The Importance of Post Production

Video Editing Software

There are plenty of important fields in the video production industry. Between casting, shooting, and audio production, all play a separate role. But that doesn’t make any of them less significant. After all, a production piece may be shot very well and have clear audio. But if actors are miscast, the finished product may receive heavy criticism. Speaking of which, the final stage of the production process, which involves putting many of these aspects together, is another important part of the video production industry. Known as post production, here are a few things to remember in the process.

Don’t Wear Too Many Hats

Whether you have experience in the video production industry or not, don’t try to juggle too many tasks at once. Post production is a team effort. And with all the work to be done, it can take up to several months to complete. Between adjusting audio and music, adding special effects, and wrapping up the piece as a whole, it usually takes longer than the actual shooting of the film. It’s a collaborative effort where all aspects of production come together, and the piece becomes refined. Of course, though, the length of how long this will take, depends on what you’re producing. If you’re looking to produce a full length feature, for example, the process will be much more involved than if you were creating a short piece for college students.

Have A Back-Up Plan

Don’t just plan ahead during the post production process, but have a back-up plan as well. For example, let’s say you or someone on the team is working on adding music to a scene. Make sure to have another piece of music prepared, in case you realize the original track which was planned to be used, doesn’t fit well with the scene. For every effect, music track, or transition shot that’s added, make sure there’s a contingency plan. Even during the final stages of production, effects and editing often don’t wrap up until the final weeks before the film’s release date, especially for full length features.

For more information about the essentials of video/ television creative production, feel free to contact us today at Killerspots.com, Inc. We look forward to hearing from you.

Design for the Non-Graphic Designer

design

Social Media is all about the images. No one has time to stop and read about your day or what’s hot and exciting in the world. They just want to see it. So how can you keep up if you aren’t a graphic designer and can’t afford to hire one? Here’s our list of 5 simple and easy-to-learn online programs that you can use to create stunning graphics without the need for an art degree. Don’t worry, Adobe won’t be involved in this relationship so you can put away your wallet.

#1. PicMonkey

picmonkey

PicMonkey is photo-editing made easy. But they’ve also added features for design and touch-up as well. Their site is primarily free to use with a minimal upgrade fee for certain “Royale” features. With PicMonkey you can crop, add effects, touch up, add text, make collages or even add fun shapes, stickers and themed details to your photos. If you don’t have a photo you want to start from, no worries. Just click the “Design” button on the homepage and create something totally from scratch.

Everything is very easy to find and set up to be completely user-friendly. But you will want to play around with it a bit at first, just to get used to all the features. This site is great for editing your photos before posting them to social media. Or adding a quick block of text to a flyer. Creating a great graphic for your next blog post.

#2 Pixabay

pixabay

Perhaps you’re thinking…. but I don’t have any photos that I need to edit. I just need to access free, non-copyright photos to use for my business. Pixabay is perfect for just that. They have a staggering collection of over 420,000 quality images that won’t come back to bite you in the legal ass.  

They of course also have the option of upgrading to some paid royalty-free photos. But almost always you can find what you’re looking for without needing to do that. They rely heavily on donations so after downloading multiple quality images; you might feel inclined to “buy them coffee”—but it’s never required.

#3 Canva

canva

Canva is a newer platform that was beautifully designed to create stunning graphics with minimal effort. They have hundreds of “templates” organized into various categories such as, “Social Media, Documents, Marketing Materials, Email Headers, Blogging and Books” and more. Each template is sized properly for the platform is was created so no worrying about sizing issues. There are usually about 3 free templates per category that you can use or pay an upgrade fee to use all the features.

Canva is similar to PicMonkey in that they have many of the same editing features but Canva’s templates are a time-saver for sure and also highly beneficial if you aren’t “layout-inclined”. You can also save your pieces publicly or privately if you choose. Publicly allows you to share your work with others in the community and also see what else is being created. It’s a great place for inspiration, or just to ask questions if you aren’t sure how to improve your work.

#4 Dropbox

dropbox

While Dropbox might not seem like a graphically-inclined site to choose, it’s actually invaluable if you take a great deal of photos using your phone or want to quickly exchange graphics between desktop and mobile. The app and desktop icon interact with each other. So if you set your photos taken on mobile to auto-upload to Dropbox, the next time you open your desktop, they’ll all be there—ready to use.

The same applies for editing. If you use one of the great platforms listed above to say, create a stunning graphic for your next Instagram post, the only way to upload it to Instagram is on your mobile device. No problem! Just save that graphic to Dropbox, and it will also be on your phone. Then you can easily open it, save it to your phone, and share to your heart’s content. Plus Dropbox gives you 2GB for free. If you find you need more than that, upgrading to 1TB of space will cost you just $9.99/mo. Incredibly simple, not to mention a great back up system in case you deleted something from your phone or desktop you weren’t quite finished with. And you can access all your photos/files anywhere you are.

#5 Afterlight

After-Light

What if you just want an amazing app for mobile use for those on-the-fly times when you can’t sit down at your desktop and create the perfect image and take lots of time doing it? Afterlight is the app for just that! It has 74 of the most beautiful filters. 78 natural textures and 128 frames for you to create just the right look.

It’s awesome if you hate the “perfect square” shape of Instagram photos and want to add more character to those images. Afterlight is very easy to use and once you’ve created the perfect look— sharing is simple with the “save & share ” feature. Here are some shots edited with Afterlight.

