3B Solutions

Next week, we are going to bring this little fella to the Big Blue Box Studios so he can teach camera operations to our three studio pups. It's about time they started earning their kibble and cuddles ;-)

Videographers don't often get a moment like this, but when they do they need a much better camera than a cell phone.

Before and after. The power of green screen . . . or blue ;-)

It was our pleasure today to be of some small assistance to the Barrie Police Service who requested that we provide them with some video recordings of an apparent hit-and-run car accident in central Barrie that had been caught on surveillance cameras. Our producer sampled the video, spliced together three different angles of recording, and enhanced the imagery using state-of-the-art video tools like those used in police forensics, a trade our Producer worked in while in Europe a very long time ago.
♩ ♫ ♬ ♮ ♭ ♪ ♬ Bay boys, bad boys, what are you gonna do when technology catches up with you? ♩ ♫ ♬ ♮ ♭ ♪ ♬

What you don't see when watching a nature documentary.

Not every scene needs to have a big budget. Through careful camera operations, sets and location work that would otherwise cost tens of thousands of dollars to be custom built can be created for a few hundred.

This is another great example of clever writing over falling back on expensive production options.

Cure Your CD with Harvest Hosts Feeling the camping blues? You might be suffering from Camping Dysfunction (CD), characterized by a lack of excitement and a longing for new adventures. Harv...

What you don't see ;-)

So, we are just this old, or at least our studio is 😉 Back in May of 2022, we were required to rip out the walls of the front bathroom due to a leak in the roof. We knew the house was constructed before the turn of the century, as we had been in the crawl space and had looked in the attic, but we weren't quite expecting what we found behind the walls. So, I called Mary Fletcher Harris of the Barrie Historical Archive who asked for some pictures to document the construction. Then it was time to fix that leak by installing a new roof. If you look closely, you can see the distance that was then common between the old boards that had contracted with time. In addition to all new shingles, the roofers installed 30 sheets of 4'x8' plywood. We have frequently commented on how the building is so quiet, and clearly the logs are a big part of that. We are guessing that our Big Blue Box Studios is one of the oldest buildings in The City of Barrie.

This is a fantastic example of how NOT to tape down a cable while working on location.

Experience matters. Our team goes this far back, and then some.

We used a similar technique when producing a video for the Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides through our not-for-profit community channel, Five Points Media. In that video, we used selective colour to communicate the limitations and burdens forced upon people without sight, and why the availability of guide dogs is so important: https://www.fivepointsmedia.ca/dining-in-the-dark-2017.html

On this date in 1993, "Schindler's List" was released.

Influenced by the 1985 documentary film "Shoah," Steven Spielberg decided not to plan the film with storyboards, and to shoot it like a documentary. Forty percent of the film was shot with handheld cameras, and the modest budget meant the film was shot quickly over seventy-two days. Spielberg felt that this gave the film "a spontaneity, an edge, and it also serves the subject." He filmed without using Steadicams, elevated shots, or zoom lenses, "everything that for me might be considered a safety net." This matured Spielberg, who felt that in the past he had always been paying tribute to directors such as Cecil B. DeMille or David Lean.

The decision to shoot the film mainly in black and white contributed to the documentary style of cinematography, which cinematographer Janusz Kamiński compared to German Expressionism and Italian neorealism. Kamiński said that he wanted to give the impression of timelessness to the film, so the audience would "not have a sense of when it was made." Spielberg decided to use black and white to match the feel of actual documentary footage of the era. Universal chairman Tom Po***ck asked him to shoot the film on a color negative, to allow color VHS copies of the film to later be sold, but Spielberg did not want to accidentally "beautify events."

