IDG World Expo has been producing Macworld for years. This year, a new focus and a new name had IDG World Expo turning to D2 with a challenging project to help generate that buzz.

The concept: to produce, shoot and edit a promotional video each day of the event from show site at Moscone in San Francisco, concept to completion, and push the video as a tickler to the attendee base that had registered for the event but had yet to be “verified” (show up) – THAT DAY.

D2’s Damon Movitz, Mike Hennessey and Alex Enman traveled to San Franciso with one of our Sony PMW-EX3 high-definition camera packages, a couple of DSLRs (Canon 60D and Canon t2i), and a powerful, portable, Premiere Pro editing system.

Arriving from Boston on Wednesday, the crew had only enough time to drop bags at the hotel and rush over to the historic Warfield Theater for Macworld’s opening night Modest Mouse concert (well, after stopping at Damon’s favorite San Francisco noodle joint but that’s a story for another blog). Making sure to capture that excitement would only add to the “what did I miss?” story.

Thursday was opening day at Moscone and the crew captured every bit of excitement from the event – from the show floor opening rush and the exhibitor-sponsored trampoline act to the attendee-packed booths and the performance artists working the floor – not to mention all of off-the-floor activity… the Midway – art exhibits, film screenings, drum circles, South Park gallery, iPad sketch station and presentations including Hank Shocklee, moe. and Commander Rykker from Star Trek.  And, almost as quickly as the images were captured, they were ingested into the MacBook Pro-based edit suite and a commercial was born. By 6PM on Thursday, only seven hours after the show floor first opened, the fully-HD “Thursday” video was uploaded to YouTube and the link was blasted to the attendee list:

Friday’s repeat performance was just as important to help increase floor traffic on Saturday, the show’s last day. A second video was produced, shot and edited including Thursday night’s performance by Beats Antique and, at 5PM Friday, another email blast went out, this time with “So Far”:

D2’s long history with trade shows only served to help capture hours of additional footage that is now being used to create promotional videos for the 2013 event allowing for a 10 month sales cycle – targeted attendee and exhibitor marketing, sponsorship opportunity pieces and overall event promotion. The money that was spent on on-site promotion doesn’t have to be re-spent to deliver a different message.

Our thanks to IDG World Expo, Macworld, iWorld and especially Nina Carrara and Linsy Miller for entrusting D2 with their “baby”.

“We feel there is this middle market that is underserved. They can certainly web stream but if they are looking to do something that is suitable for broadcast, I think this truck will allow them to do that at a price point that has never really been possible for them before. We are enabling the market for smaller schools to enter the broadcast world…

There’s this movement to get every sporting event played online and each game doesn’t have to be a huge $40,000 production, but they do want it to look professional with replay and graphics. I think the equipment that we are putting into the truck enables that to happen for the first time…

A lot of the stuff in the truck is we are taking stock items and we’re either customizing them or augmenting them to optimize them for broadcast.  So with EX-3s we’re taking the stock camera but taking off the stock lens and putting on true sports lenses and longer lenses. We are customizing rear controls, view finders, the whole thing in order to make them user friendly for the sports world…

We’ve been doing sports television for twenty years, so we know what it takes and what a professional sports crew is accustomed to so we know to surround the infrastructure with the environment we know a pro crew is comfortable in.”

For the full write up, visit: Sports Video Group

Due to high demand, an overflow room needed to be setup to accommodate everyone.

Mike, surrounded by gear, goes over a variety of different grip options.

Check out the full presentation here:

- Newtek Tricaster 850 Extreme switcher
- Newtek NEW 3Play 425 replay system
- Sony EX-3 cameras w/ Telecast Copperhead fiber chains
- Soundcraft 32-channel board w/ full sports broadcast audio complement
- full broadcast graphics

Designed for small live sports production, this powerful production unit will also be great for live concerts, corporate webcasts, and many other applications. Launching March 2012. Check back here for updates during the construction process!

