I’ve really made some good friends over at Trinity Marketing Group. I can’t even count the number of times we’ve collaborated on projects over the last 4-5 years.  Thanks guys and gals!

A couple weeks ago, they called me in and said that they have a new project called DocTalkTV.com. It was to be a weekly TV show that runs on RFD-TV.

I was so excited to be involved in a national broadcast television show. I built them a new website in WordPress so they can make content updates on their own. They can even play each weeks’ episode right on the home page.

Be sure to click on over to DocTalkTV.com and check out a new episode each week!

Welcome our newest client, Laugh2Learn.com. This new website is operated by Marvin Stottlemire.

“A Classroom Without Laughter is a Classroom Without Learning”

Because of his varied interestes and activities, Marvin Stottlemire has been called a “Renaissance Man.”

He is an experienced litigation attorney, outstanding classrom instructor, and award-winning amateur actor.

He is a trained mediator, and experiencedd group facilitator.

Whether on stage, or in the classroom, or facilitating a planning session, his warm, vibrant personality makes him a welcome addition to any event.

Check out his new website at:  http://www.laugh2learn.com

Sitting here at The Blackbird talking to an old friend Marvin Stottlemire about upgrading his website.

Hopefully, we’re going to be upgrading his website to WordPress so he can post to his blog and automatically post to Facebook at the same time.

We have a new client, Class Act Uniforms in Topeka!  Come to find out, we were a referral by the Washburn Small Business Development Center (SBDC), so here’s a shout out to the SBDC!  Thanks guys!  Hope we can do more work for your clients in the future.

I delivered a new WordPress website to Class Act Uniforms on Wednesday and they really liked it.  If you or your company needs a website that empowers you to become your own webmaster without knowing all that ‘coding stuff’, be sure to contact us.  Our rates are very reasonable!

Class Act Uniforms is now the only place in Topeka where you can buy uniforms for private school.  Formerly known as Worland’s, they have been a staple in the Topeka community for many years.  They are located just east of Home Depot on Huntoon St.  They specialize in school uniforms of all designs/shapes/sizes and are also a good contact for corporate logos and embroidery.

Be sure to give them a call if you need some school clothing or embroidery work!  (785) 273-0551. Or visit their new website:  http://www.classactuniform.com/

So, you spent a million bucks to have a really awesome website, now what?  There is a new technology that is being used more and more these days that may benefit your small business.

It’s called a Quick Response Code (or QR Code for short).  6 months ago, I realized there was something to these when I bought a new Canon Vixia HD Camcorder and there was one of these on the bottom of the camera.  They look like this:

You’ll start seeing these more and more in printed marketing.  I have even heard about them being used more frequently at auto dealers, so when they are scanned, the ‘buyer’ can learn more information about the car they are looking at. (I saw one used on a TV commercial, but it flashed on the screen so quickly that unless you were ready, you didn’t have time to scan it.)

Here’s how it works:

You insert these into your marketing pieces, and users of smart phones can scan them to go to a specific URL.

•  Product details
• Contact details
•  Offer details
•  Event details
•  Competition details
•  A coupon of the month
•  Twitter, Facebook, MySpace IDs
•  A link to your YouTube video

 You can see how this is an easy way to reach a younger generation of consumers.

At some point, search engines will likely recognize QR codes embeded in your website and index the content in them as they do for images now.

So, you’re probably asking yourself if consumers will actually use them today.

Few people may use them, but those that do will appreciate your tech knowledge and internet savvy.  It may even be a conversation starter which may open the door for a potential sale.

Those that do use QR codes will definitely have a high tech know-how and may be more receptive to your presence on the web, your Twitter presence, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube etc.

As a videographer and video animator, I’ve always wanted to know how to set text on fire. I’ve seen it before on the big screen, but had no clue where to start.

I had a specific job for a side project of mine called “The MMA Video Guy”. (I do some live Mixed Martial Arts and Boxing video production.) Basically it’s live sports video production. I wanted to animate some text, and have it fly on the screen and burst into flames! How cool would that be?

So the first thing I did was search YouTube looking for some tutorials. Unfortunately, none of the tutorials had the final result that I wanted. Some masked the text over a fireball, some used the particle generator in After Effects and the ‘fire’ just didn’t look authentic enough. I wanted the text to look like it was really on fire!

One of the ‘tutorials’ was actually a sales pitch by a user called ‘thirdmenson’. They had some demo comps out there that looked very promising. So I picked up the ‘text on real fire’ package and started to decompile their After Effects Sample Comp and rebuilt my own from scratch.

The cool thing about thirdmenson is that they actually took the time to create individual video files of every letter of the alphabet and also provided an ‘alpha’ channel version of each letter, too. (By the way, if thirdmenson actually reads this, you did a whole lot of work and you’re only asking $30 … It’s worth much more than that!)

