Category: Production

New York Yankees – Avid Customer

One star brand meets another, as the New York Yankees video production team explains why they choose Avid Technology products to help make their giant scoreboard come to life.  This video was shot using multiple cameras and different tapeless formats.  There’s Panasonic P2, Canon 7D DSLR, XDCam from the Yankees, even a smattering of AVCHD.  And then all those different sources were edited together on Avid Media Composer, of course, in Peak’s studio.  As Yogi said, when you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Pixillation Video for Kronos’ Next Generation UI Launch

Here’s a look at the video we shot last year with a unique look. It combines graphic design & animating a person in stop motion, as well as a section that merges live action with UI screens in a nod to “Minority Report.” It was created to give a big splash for Kronos’ launch of a new user interface that completely changes how a customer uses their workforce management software.

Michael Rothenberg was writer/director; Joel Markus created the motion graphics; and Gabriel Polonsky directed the pixillation section. This project included a whole separate still shoot just to make the right backgrounds for the “manager” to walk through!

Identity Theft Videos for McAfee

Boston corporate video shoot for McAfee

Actress Mary Fegreus as Carmen Miranda

Peak recently teamed up with writer/executive producer Shane Keats from McAfee to create 3 whimsical videos about identity theft (oh, the horror!). McAfee is rolling out a series of web videos to raise awareness about the issue while maintaining a sense of humor. It’s a good illustration of using video production the right way: building awareness and a connection to the audience. The whole series can be viewed on McAfee’s YouTube consumer channel. My favorite? “Meet the In-Laws.”

DSLR / Green Screen / Animation Shoot

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A really fun and unusual shoot for a software product launch. Here animation director Gabriel Polonsky works with actress Joanna Herrington using an animation technique called ‘pixillation.’ It’s a perfect application for shooting with a DSLR (digital SLR camera), in this case Canon’s 5D Mark II. Using the camera in “still” mode, DP Mark Wuerthner shot hundreds of images as Joanna patiently posed for each one.

The idea of this corporate marketing video is that the actress will walk through several changing work environments – hence the green screen. We’ll composite her into those background environments later. Adding some visual “spice” is the pixillation, a technique that takes stop-motion animation and applies it to human beings. We’ll the post the video when it’s finished so you can see what that means. All I can say is that Joanna did an amazing job in her role as puppet!

In much of the finished video, the actress – moving in normal motion – will operate the software in a futuristic environment. For those sections, we switched modes on the Canon to shoot 1080P video. To check our work on the set, I downloaded video and stills from the card into a laptop with After Effects. This allowed us to check how well the actress would “key” out of the background, as well as how our animation was progressing.

All in all a great day – making good use of technology in the service of a really cool idea.