IG3IG1

Contact Killerspots Creative Team for any design needs you may have. http://killerspots.com/

Fascinating an Overstimulated Media Market [part I]

media
[AS FEATURED in ULTIMATE MAGAZINE]

Have you had this experience? Search for an answer on Google, click on a webpage and before you can even complete reading a sentence of information; you are bombarded with an ad or a window to “sign up now”. You haven’t even decided how you feel about this information, page, media or site and already are being told what to do. It’s threatening almost.

office-625892_1280

The same used to be true for television. Sit down to relax after a long day and within the first three minutes of your selected entertainment, you now find yourself being told exactly how to spend all your hard-earned cash. Except now we have the option to fast-forward through those advertisements. Or bypass them entirely with paid services such as Netflix.

Introduce: mobile device. According to the digital analytics firm Flurry, people spend two hours and fifty-seven minutes per day on average on their mobile devices. Which is ahead of time spent watching television. Obviously, businesses, marketers and advertising agencies cannot ignore that statistic. They must find a way to reach those customers. Enter in, Social Media.

Social Media

Social Media began as something teens were doing in AOL chat rooms. With friends, in their basements as yet another venue to box their parents out of “what was cool”.  It was the texting of this generation.  But then in February of 2004, Mark Zuckerberg took online networking to a whole new approach. What if people could connect together to build a networked community? Share their thoughts, feelings, updates, photos and even opinions beyond just one-on-one. But within an entire network of friends/family. The possibilities were endless. And now in 2015, as the social networking platforms have expanded, that online community is something a business cannot be without in order to succeed.

Social Media Icon

The question becomes, how do we gain the attention of that audience? In the near three hour window of time they are spending in Social Media communities. How do we sell to them? These five tips will change the way your business interacts socially. While also giving you that rare moment of attentiveness from your customer.

[TIP ONE]

You do not need to use every social platform available. You might feel being on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest is best in order to reach every possible audience. In actuality what ends up happening is that you spread yourself thin trying to keep up. on each of these vastly different platforms that you aren’t posting quality content to. The audiences that do engage and therefore missing opportunities for your business.

man-404376_1280

It’s best practice to figure out your customer base. (who they are, where they shop, what they do and what are their needs). And then pick 2-3 social platforms that best suit that customer. You do not want to start a Pinterest page as a law firm because posting the best recipes for crockpot cooking isn’t going to bring you closer to your target customer. You are going to want a Twitter account so you can talk about the latest updates to the law and interesting articles regarding the type of cases you take on.

[TIP TWO]

Along with that idea, the next tip is to focus on which platforms people are using regularly. Posting your very best content on those platforms. In 2014, there were a reported 1.28 billion users on Facebook with those users on average spending 21 minutes per day on the site (Digital Marketing Statistics). That number is five times higher than the number of active users on Twitter; which is still remarkably high at 232 million.

What this means is that businesses are no longer in a place to ignore the use of Social Media if they want to gain any kind of attention from their customers. However, you also cannot just create a Facebook page, fill it with ads and posts about your business and expect users to follow excitedly. You must build a community online. Engage with your fan base. Give them content they are excited to read and comment on and then occasionally remind them about your latest and greatest products and/or services.

—Continued in the next post! 

Contact Killerspots Creative Team for any media/marketing needs you may have. http://killerspots.com/

Facebook has done it again. What the heck is a Beacon?

Recently I was looking over notifications for one of the Facebook pages I manage when I stumbled into this message alert atop the page about a beacon:

special invitation
Figure 1 Screenshot of beacon invitation

Facebook is certainly one for new innovations that usually aren’t introduced. But rather implemented. Therefore, I was less than shocked to see yet another “Facebook update” that I hadn’t heard of. Even working day-to-day in the Marketing and Social Media world doesn’t necessarily grant you awareness of current trends. But being that I like to have know-how of such events. I thought I’d investigate these new Facebook “beacons” and find out if indeed this was a special invitation.

Basically what I’ve found is such:

facebook beacon
Figure 2 Photo c/o Facebook Help Pages

A Beacon is a Bluetooth device.

Facebook plans to send these devices to businesses with great activity on Facebook within their local area for early access trial runs.

The beacon will interact with your customers’ Facebook apps while visiting your business. To let them know inside “tips” about your business. These tips are based off of comments your friends have made on Facebook, reviews of the business, photos that have been posted and more of that liking.

Beacon
Figure 3 Screenshot explaining the beacon further

According to an article posted in Facebook’s Help Center: “Your location is determined using cellular networks, Wi-Fi, GPS and Facebook Bluetooth® beacons. Viewing place tips doesn’t post on Facebook or show people where you are.”

When I clicked “Get Free Beacon” I was taken to a form to fill out name, address and business name. There’s also an option to send the device to a different address. Than that of the business page you were on. If you are like me and managing a page for another company.

Is this the future?

So far as I see it, this new addition to Facebook technology could either be a fantastic advantage for businesses and their customers. Or it could be taken as yet another creepy invasion of technology that we now need to block in our privacy settings. As a Social Media Maven and voice for many businesses soon to receive these beacons. I’m obviously pushing for the former to be true.

At this time we have not yet received the device or put it into action so only time will tell how people react. We will update once we have more information for you and try these little Bluetooth gems for ourselves.

Have you heard about Beacons? Were you invited to use one? What are your thoughts on this technology and Facebook introducing it to their platform?