Trade Show Video on Display at the International Microwave Symposium

A video I produced for UltraSource (www.ultrasource.com), one of the most advanced thin film circuit and interconnect manufacturers, is running in their trade show booth at the 2010 International Microwave Symposium (http://www.ims2010.org). The video was designed to complement the marketing message throughout the booth by focusing in on customer challenges, the UltraSource solutions and the benefits those solutions provide.

You can see the full video under the "Trade Show" section of our website's portfolio page (http://www.renderedgemedia.com/portfolio).

Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow at the Beacon Theater December 11, 1975

Monday, May 17, 2010

I just learned from a close friend that Ronnie James Dio died yesterday (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/05/ronnie-james-dio-dies-sabbath-rainbow-singer.html). How sad. He was a favorite rock and roll front man of mine. Excellent rock voice. Good song writer.

Back in the 70's I was a huge Deep Purple fan, so when Ritchie Blackmore left the group to form Rainbow, my friends and I were all over their debut album. Then, as luck would have it, we scored great seats to see their United States debut performance at the Beacon Theater in New York City. We had first row seats in the balcony. I brought my Dad's trusty Pentax and two lenses, and a couple of rolls of film.

Lessons Learned

At this show I was still an amateur with regards to shooting concerts. The light meter in the camera was never right because it would always be averaging all that blackness surrounding the subject. It took several shows of mistakes before I built up the proper knowledge, and confidence, to set the exposure correctly for a given film speed. So, at this show, I had a ton of shots that were exposed brilliantly, but were very blurry. I could have easily rested the long lens right on the balcony rail, but I don't think I did that given the results.
The opening act was Argent. A completely forgettable performance - even the extended performance of their one great hit, "Hold Your Head Up," was a yawner. The crowd just wanted to see Rainbow.
I loved Rainbow's staging. From the iconic rainbow arc of lights framing the stage, the backdrop of the painting from their debut album, and Blackmore's dual stacks of Marshall amplifiers, it was just what you would want a rock and roll show to look like. I always wondered what the tape recorder was used for behind Blackmore.

 I was astonished to find that an audio recording of this performance is available on the web. It was indeed quite a kick to listen to it after all these years. I had remembered that the show had a great, long rocking song which was new at the time. I later summized it to be "Stargazer" from their second album, but I really didn't know until I saw the set list for concert which confirmed it. How cool! I also remembered and was impressed by Cozy Powell playing to the "1812 Overture" during his drum solo. I thought that was a clever innovation for the time.

Blackmore did not throw his Strat in the air at the end of the show or smash it, but it was a great performance. A few years later I saw Rainbow again at the Capital Theater in New Jersey. There Blackmore did toss his guitar very high in the air - and I got photos of it. I'll post those photos in a future blog post.

Display Installed at Red Sky Restaurant & Lounge

This week we installed a digital display in the store front window of the Red Sky Restaurant & Lounge (www.redskyboston.com) located in Boston, MA. It combines the food video and food beauty photography created earlier with information about the restaurant, including their menu, function rooms, and daily specials to produce a dynamic experience that will catch the eye of potential customers as they pass by the restaurant.

Located directly across the street from the famed Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Red Sky gets a ton of foot traffic passing by the restaurant as people visit the large array of shops, food, and entertainment. With 44 pushcarts, 18 full-service restaurants, and 35 food stalls, this is a highly competitive food-selling situation. Patrons love to look before they buy, but full-service restaurants typically only display a paper copy of their menu in the window. This leaves it up to the customer's imagination as to whether the food is compelling and desireable. With the digital display, people can not only actually "see" the menu, but they instantly realize their food is prepared to order with fresh ingredients.

After installation, it was great to see people become transfixed watching the display. Between the food video, motion graphics and text, the experience is very up beat and interesting. After asking one of the patrons what they thought of the display, he responded "I think I want a burger!

To install the display, a Hannspree 23" full HD LCD display, a custom bracket was fabricated by NAB Tool & Die to mount the display directly to the inside of the window. They also fabricated a custom shelf that was mounted at the top of the window close to the ceiling to hold the Blu-ray player. For convenience & absolutely no maintenance, the Blu-ray disc was authored such that the video would play instantly upon power up and then loop continuously. No fumbling with the remote or teaching the staff how to select the correct video. Simply powering up the player launches the video.

The content for the digital display was chosen specifically to enhance food sales. By showing the customer how great the food is we expect to influence them in a positive way to make a food purchase they were perhaps not planning to do. For instance, if someone had it in their mind that they wanted to have wings before coming to the restaurant, upon seeing how great the Seared Ahi Tuna looked they might upgrade their appetizer order. Similarly, someone already hungry for an appetizer might see the burger or steak tips and upgrade to an entree instead.

By showing how the food is freshly prepared without the use of microwaves or frozen products, the customers instantly form a positive bond to the food which creates a strong desire to try it. The deal is sealed by elegantly photographing the plated product. Who can resist that wonderful piece of bacon or the melted cheese oozing down the side of the burger?

With the aggressive pricing of HD displays and Blu-ray players, installing a digital display becomes a very attractive, realistic proposition for almost any sized business. For well under $1000 you can have a 50" LCD or plasma display that will attract attention from across the street and draw people to your store front. By creating custom content, anyone can have their own commercial running 24/7 to sell your products or services even when the business is closed.

For more information about how we can do this for you, please visit www.renderedgemedia.com.

Tea Cozy Product Photo Published in Philadelphia Inquirer!

