existant!!

We had to drive down the narrowest mountain roads, and across a number of tiny, single lane bridges, in order to get to this gravel road at the location in rural Pennsylvania.

Either condition requires us to be experts at both driving and navigation.  Each of us has to be willing to jump out at a moments notice and re-direct traffic so someone else can turn the truck around.  It’s lucky sometimes that there are usually 3 of us out on the road, because some situations require more than one person as lookout…

To fit in the space we had for the night while in Boston, we had to prune back some of the trees...from the top of the truck...while it was backing into the driveway.

Since we need so many people just to travel from one location to the next, it is a good thing that the first two thirds of the truck are living quarters, leaving the last third for our high definition production gear, and the SolidLine golf cart.

Eddie hauls some of our more delicate high def equipment in the SolidLine Golf Cart

Most of the time, we are able to find a nice spaceous place to park for the night at a local Wal*Mart, allowing us to do the necessary shopping for the trip all in one convenient stop.  Despite the sometimes tedious driving conditions (New Jersey and New York, I’m looking in your direction), travelling on the truck is truely a fun time, with all the comforts of home.

For the majority of the shoots that we go on, I’d have to say that around 90 percent of them require at least one interview.  Whether we are interviewing the CEO of a company making a promotional video, or if we are doing a customer testimonial for a Direct Marketing spot for television, we’ve done it.  Even though the impact and the dialogue of these interviews can be dramatically different, the preparation that goes into setting it up is the same from one to the next.  True there are some considerations that are unique to each interview (space, indoors/outdoors, sound, backdrop/no-backdrop, etc…), but the end goal is the same, a clean, smooth, informational, and professional piece of the greater whole of the video.

One major piece to the consistancy of each of our interviews in general, and each interview within a video specifically, is the lighting.  Similar framing and lighting techniques work like a glue to seamlessly join the testimonials to the graphics, and vice versa.  Without this consistency, each interview would seem different enough from the others to disrupt the viewing experience, and draw the audience out of the program.  And it’s safe to say that once you lose your audience, it is very difficult to get them back.

We begin with the most basic of lighting set-ups, the ”3 point lighing” set up.  This, and variations of this are used all throughout movies, television, professional photography, and anything else that requires photographing something or someone. 

Here is the basic 3 point lighting set up.

As you can see, this particular configuration is well named.  There are three lights, the Key Light, used to provide the most light to the front of the subject (if the subject is in a 3/4s pose looking slightly to one side of the camera or the other, the key will be lighting the side that we can see the most of).  Next we have the Fill Light, just like it’s name implies, this fills some light onto the other side of the subject’s face.  This light is traditionally not as bright or as direct as it is not meant to match or overpower the Key Light.

These two lights work alongside each other to create natural looking shadows as well as variations of light intensity and brightness in order to approximate what the human eye sees everyday.  There are all sorts of things to take into consideration with lighting, such as light temperature (or the color of the light), and lighting ratio (the contrast of the bright and the dark areas) to name just a few.  For sure the whole lighting process requires a lot of adjustment and fine-tuning to get right.

The third element of the 3 point lighting set up is the Back Light (also called the Kicker Light, Hair Light, Shoulder Light and Rim Light).  This is used from behind the subject to create a slight lining of light around their shoulder and head.  This mainly serves to separate them from the background of the composition, but can also create a bit more variation in color, tone and shadow which looks more life-like to the camera.

Here’s an example of our 3 Point Lighting Set-up in action.

As you can see, the Key and Fill lights are to either side of our interview subject, and the back light is suspended behind him shooting downward.

A slight variation of this that we use pretty frequently, is the 4 Point Lighting Set-up. 

The first three elements are the same, Key, Fill, and Back Lights, but this one also adds in a Background Light.  This is used to further separate the subject from something like a backdrop, or it could also be used to highlight something specific in the background, such as a company logo, a well placed houseplant, or (in the case of direct marketing commercials) the product that the testimonial is about.

Since we here at SolidLine have conducted so many interviews throughout the years, we’ve developed an interview package, most of which consists of lighting equipment, and support for lighting equipment.  Here’s our standard interview package.

If the situation calls for it, we need to condense this down so that we can fly from place to place with this equipment also, in that case it is also referred to as our flight kit.

