New series on innovative businesses in Seattle launches today

We’ve teamed up with Biznik to produce a series of short videos spotlighting innovative businesses and thinkers in Seattle. The first installment launched over the weekend, featuring a local cabinet making company.

Lisa and I are producing these videos quickly (one day of shooting and editing completed within a few days), but without sacrificing too much on quality (you won’t see any shaky handheld camera work in our stuff, for example). Everything done with a crew of two, and all the gear we can stuff into a Nissan Leaf. Lisa directs and produces; I shoot and edit. Although Lisa also did a fair bit of b-roll shooting on this as well.

For this piece we used four lights – a Smith Victor 650-watt open-face light through a medium soft box for the interview with Lowel Pro-light for rim light; and a pair of CN-900 LED lite panels for lighting him in his office. The rest was all shot with available light in the well-lit factory.

It was also the first piece on which I got a chance to use my new Sennheiser 8060 shotgun mic, and it’s a dandy. Jeff’s voice comes through really rich and warm and needed very little EQ adjustment in post (just added a tiny bit on the high end in a few of the clips to get them to match). Everything they say about this mic is true: it makes whoever’s talking sound great, is tuned to bring forward human speech from the environment, and rejects sound from the sides without coloration. What more can I say? Oh, it’s tiny, light, and will probably last for 20 years.

We’re ramping up to do a lot of these in coming days and excited about the challenge of making business videos that are easy to watch and ultimately inspiring.

2 thoughts on “New series on innovative businesses in Seattle launches today

  1. Doug Plummer

    Good job! I’m amazed that you turned this around so quickly. You’ve got serious chops on display here, with obvious business application. I’m envious in the best way.

    Reply
    1. Dan McComb

      Thanks Doug. That means a lot coming from a man with your mad skills. I wish I could say that Beyond Naked was turned around similarly quick, but no, we’re still plodding along on that one.

      Reply

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