If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed for me over the past year, it’s my admiration and love of ShootQ! If you have heard me speak you know how much of an evangelist I am for this amazing and indispensable piece of online software.

The reason I love it so much is because as a creative professional and small business owner, my customer service and my time are the most important things to me. ShootQ gives me both! Sometimes, words are cheap, so I just wanted to show everyone out there first hand, whether you already use ShootQ or not, how ShootQ can help your business organize your leads and clients, your packages and your contracts, financials and forecasts, and how it creates “workflows” for you so you are always on top of the tasks that need attention now.

I’ve even heard from some of you, saying you have ShootQ, you can see the potential, you just don’t know where to start. This video shows you the “backend” of Life Stage Films. I hope it helps you understand the power of this amazing software. Let me know if it helps you!

“Head Coach”
Matt Davis

Hey there kids!

If you are shooting video using any of Canon’s DSLR cameras, check out this video! You are going to want to know how to use this plugin for Final Cut Pro…it has some interesting features that are worth taking a look! You can download the plugin here.

Catch ya on the flip side.

E

IN[FOCUS] Screen Calibration from Northernlight Filmworks on Vimeo

Greetings from the Hoosier State!

As visual artists we need to make sure we are using all our tools properly to ensure our images are the best they can be.  One way in which we can achieve the best imagery possible is to calibrate our monitors, an oft overlooked step!

In watching this video, you will see how easy monitor calibration is to perform and how much of a difference it makes once performed.  The software we used was Spyder2express.  We purchased it at Fry’s Electronics for approximately  $80.  We did discover that if you have a dual monitor system connected to your editing station, you will need to use the Spyder3Pro.  You can find it at Calibration-Direct for $129.95.

We also asked our friend Steve Zugelter of Studio Z Films to give us his input on monitor calibration.  Here is what he had to say,

“What’s the sense in doing any kind of color correction or grading if your monitor isn’t displaying the images correctly?  For me, monitor calibration is one of the many steps in filmmaking.  We balance the colors in our cameras, why wouldn’t we do the same in post?  Its one more step, but its a vital one in making sure the images you produce are shown exactly how you wanted.  I really believe that the colors and tone of each clip and each film convey a message and if we’re sending the wrong message its confusing to the viewer, much the same as speaking a foreign language to someone that doesn’t understand it. Since I’ve started calibrating my monitors, I’ve noticed a huge difference in how my films look.  I now calibrate them regularly to ensure they are where they are supposed to be and that nothing has drifted.”

Well put, Steve!

We look forward to your comments and experiences.
Jen and John, Northernlight Filmworks

Hello In[FOCUS] Reader,

Welcome to the 2nd installment of Organizing Your Workspace!

Our organizing bible is David Allen’s Getting Things Done. He has by far the most in-depth and complete organizational concepts that we were able to find, so much so, it would be the longest post in IN[FOCUS] history if we tried to teach you everything we’ve learned. In part I, Corbin and I shared with you exactly how far we had to go to increase our efficiency by organizing our office and workflow.  Today, this will be more of a teaser for the 3rd and final installment, but also an overview for what you can learn when you read Getting Things Done or listen to the audiobook.

Here are just a few of David Allen’s life-altering strategies and some examples (at the bottom) of how we are implementing them:

The Major Change: Getting Everything Out of Your Head

The Two Key Objectives:

• capturing all things that need to get done out of your mind and into a trusted, logical system
• disciplining yourself to make quick decisions about all the inputs you let into your life, so you’ll always have a plan for next actions that you can implement at any time.

Your Daily To-Do list doesn’t work:

• calendars should be sacred, everything for your day should be able to be completed
• not completing the day’s tasks and having to move them to future dates is unproductive and demoralizing
• the very heart of his Daily Action Management Organization are your calendar and Action Lists

Collecting All Your Life Stuff, So You Can Get It Out Of Your Head:

• every open loop is in your collection, so it’s in your head
• have as few as possible in-baskets, but as many as you need
• empty regularly by reviewing them all

Collection Tools (Your In-Baskets):

• physical in-basket
• paper-based note taking devices
• electronic note taking devices
• recording devices
• email

The above bullet points are the tip of the iceberg from the wealth of knowledge we’ve received from David Allen’s program. Here’s how Corbin and I have implemented it thus far:

• purchased 2nd editing system: MacBook Pro
• bought the latest version of Final Cut Pro Studio and maxed out our RAM for faster editing
• upgraded to Leopard Mac OS
• bought large and small notebooks for more comprehensive note taking
• upgraded our digital calendar and in-basket with Entourage
• organized our GoDaddy email
• said goodbye to our outdated PC and networked our Mac Pro and MacBook Pro with an Airport Extreme
• upgraded our business cell phone with a Verizon EnV Touch
• purchased Quickbooks for easier bookkeeping and bill pay
• hired Donna and her team of We Keep Books for training in Quickbooks and to catch our books up for the year

Our upcoming goals to accomplish a more carefree, efficient life:

• desks with greater workspace and storage capacity
• physical in-baskets
• large paper filing system
• shelving for closet, The Container Store can customize to fit your storage needs

In the third and final entry in this series, we will show you how we executed what we’ve learned from Getting Things Done and how it has benefited our workflow and business!

Dave and Corb, Soulbox

Who doesn’t hate it when they are left with no choice but to bump up their camera settings all the way to 12db (or the dreaded 18db!) because of a poorly lit situation? How about some light, people?!?

Whether you never leave home without them or swear against them, we are all in agreement that having proper lighting at our events makes our production value higher.  

But what happens when you bring your light and it’s still inadequate, or when the situation does not allow you to turn on a light?  Gain happens!  We almost always have to turn our gain up to at least 6 db for our weddings – it’s just the nature of the beast.  

For the longest time we used Sony PD-170s, the king of low light, but like many studios, we have already made the jump to HD (Canon XHa1) and every little detail counts when we produce images for HDTVs. We edit with Final Cut Pro, and we have used everything under the sun to try to rid our films of as much graininess as possible – Gaussian blurs, After Effects, Motion, and many more 3rd party plugins.

Nothing came close to cleaning up our footage like Re:Vision’s De:Noise plugin. For any Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, or After Effects users, this plugin is a must.  

In the examples below, I used my messy desk as well as some real wedding footage to show some before and after. It will be hard to see all the details of the results on such a small viewing window, but seeing it in your editing suite really shows its power. 

Render time is a bear, however, so be prepared. And remember, this is just a tool to make grainy video ALOT better, but not perfect.  And it is certainly no substitute for quality shooting on the front end.

De:Noise – Review from Matt Davis on Vimeo

For the past year or so we have been using Basecamp which is a web app created by 37signals.  We use it primarily as a way to manage the projects that our editors are working on.