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently published an article entitled "Tea-He: More Men Are Finding That This Other Brew Is Their Bag" that mentioned the product of a local Windham, NH company called Thistledown Cozies (www.thistledowncozies.com). A few months prior I had done an extensive photo shoot of their products, so they were ready to provide the newspaper with a nice product photo that they placed in the center of the layout (see left).

I've enlarged the area with the photo and the photo credit so it is easier to see.

Sadly, the on-line version doesn't use the same layout, but rather a photo gallery where the product photo is last in the series.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/image/86128057.html

iPad Underwhelming - First Impressions

I stopped by the Apple store yesterday to check out the new Apple iPad. The store was reasonably busy, but not anymore traffic than I've seen normally (who knows what it was like during opening weekend!). They had a table set up with eight (8) iPads to play with, and not all of them were being used.

After all the hype and hearing the initial impressions, I expected to love it -- but I didn't.

PRO'S

The iPad is VERY responsive. No hesitation when you select an icon, swipe your hand across, or even tilt the device every which way. This is an improvement over the iPod Touch, especially in the area when you re-orient the device. I find the iPod Touch delays too long when you tilt it from landscape to protrait mode, but the iPad was instant and dealt with going upside down as well - a really effective, natural feature when you give it to someone to else.

I thought the book reader application was very nice. The pages flip with ease. You can instantly change the size and type of font. And I thought is was very easy to read.

I was able to successfully play HD YouTube videos. The only disappointment being that 16x9 videos are letterboxed (those black stripes running across the top and bottom of the video). This is because the aspect ratio of the iPad display is not 16x9. I don't know why this negatively effected me, but I was not happy about it.

The photo gallery applications were very nice. Given what Apple has done in this arena this was expected, but they did an excellent good job here. You can even turn the device into a picture frame viewer.

CON'S

I was perplexed on the best way to type on the device. In landscape mode, the virtual keyboard is easy to line up your hands, but you have to lay the device down on something to type. This was less effective in portrait mode (due to the smaller width allocated for the virtual keyboard), so I found myself holding the device with my left hand and poking the keys with my right. Not very quick, but effective. I then tried holding the iPad phone-style with both hands and typing with my two thumbs. This actually worked well, but I found myself NOT gravitating to using it this way because for the most part you are browsing info which means using one hand primarily to hold the device while the other does the navigation. It takes too long to switch the position of the hands. Perhaps over time this would become natural.

Even though the device is very thin, somehow I wanted it be thinnner. Is that crazy? It's heft was more than I expected. My hand/arm became fatigued only after five minutes of usage. I know that time will extend as one uses the device more and more, but I wasn't happy about that part of the experience, probably because it was unexpected. I'm sure future versions will be lighter -- just look at the history of it iPod.

It's really hard to get good advice on which memory configuration would be best to buy. We all know more storage is better, but it does come at a premium, so it pays to understand how much you really need. The Apple representatives were not able to help make this decision. For instance, it would be nice to know how much storage is required to store an HD movie on the device. This is key because if I were to use it as a sales device, I would need to be able to store my portfolio on it and I would like to know the limits.

SUMMARY

The iPad I did not generate any real excitement within me. I did not have a moment when I said "I have to have this!" like when I saw the first Macintosh in 1984.

I'm planning on looking at the iPad again, this time going deeper into the applications and try and do some serious browsing with the device (to get more typing in). If I buy one, I would certainly get the 3G version so it can always be connected to the internet. Stay tuned.

Amazing Closeup of Dew on Moss

On my way out the door this morning, the dew on the moss caught my eye, and I took this photo. Spring is coming!

Food Styling at Amelia's Restuarant in Gainesville, FL

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Yesterday I filmed a series of instructional videos and captured food beauty shots for Chef Andy Fass, owner of Amelia's Restaurant (www.ameliasgainesville.com) located in Gainesville, Florida. Our goal with this client was to create compelling website content that will attract people to come to the website, come back often, build his brand and reputation, and, ultimately, convert website visitors into customers . The videos consisted of Chef Andy teaching people how to create classic Italian dishes, insightful cooking techniques, how to determine food quality, and communicate his restaurant's cooking philosophy

Video Camcorders Used

We shot the videos with two camcorders, one on a Steadicam to handle the main shots and the second camera handheld to dive in for those extreme close ups. It was challenging working in the relatively tight space of a kitchen augmented with light

s. I had to be accutely aware of the light angles to avoid casting unwanted shadows onto the subjects while panning, pushing, and backing up the Steadicam. Oh, and avoiding getting the other camera operator or the audio technician with his boom into the shot.

Audio Considerations
Audio-wise this shoot was also a challenge with the refrigerator and fan motors whirring constantly in the backgro

und. We recorded Chef Andy with both a lapel lavalier microphone and a boom microphone handled by a roving technician. We also have the audio from the Steadicam camcorder which recorded the audio using its built-in mics. We monitored the audio as we shot, adjusting the levels as required, so we expect to get excellent resultant audio from mixing the various sources.

Organic Food Styling

For the still photography, I set up studio strobe lights on site i

n a corner of the restaurant. As Chef Andy completed the meals for the video, we then paused the video shoot to take the still images of the food.

As consistent with our trademark, all the food beauty photography was executed on the dishes just as they were prepared by the chef. Nothing inedible (or even edible, like oil) was added or spayed onto to the food. They represent the precise dish created by the chef that was created in the video footage.

It's great to see the positive reaction to the still images of the food as I take them even though the plated food is right there in front of them! It just reaffirms that the true drama and beauty can only be brought out with the proper balance and direction of the food itself, the lighting, mirrors, and reflectors.