Article on Video Lighting

[eric_darling]

This is probably of special interest to Corey, but others may find it helpful as well. The current issue of Studio Monthly (formerly AV Video and Multimedia Producer Magazine) has a couple of articles on basic lighting schemes. One is about how to light an interview with ARRI fresnels. Of course, the basics can apply to any lighting kit, really.

I don't know how you get your hands on the magazine where you are, but you can visit their web site to get started: http://www.studiomonthly.com

It's a pretty good rag.

[Corey]

Sweet. Yes I read through that Arri handbook, excellent source. They show you shots and then give you a diagram for "how to get that shot". Really woke me up.

Had a look through Studio/monthly's site, not for me, that's the exact opposite of what I'd read. No balance. Oddly their creative team is 100% female, all from the career yuppie set. Not sure how wide their scope can possibly be in light of that, that's a pretty strong and specific message they are sending out to readership. These highly homogenous corporate creative teams are typically anything but creative, i.e. homogenous. Homogenized creatvity already gets way too much space on the mag stands for my dollar.

Additionally their on site writing is beyond boring and their vision is flaky, i.e.:

You'll find something in every issue that you can relate to and learn from. If not, e-mail me or editor Beth Marchant and we'll change it.

Uh-oh, that's never good to hear from the producer of a publication. Besides which is it, he says "I'll find something in every issue" but in the very same sentence says "If not..." So obviously he doesn't believe what he's saying in the first portion of the sentence. Offering to change it just confirms he has no vision. That's not how you run a magazine. This man should not be a career editor/writer either way, there's too many way more talented folks about. If he's the lead editor then boy-huee. I started reading their press and it goes:

What do you do with a 26-year-old publication that's dropped from No. 1 to No. 4 position in a market that's gone from 4,000 ad pages down to 2,000 over the past four years? If you're a new publisher coming from the competitor that went from No. 4 to No. 1 by targeting the dowdy 26 year old, you "change everything."

And already I'm thinking, "huh? From 1 to 4 with 4000 to 200 over 4... What?", then "who cares?", and finally "dowdy?". Two sentences in. I can't imagine who this magazine is aimed at ultimately, but I doubt I have a very good suss on the market.

Thanks for link anyhow Eric, I appreciate the consideration. Don't take my rant on in any way. You know me...

[eric_darling]

Well, the rag itself is quite a good bit better than their site. I was merely providing that for contact info, actually. I've never even been to the web site before today, as a matter of fact.

Anyhoo, just thought the article itself was handy. Too bad they don't put the magazine online. And too bad they pay far less attention to their web presence than their actual print product.

It's fair to say that they suffer from the common disease of putting no effort into their most public front - that being a web site in today's day and age.

I'm guilty of it too, and that's why our company is changing gears this quarter. By March, a new identity. By April, a new home.

[Corey]

Hey that's great Eric. Best of luck. Don't overlook the SEO aspects, build than all in from day one. If I've learned anything in my life it is that. Put 50% of your energy into planning and SEO and your site will do better than any of the others in its class. Our new TrueUpdate.com site for example has gained tens of thousands of rankings since its release a few weeks ago. I can't share any specific knowledge but trust me, don't sell yourself short on SEO, that's the whole name of the game in 2005/2006. Usability is number two followed by design aesthetics.

Typically nowadays I see most people doing this:

Aesthetics : 75% - Usability : %20 - SEO : 5%

Whereas we're finding that this works best in terms of raw results:

Aesthetics : 20% - Usability : %40- SEO : 40%

One great thing you have going for you given the premium quality of your work is that video is so much easier to deploy now than the last time you redesigned. You can nail them with a few really solid samples up front and win them over almost immediately, setting yourself far apart from the pack. You're lucky in a way Eric because people, even untrained, can spot good video instinctually nowadays so it's easy for you to stand out. Given that Nielsen reports the average American is now watching well in excess of 60 full 24 hour days worth of television per year, that probably won't change anytime soon...

Don't overlook the SEO. Most people get exasperated and decide they simply don't have the knowledge to do it, but I promise you 100% that SEO is where all the significant gains are at. I'll be happy to assist you with generalized answers anytime of course, I've become recently quite adept in this area and my knowledge is current.

P.S. Just got a call from thecamerastore.com and my Lowel Fresnel 650W will be in next week, so I'll grab that, one umbrella for my omni, and a slab of foamcore. Next month I'll pad it out with a Rifa (with eggcrate) and some gels, <HOWARD DEAN>then we're going to Branson, Nashville, and from there, Hollywoood! Yeah!!!</HOWARD DEAN> Well not quite, but Branson anyhow...

[eric_darling]

Optimization is a component of our redesign. It's especially true since the site will have large chunks done in Flash, so being creative in terms of getting those robots to like us is important.