Control Room

Rather than hire a conventional HD production truck, we built an entire production system onsite from the ground up.  The heart of the system was a suite of products from Newtek: the TriCaster TCXD850 HD switcher, the 3Play replay system, and LiveText graphics.  For cameras, we used four Sony PMW-EX3′s.  We also built a full audio system based around the Mackie Onyx 1640i 16-channel mixer, with standard announcer headsets and effects mics.  Rental gear was supplied and shipped in from six different companies around the country.

TriCaster TCXD850 Switcher

Here’s the TriCaster TCXD850 switcher with the main interface monitor and new “CS” control surface.  This control surface emulates the usability of professional switcher control panels, and is really what enables a TD to be able to switch the fast-paced action of live sports with the TriCaster.

Cabling behind Front Bench

Here’s a look at the cabling we installed behind the “front bench,” which includes the TD, director, and producer stations.

Wires behind TriCaster

This is a close-up look at some of the wires going into the TriCaster.  We used seven of the available eight external SDI inputs on the TriCaster.  This included four cameras; one channel from the 3Play; and the scorebox bug, which used two inputs, one for video fill and one for the key channel.

Steve Shaw and the 3Play

Steve Shaw operated the 3Play, Newtek’s replay system.  The 3Play is a 3-in system, meaning it can record 3 different camera feeds simultaneously.  It is capable of running in either 1-out or 3-out mode; we ran it in 1-out mode because we didn’t have enough available switcher inputs to support all 3 channels.

Rene and LiveText

Graphics operator Rene Ray running LiveText, Newtek’s graphics system.  While the TriCaster has an internal version of LiveText, in a sports producton environment a standalone graphics machine and operator is required.  In this situation, the LiveText software is installed and run on a standard Windows laptop.  The LiveText machine supplies its graphics to the TriCaster via a gigabit-ethernet network connection.

Audio and Bug

We put the audio position and the scorebox bug at the back of the control room.  Here’s the Mackie Onyx board and a standard CBS Sports Network scorebox bug.

Camera Ops and Long Lens

We used four Sony PMW-EX3 high-definition cameras and put 40x lenses on two of them.  Here are the local camera operators mounting a long lens on one of the cameras …

Camera 3

… and here’s Camera 3 in position at high first.  The homemade viewfinder shade makes it easier for the camera operator to see the viewfinder in sunny conditions.  We were able to use HD-grade coax cable to connect three of the cameras to the control room.  Because coax can’t deliver HD-SDI over the 1000′ distance from the center-field camera position, we used a fiber line for that camera.

Audio Operator Bill Williams

Audio operator Bill Williams configures the intercom at the director station.  We used an eight-channel ClearCom system, including four wireless stations.

Bill, Rick, and Deb

Bill Williams, EIC Rick Buffolano, and A2 Deb Partin working on the intercom system in the announce booth.

Joel Kitay with the Announcers

Producer Joel Kitay (center) meets with play-by-play announcer David Saltzman (left) and analyst David Brady (right) in the announce booth.

Director Adam Hinsdale

Director Adam Hinsdale checking out camera shots on his multiview monitor.  In addition to the main interface monitor, the TriCaster has a separate multiview monitor with several different view configurations.

Speaker Stands

When you’re on a budget, you find out that lens cases make perfect control room speaker stands.

Satellite Truck

We employed another fiber line to run our HD-SDI signal to the satellite uplink truck outside, which beamed the show back to CBS Sports Network master control in New York City.  Saturday’s game was live-to-tape, meaning it was recorded live by CBS in New York and aired a few hours later.  Sunday’s game was aired live.  In addition to feeding the uplink truck, the TriCaster also recorded the program in full HD resolution, and encoded a live Flash webcast stream.  All in all, the show looked great on-air, and we accomplished our goal of producing a professional HD sports broadcast in an innovative way!

Watch a sample inning from the broadcast

From the Lands’ End Canvas page:

“We recently presented the Punk-rock duo Matt & Kim at the House of Blues in Boston.  The concert was the last show of the duo’s Sidewalks Tour.  Before the doors opened we threw an exclusive VIP concert for 50 fans to attend the sound check, personally meet the band and take pictures prior to Matt & Kim’s headlining set.”