While the film is shot primarily in black and white, a red coat is used to distinguish a little girl in the scene depicting the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto. Later in the film, Schindler sees her exhumed dead body, recognizable only by the red coat she is still wearing. Spielberg said the scene was intended to symbolize how members of the highest levels of government in the United States knew the Holocaust was occurring, yet did nothing to stop it. "It was as obvious as a little girl wearing a red coat, walking down the street, and yet nothing was done to bomb the German rail lines. Nothing was being done to slow down...the annihilation of European Jewry," he said. "So that was my message in letting that scene be in color." Andy Patrizio of IGN notes that the point at which Schindler sees the girl's dead body is the point at which he changes, no longer seeing "the ash and soot of burning corpses piling up on his car as just an annoyance." Professor André H. Caron of the Université de Montréal wonders if the red symbolizes "innocence, hope or the red blood of the Jewish people being sacrificed in the horror of the Holocaust."

The girl was portrayed by Oliwia Dąbrowska, three years old at the time of filming. Spielberg asked Dąbrowska not to watch the film until she was eighteen, but she watched it when she was eleven, and says she was "horrified." Upon seeing the film again as an adult, she was proud of the role she played. Although it was unintentional, the character is similar to Roma Ligocka, who was known in the Kraków Ghetto for her red coat. Ligocka, unlike her fictional counterpart, survived the Holocaust. After the film was released, she wrote and published her own story, "The Girl in the Red Coat: A Memoir" (2002, in translation). (Wikipedia)

This is Alan Rickman filming the scene of him falling off of Nakatomi Plaza at the climax of Die Hard. There is no big fall. There is not even a building. Film and video production is seldom what you think it is, but it is an incredibly powerful means of business promotion that does not have to cost a lot for a fantastic return on investment.

Behind the scenes of "All in the Family" in 1971. Corporate television and independent video production are seldom what you see on the screen.

Television and video production are not always what they appear to be. To turn an idea into reality, you need the right team of experienced professionals.

I LOVE this picture of Julia Child filming French Chef back in 1963. There are 5 people - FIVE! - sitting on the floor of the set, crammed behind her kitchen island, hidden from the camera's view. One of the five is holding at the ready a pie tin, which will undoubtedly be magically transported into her hand momentarily.

The scene reminds me of an interview that I saw with Cindy Crawford a long time ago. The interviewer had said something to the effect of, “Not everyone can wake up looking like Cindy Crawford,” and Cindy had responded, “Even I don't wake up looking like Cindy Crawford."

A few years ago I shared a post here in which I’d written, “A series of happy, shiny Facebook posts or a perfectly curated Instagram feed or Snapchat story or Pinterest board or whatever the heck other platform we choose to share only the best moments set in only the most flattering light will never represent the totality of a life. A part of one, yes. A real part. An honest part. But it's a highlight reel, not the whole movie. None of us, no matter how shiny or happy our photos or our stories, is living the one-dimensional life you see here.”

Heck, even Julia Child couldn’t cook like Julia Child. At least not alone. 😉

{Image is a photo from WGBH, as described in the post.}

Advertising through video doesn't have to be expensive to be effective or memorable.

Yellow Pages Christmas TV advert - Mistletoe (1992) Classic Yellow Pages advert first aired on TV Christmas 1992. What do you do if you can't quite reach up for that festive kiss under the mistletoe? Grab a 'g...

So, it is once again that time of year. This switch is in our primary post-production suite; a room of about ten feet tall, wide, and deep, or a thousand cubic feet. The top switch controls a small space heater, and the bottom one a window air conditioner. Some days we go high, and some days we go low. Somedays we do both.

Everybody knows what a green screen is and most know roughly how it works. One of the rules of the technology, known as Chromakey, is don't wear green. Well, here is an example of how precisely we can light a subject in our studio and how good our cameras and post-production technology really are.
The green on the left is part of a logo embroidered onto a white golf shirt that was worn by a client who was providing on-camera commentary in front of the green screen. The colour on the right is the colour used by that technology. If the white line is not in place, your eyes blend the two colours into one solid block.
So, imagine how precise the tweaking had to be to obtain a perfect removal of the background while not losing any details in the logo. You can liken it to extracting a single grain of salt from a large jar of sugar.

This is kind of what we do every day. We take something from the real world and turn it into something very different just so we can get that impossible shot.