The results are in, and I’m proud to announce that The Buddy Group has won eight 2010 Telly awards! For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Telly Awards, they honor the very best local, regional, and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions, and work created for the Web.

Here’s how it works – The elusive Sliver Telly is the highest possible award, and isn’t given out very often. The second place award is the Bronze Telly.

Seven of our awards were awarded in the traditional process, where producers who have won Silver Tellys in the past are sent copies of the work and judge each individual video based on the category in which it was entered. The eighth award was for the VelociRaptor Product Trailer that we made for Western Digital and comes from an exciting new category – the People’s Telly, which was voted on by the general public via the Telly Awards YouTube channel.

Here’s the full breakdown of our eight 2010 Tellys:

WD My Passport Studio Trailer – Computers/Information Technology Category – SILVER

WD My Passport Studio Trailer – Use of Animation – SILVER

WD Velociraptor Product Trailer – Computers/Information Technology Category – BRONZE

WD Velociraptor Product Trailer – People’s Telly, Use of Animation - BRONZE

WD SmartWare Overview – Sales Category – BRONZE

WD SmartWare Overview – Visual Effects Category – BRONZE

Hot Wheels Custom Motors Interactive Video Experience on YouTube – Entertainment Category – BRONZE

DTS UltraPC Video – Miscellaneous Category – BRONZE

File this one under: Stuff I Can Finally Tell You

We did it! We finally launched the Hot Wheels Custom Motors Cup interactive game on YouTube and the Mattel Hot Wheels site. In its first few weeks alone the game has garnered over 350,000 views - and that’s just on YouTube!

We’ve been dying to tell you all about this project, but we had to keep it all top secret until after the official launch. It’s out there in the world now, though, and if you haven’t already seen this interactive game, you should check it out.

The concept is pretty simple - you pick the vehicle you want to race with and then you pick the accessory that you think will give you the best shot at winning the next race. There are three races overall and you get to pick a different accessory for each race. Watch out though, because the other cars get to pick new accessories, too, and everyone wants to win!

We shot every frame of this video in stop-motion animation. The prep, which included concept generation, storyboarding, planning, set construction and the stage build took six weeks. The shoot took a month. For those of you who like production trivia and fun facts, here are a bunch of numbers that went into this project…

26 days of production
9181 frames captured
1 minute 16 seconds average to shoot each individual frame
88 individual camera angles shot
3 expensive movie light bulbs burned out
2 expensive lighting control boards burned out (but fixed under warranty!)
85 pounds of sugar used
150 pounds of sand used
2 tripods hot glued to the floor
98,511 individual files totaling a 641GB project

Sometime in the next week or so we expect to have a behind the scenes video completed that will highlight all of the work that went into bringing these cars to life. For now, you can play the game on YouTube and tell all your friends about it!

–Mike

It finally aired, so now we can share it with you here! This is the PSA that Mike edited for the Death Valley Fund. If you want to see it on TV, it will air on KCET right before National Parks Episode 5 on Thursday night. If you’re setting your tivo, be sure to record the show before the Ken Burns doc, too, because the spot actually airs at 7:58pm.

Or, watch it in High Def by clicking here!

– DotLot

DotLot Creative Director Mike Kirsch was tapped by the Death Valley Conservancy to edit a PSA promoting the Death Valley Fund. The 30-second spot will air on PBS (KCET-LA) September 27th during the premiere of the new Ken Burns documentary “National Parks”. (Check your local PBS station’s website for air times.)

Reps at the Death Valley Conservancy sent Mike more than 13 hours of historical, modern and aerial footage, stills and postcards. They asked for a spot that would make Death Valley look heroic and beautiful. Mike sifted through all the footage to cut a spot centered mainly around the Borax 20-mule team and amazing 35mm aerials.

The spot is being conformed to HD in DotLot this week and then will move on to a post-house in LA for color correction and output.

You can learn more about the Death Valley Fund at DeathValleyFund.org.

– DotLot

Hi Friends!

Just a quick post here to test whether we set up our Facebook page to properly display posts from blog.dotlot.com.

If you’re reading this on our blog, be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter (@dotlot).

A few months ago a friend came to DotLot asking for some help in producing a PSA for an organization he was involved with called Know Newspapers. His goal was to produce a short spot that he could put up on the website of his organization whose primary goal is to save newspapers and prevent the downfall of the printed word. 

According to Newspaper Death Watch, no fewer than 11 newspapers have failed in the past two years, and I have heard several stories of other papers in Chicago and San Francisco that are faltering, too. 

Then, today, the crisis hit our industry, too. In a lengthy email from Studio/Monthly’s Beth Marchant titled “Last Letter From The Editor”, it was announced that Studio/Monthly will no longer be publishing a paper copy of it’s monthly film and video industry trade mag. As a director and as someone who runs a stage rental facility, this is big news to me. Our little production niche has been hit hard over the past year by a faltering economy and reduced client budgets. Those people who I work with frequently all tell the same story - “We’re holding on, but it’s tough.”