Included in both are our Mole Richardson 5 Lamp Professional Light Kit, 2 KinoFlo Diva Lights (4 bulbs), and a whole host of C-Stands, Apple Boxes, Gobo-Arms, Backdrops, Colored Gels, and Diffusion.

And as you can see…

…the final result fully justifies the care and trouble that goes into each set up.

You can contact Ed Boe at ed@solidlinemedia.com

For more information about SolidLine Media, visit us online at www.solidlinemedia.com.  Or call 312-939-8600.

Copyright 2009 SolidLine Media, a division of KV Media Group, Inc.

You’ve made it this far. You have your budget. You have your outline of the script you want. You know what shots you want included in your video. Yet, most likely, you have overlooked a very powerful and very important ingredient to your video. Graphics. Again, let’s go to Wikipedia to see what they have to say about the subject.

Graphics have become a major part of what we do at SolidLine Media. From inception to final delivery, the Art Department works closely with you in order to ensure the graphics in your video are exactly what you need. But, how do we get there? How does the process work? How does SolidLine Media help you to realize your vision? I’m glad you asked!

After deciding, “Yes, we would love some graphics in our video,” the Art Department begins a series of events that will continue to unfold until your video is complete. The first step is the implementation of your branding guidelines.

Branding Guidelines
Most likely you or your company has a logo / color / font that you use for all of your print and web materials. Or, if this isn’t your first video, you have a series of rules already set in place for film and video. Whichever the case, we know how important the guidelines are to you, and we would like to follow them as closely as we can. Once we get the branding guidelines in hand, we will have a better understanding of the look and feel your video will have. We will also understand what we can or cannot do with your logo.

Concept Design / Style Sheet
After learning your branding guidelines up and down, the Art team will then move forward with a concept of how the graphics will look on screen. These will be just a few composited illustrations in order for you to understand what the “look and feel” of the video may be. For example, if you video is all about ocean freight services, the concept may include shipping crate textures, ropes, water, etc combined with your font and sample text. Once the concept is agreed on, the SolidLine Art team puts together what we call a ‘style sheet.’ What this does is further solidify the concept, putting the awesome new design into action. We give you composites of what your logo will look like, what any header text or listed text will look like in the video, what lower thirds or interview introductions will look like, and what any major animation sequences will look like. We break these down into six frames for you to proudly share with everyone in the office, giving you bragging rights on how great your video is coming along. Here is what the style sheet looks like.

Animation Test
Taking the concept which everyone agreed upon, we will do a test animation first. At this step, you will be able to see for the first time how all of your text, video, pictures, colors, logos, etc. will interact on screen. This stage is the most exciting for the art team, because you finally get to see the full potential of your video. This is the point at which you can say “That’s awesome keep going!” or “That’s terrible! Let’s rethink this.” If the graphics are not to your liking, we can go ahead and do another concept for you. That’s the beauty of this stage in the process. We haven’t really done that much work. It would be a whole other story if we completed the video and then had to go back and change the graphic concept. Yikes!

Animation Begins
Here is the phase of your video that the SolidLine Art Department retreats to their dark cave, working through hunger and lack of sunlight in order to provide you with the graphics you need on time. It’s usually during this time that the rest of the SolidLine Media team is out filming the video portion of your video, so the Art Team is actually able to get some work done without those noisy video guys hanging around the office! If everything goes as planned, the graphics are ready to be edited with the rest of the video when they return. Once the rough cut is ready, we will send you a streaming link so you can watch in amazement as your video unfolds for the first time before your eyes. Now, don’t be bashful. This is the rough cut stage, which means there will be graphic mistakes. Most likely I will have misspelled something, but again, if something is not really what you expected, we can go back and figure out how to remedy the situation.

Animation Finalized
After going through your rough cut video with a fine toothed comb, showing it to every friend and family member and asking their opinion, the SolidLine Media team will sit down with you and go through all of the changes. The Art Team will make those changes, give the final animation renders back to the editor, and voila! Your video is complete and looks totally amazing! Now that you have your amazing video on blu-ray, you can go ahead and show it off to all of those friends and family members. Go ahead. We do it to.

You can contact Mike Petrik at mpetrik@solidlinemedia.com.
To learn more about SolidLine Media, visit us online at www.solidlinemedia.com.
Or call 312-939-8600.
Copyright 2009 SolidLine Media, a division of KV Media Group, Inc.