Dyn's Ready! Marketing Project

   You may have heard me talking recently about some music videos I have been working on for a marketing effort towards companies such as Hulu, Expedia, CareerBuilder, LivingSocial, Posterous and FunnyOrDie, well they are finally all out and I can tell you all about this awesome project.

   The company I was working with that started it all was a DNS and email hosting company based out of Manchester, NH called Dyn. My friend Ryan (@Ryhara) who works for the marketing department had this crazy idea to make personalized music videos for companies they really wanted to pick up and work with. I get a message from him last year explaining what he wanted to do and we began talking about translating it on-screen.

   After getting the instrumental track from Verse Media I came in and sat down with Ryan and Tom (@tddenniston). As they wrote the lyrics I would figure out what that video would look like and write out the shot list for that song. Tom then went back to the studio, recorded the lyrics and we started the 3 days of shooting with him, @johnzahr, @AMaeCaron and several other employees as talent.

   After we wrapped and taking some time off for the Christmas and New Years holidays I started the editing process and getting them sent off to Dyn. At that point they created personalized web pages to host the video and explain exactly why they wanted to work with those companies. And lo and behold! As of writing this post they have gotten responses back from Funny or Die and Hulu! As for the other 4, Dyn has publicly released the videos to drum up attention and will hopefully hear from them soon.

   And speaking of attention, check out these articles from Union Leader, The Next Web and Fortune Magazine. This was a blast to work on and hopefully more music videos will be on the way. Here are my two favorites of the campaign:





   If you want to see the rest, go to my "Videos" page.

More Videos For the Interwebz

   Just pumping out the videos this week! Well these videos are actually from earlier this summer/late fall but they have finally been rolled out to the public. Here are 3 Darwin's Waiting Room skits for your viewing pleasure!

   This one is probably my favorite out of the bunch (whoever said "save the best for last"?!). I directed/shot/edited this one over the summer at Hampton Beach on a little "DWR Improv Day" and we came up with this gem about hypnotism as an alternative medicine gone wrong... Or oh so right? No, never mind, oh so wrong...

   This next video, It's Complicated, I filmed and edited--it was actually the first project I worked on with Darwins (and another short improv bit spawned out of it. If you haven't seen Coming Out yet check it out here). It's short comedy about a guy and a girl discussing their relationship with each other, with very different views on the matter.

   And this last one I just hopped on as an editor. Its called Therapy, a short skit about a relationship counselor assuring his current clients he has dealt with worse.

   Hope you like them and check back soon for more videos!

Two Videos This Week

   Great Scott! Two new videos this week! The first one you can see below is a quick preview of Turbulence Park for Bennys' Blog, the Pats Peak Park blog maintained by Ben Ross. I was shooting in the park for part of my weekly video and he wanted something to put in up to show there actually is snow on the mountain.

   And speaking of which, the other video I just posted is the Pats Peak Weekly. While it was shot in the park on the same day with most of the same riders, it has a completely different park section (save maybe two shots) and has a bunch of stuff from all around the mountain, including the time-lapse I talked about in my last post. I got some really neat slow motion footage of some downhill racers and some cool Glidecam shots of ski instructors. This one I went in all gung-ho from last weeks Diversity Day video, I had done all kinds of neat visual things with it I dont usually include on something like this and figured maybe I should go for round 2. Well let me tell you, the Technicolor CineStyle Picture Profile I have loaded on my Canon 60D--the color profile I am using for stuff I want to color grade--is a whole lot harder to work with on the fly than I thought. It is not nearly as forgiving as I let myself believe from last weeks shoot. I had a bit of trouble finding the right exposure as I was shooting and I think what must have helped me last time was the fact I had a clear blue sky that day. Monday the sun was going in and out of the clouds and I couldn't just set my exposure and be done with it. I have heard of some other color profiles that are a little more forgiving than CineStyle, I think it may be worth my while looking into them for this kind of run-and-gun shooting.

   And if you missed the Diversity Day video I was talking about, check it out too! I went all out because it took forever to post so I did some really nice color grading, added a vignette and threw in some light leaks! I'm actually really proud with how it looks so I may keep trying here and there when I get the time to go all out again. Maybe I can get used to CineStyle in the process, haha...

   The great thing about these Pats Peak videos is I really get the freedom to experiment and try out new things with what I am doing and I get in some real practical experience with new stuff I may be trying for the first time. Look for the next weekly... um... probably within the week!