I’m glad that Studio/Monthly will continue to publish its online version, and from the info in Beth’s email, it sounds like they might even be expanding their coverage. But as any grip who has ever spent six hours in a dimly-lit green room knows, it’s still nice to have a few magazines laying around. 

Here’s the full text of Beth’s email…

“Dear Readers,

Maybe it was prophetic that the coverline on Studio/monthly’s June issue included the words “to Web.” I wrote that coverline long before the decision was made to end the magazine’s four-and-a-half year run as a standalone print and digital publication. But the Web is where The Studio Group is strongest and where we’ll continue to grow. Studio/monthly will deliver the same award-winning content at www.studiomonthly.com. The magazine online will do what it’s done from the start: provide practical, well-edited product reviews, in-depth tutorials, first-person advice and analysis of emerging trends at Studiomonthly.com and through our portal, Studiodaily.com. You’ll see the site evolve, however, as we refresh it more often with the kind of dynamic content that a monthly magazine could simply not deliver.

The flow of the magazine-its visual impact, its organization and the way each article was designed and edited-was thoughtfully constructed with you, the reader, in mind. I’m proud of what we built. And I know from my conversations with many of you that Studio/monthly, when it was launched in 2005, gave you exactly what you needed: practical advice that helped you improve your kit, your skill set or your business. One special word of thanks to those who wrote to tell me over the years how much you valued the magazine in its initial print form for giving you the chance, however briefly, to step away from the computer without leaving your work entirely. You read it on set, on the train, on a plane, in a facility lobby, or even far away from the dark cave of your edit suite under a shady tree. I had hoped you’d be able to do that for years to come on a Kindle. We’ll certainly be thinking about ways to curate selections of our content for viewing devices like the Kindle.

Due to the end of the print/digital editions, the position of managing editor has also been eliminated. I’d like to thank Jessica Clegg for her talent and dedication to developing the magazine, Web site and spin-off e-newsletters into valuable components of The Studio Group’s broad and deep network of production and post-related content.

Stay in touch and come back often.

Regards,

Beth Marchant
Editor-in-Chief
Studio/monthly”

Recently I’ve been exploring and learning about Twitter. What is this thing? How can Twitter benefit me? Like most people, I had signed up at one point but hadn’t done anything with it after that.  What’s its purpose and why should I spend any more of my valuable time on it when I already have email, a smart cell phone and FaceBook?

So I started by learning a little more about it in plain English. Thanks to CommonCraft,  I got a simple and clear understanding of Twitter’s function and uses.

I love the action hands with the cutout pictures. It makes the message so clear as it’s not distracted with typical heavy graphics and digital sprinkles of eye candy. From this video I started to understand its basic uses. I began to follow people of interest from a variety of areas: video production, social media, friends & family (of course), public servants, and some celebrities, why not?

I’ve come to see that little messages lead to interesting and hard to find information. For instance, @mashable Reading: “10 Golden Rules of Social Media” - http://bit.ly/4by3vD. Or other entertaining pages: “Three Wolf Moon!”, fun Amazon reviews : http://bit.ly/s8gVL.

So now the question is, how can I take advantage of this tool for DotLot and myself? One way I’ve begun is to search the chatter on Twitter for what other production companies are talking about or sharing.  For example: @nilsbreckoff: Cranking up for another fine day of video production, or @Xcelus: We are putting two new marketing scripts into video production. A JR Golf video and ecommerce video.

Lastly I’ve found little nuggets of information that is very useful that has been right under my nose. For instance check out the Speech Search from Adobe.

Moving forward I can see myself using Twitter to research companies we’re doing business with or are targeting. This little bit of information will give me more insight to the target audience, the users and the advocates, and see what messaging is getting a good response and what’s not working. Our job as media professionals is to help our clients connect with their audience in the best way possible.

I’ve leave you with this last bit I found on Twitter from @carloguillot. I think all media production people can relate to this video:

You can find me @NBHaus.

We had a lot of fun making this next commercial. At one point, the earliest concept even included a ninja, but that part of the concept got axed due to time constraints. What we ended up with was an awesome little spot that features a wily granny in spandex. Nothing wrong with that!

Be sure to watch it in HD on YouTube!

– Mike

This commercial was made to promote the integrated car audio systems that DTS has available through several different auto manufacturers. We shot multiple locations in and around Orange County.

Special thanks to all the cast and crew who worked their butts off on one very long production day.

Be sure to watch it in HD on YouTube!

– Mike

Hey, Friends. 

During Q4 last year we produced 3 commercials for DTS in order to help them promote several of their new consumer audio technologies. I’ll be posting them over the next few days. Here’s the first one, which covers their broadcast audio technologies.

You can also watch this video over at our YouTube Channel.

– Mike