Backstage with Lands’ End Canvas  – bringing you closer to the music we love: Matt & Kim

Given our long history of live concert production and the number of shows we’ve worked with DKM in the past, D2 was approached by the band’s management to produce the live video to accompany the concert at one of the last shows of their US tour promoting the new album “Going Out in Style”. This wasn’t to be a straightforward production, though – we were asked to put together a show that was gritty and “old-school” – think black & white, grainy, frenzied and paced to match the band – fast. Stylistically and technically, the challenge was to create a post-produced feel but shot live show.

B/W treated from downstage handheld of Al Barr with crowd

Camera locations were worked and re-worked, finally settling on two hard cameras at front-of-house (where the sound and light boards live) with long (33x and 35x) lenses, three hand-held cameras on the downstage edge between the barricade and the stage, and two hand-held cameras upstage looking back toward the audience.This would provide for excellent up-close coverage of the action on stage and the two cameras at FOH allowed for “safety” coverage of Ken Casey and Al Barr, who trade lead vocals.

Ken Casey from Front of House Camera

Using a mix of our Sony DXC-D55 and Sony BVP-70is cameras turned out to be a fun and fascinating dilemma – mixing analog and digital and attempting to have all the images match – we wanted the show to feel gritty and we were able to achieve that with increasing the gain on the older 70is cameras to 18db, crushing the black levels, over-saturating the colors and over-exposing the whites. But, the SDI D55s proved to be a problem. Even at 18db, the cameras looked too good! Dialing up the gain in-camera to 27db took care of that – the seven cameras matched nicely; all with the grit and noise that was going to give that old-school rock-n-roll look we were going for.

Black and white treated with DVD overlay of James Lynch from downstage handheld

The idea of shooting the entire show in black & white ultimately gave way to using that effect more sparingly and we used a switcher effect on our Sony DFS-700a to remove all the color and add additional grain with overlays from DVD playback. Using it on just a few of the songs in the 2-hour set was met with rave reviews.

The end product was exactly what we had hoped it would be: a gritty, old-school video that supported (and, dare we say, enhanced?) the audience experience.

Here are some impressive statistics from YouTube alone:

• People watch 2 billion videos a day
• Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded every day
• 24 hours of video are uploaded every minute!

That’s an insane amount of video. So, how do you stick out from the crowd?

Well, if you’ve ever watched YouTube, you’ll know the production quality of most videos are sub-standard.  One might be someone sitting in front of his/hers computer’s webcam.  Another will be from someone’s cell phone.  Another video might be from someone with the greatest intentions of quality – using a tripod and a real video camera – yet without a microphone or proper framing.  We’ve all watched a lot of television and know what good television is supposed to look like, yet the standard for web is unbelievably low.

Presenting your company’s brand well is vital to any company’s success and there is no more effective way of doing that than presenting a high quality, professional video.  Video is often more compelling than the written word as it creates a connection with the viewer.  It gives your site personality and a way for your company to stand out from your competitors.

We’re not suggesting you should have video simply for the sake of having video but, there are a broad range of subjects you might consider.

Here are some examples:

• Deliver your message directly to your potential or current customer base
• Show your company’s personality and give people a face with whom they can associate
• Product Demonstration
• Client Testimonials

D2 Productions shooting Client Testimonials in Las Vegas for Everything Channel

All of these examples can make the content on your web site more compelling. When a potential client comes to your site, they will stay longer when they watch videos.  If the first video they watch is compelling, they’ll likely watch another and another and before you know it, you’ve created some brand stickiness.

At D2 Productions, we’ve created hundreds of videos for our clients’ web sites and look forward to working with you on a future project.

And by new amenities, I mean some awesome looking cupcakes. (not really).

Red Velvet, Vanilla & Chocolate delicious-ness

Damon putting out the cupcakes

Dave Walzer sits and talks with Jim Johnston

Check out the studio

The Control Room

The folks from BU Productions stopped by in the afternoon

Mike Hennessey shows Jerry a Kino-Flo 200 Diva-Lite

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