In my field (media production), where I'm serving a realtively known audience who are keen on design, I put a higher percentage of concentration on aesthetics at the expense of SEO. It's more important to me to have a clean, unified look than to have my site turn up first in search engine rankings. In that way, I don't classify my business as typical in terms of driving traffic to our web site. We just don't really need high traffic from a wide diaspora. We'll let the special event videographers have at it.

[Corey]

That's what I figured you'd say. Well as long as you're happy with your setup, that's all that matters...

Aesthetics and SEO aren't mutually exclusive. If a good designer puts 20% effort toward aesthetics the site will still be way more aesthetically pleasing than if many designers put 100% of their energy into it. Know what I mean?

Anyhow all the best on your new design, that's for sure. It seems like you are only seeing the surface of what SEO does though IMHO. It's not just about traffic at all, but even if it were, why would any business site intentionally create less traffic than it has potential for? I don't git it. Anyhow I can hardly wait to see it, sounds like it will be a great site.

Be careful with Flash. Still a HUGE portion of people who ignore/skip Flash. I myself never surf flash-built web sites. (unless they have an alternate HTML version and then I choose that) Most professional designers of business sites avoid Flash other than a few isolated components for a wide range of reasons. That's going to remain that way for 2005/2006 anyhow from the looks of things. It's not because of Flash, it just tied to the way people prefer to surf. Flash is seen as less usable than HTML by the majority of web surfers, i.e. the browser back button doesn't work, etc.

We have a major new web site going up in about a week or so-ish which combines extreme 100% aesthetics with extreme 100% usability and extreme 100% SEO, I think you will like it. Anyhow it will illustrate a bunch of what I'm alluding to.

[eric_darling]

I see where you're coming from, Corey. It's not an either/or situation, and we will be considering SEO elements in the design.

Design-wise, we're following a "less is more" model approach on this one. It will be simple - more simple in some ways than our existing (dated 2001) site. I hope this one can hold on for half as long!

[Corey]

Less is more is always good. Sounds promising. I have confidence in your aesthetics, I'm sure it's going to be great. For me I look at two years as the shelf life for a good site, past that it's probably less than optimal with an exponentially steeper curve after 30 months or so. That also depends on your sector of course, i.e. the role of beanie babies for example has probably not morphed too radically in the past 30 months so they dodge the curve. But for video 24 months is probably in the ball park for sites put up this year.

In terms of SEO here's the thing about where you are at, "attracting new traffic" is one specific aspect of SEO. In your case you have other priorities which could also be served ideally by creative SEO planning for example "attracting specific types of traffic" or "reducing competitor's advantages" or "making sure that people who have been to your site and wish to re-find it, can do so easily by merely entering the gist of what they read there into Google". Those are biggies too, and you can bet your hat that any web-savvy people seeking the same traffic as you will definitely be countering anything you add, so it's important to have a rich strategy...

It's rather like non-stop chess. The TU2 site for us was a big step forth in this regard, since it's launch it has outpeformed the web sites of every single package in its class. But it took massive amounts of planning. Business site design is very similar to robot wars nowadays. The main thing is to focus on momentum, not the numbers from a given point in time. Even if you are much smaller overall, if you can keep up proportionally with the "scaled growth rate" of the leaders in your class who you respect and admire, you will get great results.

Anyhow I for one am now anxious to see the thing so make sure to let us know. At some point soon I'm putting up a personal site dedicated to design, projects, users, and AMS stuff and I'll definitely run your banner.

[eric_darling]

Oh, I forgot to mention that the Flash components will not be navigational elements, so the back button is sure to remain useful to those Flash-wary surfers. I agree that a site done completely in Flash is folly nearly all of the time.

And you got it... I'll be sure to post around here when the site goes live. Like I said - nothing earth shattering or groundbreaking about it. Just rudimentary design, decent layout and easy navigation. All in all, a very cut and dry thing, I think. We'll save the crazy stuff for our clients.

[Corey]

What I meant about the back button is the way on Flash sites where the entire content is seen as "one page" by the browser. People are so used to being able to click in, then back out, click in, then back out, that they get frustrated with Flash sites.

Another example is that a lot of people like to SHIFT + CLICK on links so that they can read/close the page and be right where they started. I do a that * a lot* so for me links within flash are no good.

I think it all goes to the objective for the reader, i.e. to be able to get exactly what they want quickly without any of what they don't want. Flash is exceptionally inefficient at achieving that compared to HTML. And the days of people "reading through" web sites with any level of patience whatsoever are long gone.

[eric_darling]

Right. I guess I should have put it better. For us, the Flash on our pages is strictly adronment. There are zero navigational links in any of the Flash.

[Corey]

At the risk of accidentally misquoting 70's TV sensation "Huggy Bear" let me just say, "Solid!".