DotLot™ is ready for a brand new year of digital video engagement. We’re already working on some great projects for Western Digital, Fisker and 6 Hour Power. 

Also in the works for the next few months is a continuation of our work with creating stereoscopic videos for interactive websites. We’re working on ideas for a currently top secret website project. More on that in the next few months. 

In case you’re going to be in Las Vegas this week, look for us at CES. We’ll be visiting the DTS booth where the three commercials we produced during Q4 last year will be on display in full DTS surround sound glory.

Coming this fall … Adobe is going to release the next installment of its production suite, CS4. And after learning about some of the updated features, I have to tell you I’m quite excited. Here are some of the new or enhanced features I found most entertaining.

After Effects (AE), added several features making it even more user friendly while opening your creative genius with more tools. For instance you now have the ability to use adjustment layers like you do in Photoshop. Very nice! Also you can use the advanced clone tool to remove video blemished or add elements to your production. Adobe’s website mentioned filling a stadium of people which was fitting for DotLot and TBG as we just worked on the Madden ’09 rich media advertising. Here’s another great feature … import FLV files directly into AE. How many times have you wanted to edit or import a FLV into your production? There are so many other new and enhanced features that I implore you to look at. After Effects is an even more powerful than before.

Another Adobe tool we use often is Premiere. Here are some of the new / enhanced features YOU should be aware of: native tapeless workflow for RED, Panasonic P2, Sony XDCAM, and AVCHD. This is an awesome timesaver for us and keeps the content in its truest form. Premiere added per-sequence settings to mix content with different editing and rendering setting for each sequence. It’s something we ALL have been waiting a long time for. You can now edit multiple clip’s effects, speed/duration and transitions, all in one instance, another great timesaver. Import FLVs, cool! Blu-ray authoring. Finally, here’s a rather interesting one, automatic transcription generation with speech-to-text analysis where Adobe uses a built-in speech-to-text analysis to create a XMP metadata which allows you to make corrections to transcription. You’ll just have to see for yourself.

This blog is not the place to review all the awesome new tools Adobe has updated and enhanced. But I will tell you that with all these new features, you will see Adobe gaining more ground in the post production world, especially in online videos. Now have fun and explore all that Adobe can offer your productions.

Last month, DotLot™ teamed up with The Buddy Group and Deutsch to produce a series of rich media ads to help boost the launch of the Madden ‘09 game bundle that was released with a special edition PSP. The long list of involved clients included Sony, EA, Madden and the NFL.

It was a great shoot, which we shot on July 29th - the same day of the recent California earthquake. We built scaffolding in our studio, suspended stuntmen from the ceiling and captured it all with the RED ONE camera. It was a really challenging project that involved almost our entire company.

We thought it would be a good idea to shoot a little behind the scenes footage, so we hired Dave Gaw of Capra Media to follow us around for the day. This is what he came up with…

Great job, Dave! Thanks for making such a great video about the shoot.

This Friday DotLot is hosting a demo of the NewTek Tricaster with Keycode Media’s Mark Sambrano. We’re expecting a good turnout of some of our local friends and we’re excited to see this live web switcher in action.

I’ll post a full review after the demo.

Sad news today from the VO world - Don LaFontaine died yesterday at Cedars-Sinai. If you have seen a movie trailer in the last 15 years then you have heard his voice, probably dozens or even hundreds of times. His passing is a great loss to the entertainment community.

You can read the whole Don LaFontaine article at MSNBC.com.

New Media Expo

I learned about this expo from a friend and after watching the following video decided it would be a good idea to head up to Vegas…..

If you’re not familiar with that player, it’s Viddler.

The expo was actually a great experience. I got to meet a lot of great great people from a lot of great companies. The ones that really stood out were TubeMogul and Wizzard Media.

Tubemogul is fantastic because for podcasters, content creators, producers, etc. they are a great resource. They have a created a site that acts as an intermediary between users and 20 major video hosting sites. In other words, you upload your video to their site, and they submit it to youtube, Revver, myspace, viddler, break, blip, and many more. They then aggregate all your stats, comments, etc on their site, allowing you to see the full picture of your videos’ success.

Wizzard Media is similar to Veoh. They are a hosting site that has a proprietary player with lots of great functionality. They also work to bring advertisers and content creators together, with specific ads targeted at the right demographic. Since they actually have staffers whose job is specifically to bring producers and advertisers together, the advertising campaigns are much stronger. Recently, they worked with major companies such as Puma.

All in all it was a great experience.

Oh…and I met this girl

DotLot™ recently hosted an event with the OC Ad Club at our studio facility in Irvine. Over 100 Ad Clubbers showed up and by all accounts it was a great night of schmoozing.

While the party was raging on, we turned on the cameras in our studio and pulled in random partiers to help us tell the story of how the internet was invented. We put it up on YouTube as a choose-your-own-adventure style interactive journey. Want to know how the internet was really invented? Start here…

DotLot™’s most recent shoot was an exciting one – we shot an ad campaign for the PSP/Madden ’09 game bundle that was released this week. One of the creative executions involved an excited fan who lowers his buddy over the edge of their stadium seating section to grab a special edition blue PSP from the field below. To accomplish this shot, DotLot™ worked with a stunt crew to rig an actor from the ceiling of our main sound stage. He then climbed over a piece of a scoreboard that we built and was lowered by wires to the floor below where he picked up the PSP. We shot the whole thing using the RED One camera in full 4K mode.

An interesting production note: We shot the video elements on July 29^th, 2008 which was the day of the “Great SoCal Earthquake of July 29^th, 2008”. (Look it up – it’s in the history books.) Our rigging and stunt team was actually in the air on the scaffolding when the earthquake hit, but they were able to get everyone down safely and after a 10 minute break to wait for aftershocks, they were right back up in the air. Huge props to the whole team!

Here are some pictures from this very successful shoot.

DotLot™ was honored with eight awards at the 29^th annual Telly awards last month. We won a silver statuette – the highest award – for our work on the LA Phil Virtual Tour as well as seven bronze statuettes for work we did on several other client projects. Here are the winning entries, with links to the work where available.

• Awarded Silver for the following
  • LA Phil Virtual Tour – Public Relations category
• Awarded Bronze for the following
  • OCPAC Virtual Tour - Public Relations category
  • DotLot Video Walkthrough - Production Company/Ad Agency category
  • LA Phil Virtual Tour - Copywriting category
  • Johnny Money Game Demo - Education category
  • Digital Insight won in 2 categories - Corporate Image as well as Use of Graphics
  • WhyHighlander – Automotive category
    

I was working at hanging some lights in our green screen studio when I walked out and saw Jonathan, Brad and Michael gathered around two of our edit stations. They had split an After Effects project into three separate projects.


Michael is working from the top down.

Jonathan is working from the bottom up.

Brad is busy adding panache.

I decided I could be of the most help by walking away.

What a team!