So, here’s what I did to make the text fly in and burst into flames.

I created a comp for the lettering called “MMA Text”. I made it a little wider than the final comp, mostly because I wasn’t sure how much ‘flying in’ I wanted to animate, and if the text was going to be close to the camera, I didn’t want to lose any resolution.

For me, the most confusing part of the whole project was dropping in the video files of each letter and getting the alpha layer to ‘knockout’. I began by adding in 2 layers of the same letter, then set the alpha layer on top, for a total of 3 video files for each letter. I set the bottom ‘luma’ setting to the previous letter, and the middle letter to the alpha (top) letter. A perfect knockout with very bright orange ‘fire’.

I added in each letter (Once again, there were 3 video files for each letter) and spaced out everything so it fit properly in the comp area. I also want to take this time to mention that although ‘thirdmenson’ supplied exclamation and question marks, they didn’t include a simple period. I made my own period by using an “i” and masking off the lower quarter (of all 3 video files of the “i”). The only way you can tell the period isn’t genuine is if you know to look for it. Otherwise, no one would ever know.

Then, I created a new comp to hold the main text block and the ‘reflection’. I know most people that look at the final product won’t even see the reflection, but I believe it’s best to go that extra step. Mostly because I’m a stickler about details and would know it wasn’t there….

To make the reflection, I duplicated the main text block/line and added in some effects and settings that reversed the image and faded it out gradually. Sorry, I can’t take the space and time to tell you exactly how I did it. Go get an Adobe After Effects book or try Googling it. The instructions are out there.

I made a final comp where I could render the finished product. I added the ‘burning ember’ background that came in the package by ‘thirdmenson’ and dropped in the text block.

I added the 3d property to the text block and had it ‘swing’ in, adding a couple different “woosh” sound effects and from Video Copilot and a background track from Stax Trax by Digital Juice and rendered everything out. If you can believe this, my workstation is a Core i7 processor with 8Gigs of RAM, and this 10 second comp took over 5 minutes to render. Incredible.

Here is what the completed comp looks like, thank for reading:

We just created a new “Image Kit” for Robin Haag, Owner of Backs by Popular Demand.  Backs by Popular Demand is in the business of therapeutic massage and are located in Topeka, KS.

She recently approached us for a new logo.  So, we gave her 3 different logo designs, and she liked the direction one was going.  Then we created 3 more logo designs that were similar to the one she liked and they picked this one:

Once they settled on a logo, they asked us for an ad design to be run in a local business magazine.  We researched what the biggest therapeutic massage businesses are doing for ad designs and made one that was better!  Here it is:

If you or your business is interested in having a new logo or business image, please contact us at: 785-230-9362 and let us talk about your needs.

We can also do business cards, letterhead and custom brochures as well as creative web designs that empower you to finally fire your high-priced webmaster and take back control of managing your website content.

Here is how to shoot someone in front of a green screen.

First of all, our equipment is portable so there is no need for us to rent an expensive studio. We went in and setup everything right in the conference room and shot the subject in front of the green screen.

In this shot we used a Panasonic HDV camera, Prompter People teleprompter, 2 halogen lamps on stands and 2 directional spot lights on stands.

If you are working with a lot of watts, be sure to bring enough heavy guage extension cords because you’ll probably blow a breaker from pulling all that juice.

Of course, yours truly was the director, cameraman, lighting director and grip.

We began by running the script through into the teleprompter.

We lit the green screen evenly by using some hot and bright halogen lamps on stands, put our subject in front of the green screen, and lit him with some directional spot lights from each side being sure to not to cast shadows on our green screen.

It is very important that when shooting with green screen, you have a smooth surface as well as having it lit evenly.  You don’t want to have to deal with any hot spots when you key out the background.  It would have been ideal to have some backlighting so the outline of the subject was more defined.

Note in the picture above and below, we used wood clamps to stretch the muslin tight so there were very few wrinkles in the shot. (I also wanted to mention that I ironed out the larger wrinkles so I didn’t have to deal with them in post.)

Be sure your subject is not wearing green!  You could risk keying out his shirt and then you’ll have wasted everyones’ time.  Something solid is preferred.

Here is a shot of one of the directional spots.  Be sure you test everything before you subject comes in.  Here we were running into some problems with the wireless mic.  You don’t want the subject to be standing in front of the hot lights for any longer than they have to.  They area already nervous and you don’t want to add to their stress.

The shoot was successful, and the subject was very pleased.  I’ll try and remember to upload a clip of the finished video.  Thanks for reading!

If you are interested in the Meadows Elementary “Fun Run” that was held on Saturday, October 1, 2011, please click the “Add to Cart” button below.

My wife found an uninvited houseguest in the house yestereday.

Check out our video on how we captured it.