Happy Holidays

2010 Cocoa Beach Boat Parade from Pixel 1080 on Vimeo.

PVCF Meeting/Party December 21st at Pixel1080's Downtown Office

PVCF (Professional Videographers of Central Florida) will be hosted Downtown Orlando by Douglas Howard of Pixel1080 for the December 21st meeting. Festivities start on or around 6:30-7:00 pm.

This meeting is more to celebrate the PVCF members of 2010. Come mingle and discuss your projects and accomplishments as well as meet new members.

Beer, wine, and heavy hors devours will be provided by both PVCF and Pixel1080.

Free Parking is available from 7:00pm on in front of the building, Orange Avenue, unless there is an O-rena event (The old Angebuilt hotel, 37 N. Orange Ave., Suite 755) 

or in Central Parking by the fire house or metered parking around the block for a small fee.

The elevators need a pass key after 7:00 pm so please call 321-277-5279 to be escorted up to the 7th floor after 7:00 pm

There will be a small demonstration in one of the edit bays to demo the attributes and differences of the Sony XDCAM PMWEX1 and the Canon 5d Mark2 for image capture.

The imagery captured will then be used for a formal meeting/demonstration in January to discuss tapeless workflows by Pixel1080' s Douglas Howard.

http://pixel1080studios.blogspot.com/p/home.html

Hope to see you all there to celebrate a fantastic 2010.

Directions:

Pixel1080 is on Orange Avenue, in the Angebuilt Hotel 37 N. Orange Avenue. There is a Subway subshop on the first floor and FinnHenry's Pub. The building is on the corner of Orange Avenue and Wall Street (Cantina), between Central and Washington. 

**There is parking after 7 pm on the street IF THERE ARE NO SPECIAL EVENTS AT THE ARENA. There will be POSTED signs if there IS a special event. 

IF NOT POSTED, YOU ARE FREE TO PARK ON ORANGE AVENUE.  Otherwise, there is parking (both metered or garage) surrounding the block.

Expensive Utility Covers

This was a fun shot we popped off while shooting off Melrose in LA.
Even the utility companies use that classic logo for their covers.

Photoshoot With Pro Event DJs

Matt Rothlein of Provocative Productions approached Pixel1080 to design his CD cover of his soon to be released CD project he has been working on for over 5 years. We decided to start the project with some photography. Do some amazing and different techniques and a few locations to get the creative juices flowing.

Our first location was at Kraft Azalea Garden in Winter Park at sunset. The technique is to "paint with light". Using our  Canon 5D M2 with a couple of wide angle lenses, 5-8 second exposures and high f-stop settings for maximum open shutter time.  We had some of our crew and Matt's crew run around the trees with flashlights waving their arms around while we did a dodge and burn with one of the lights on Matt as he stood very still. Here are a few shots of the outdoor garden session.

Second location was the alleyway between the Studios of Pixel1080, downtown Orlando (corner of Wall St. and Orange Ave).  Smoke machines, lasers and flashlights were used to achieve the effects.
With an occasional wandering street person in and out of some of the shots we pulled it off without too much attention and our improperly parked cars.

Back home to the studio

Shooting in south Orlando for the final 3 careers of the year. We had the privilege to interview an NBC/Universal HR rep, A Career Counselor at Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA., and a Designer for Ralph Lauren Hollywood this last week. Now we are back to do the studio shoot and wrap these great interviews up wit our talented hosts Michael Sapp and Janette DeChamps.

LA for 3 career shoots

Pixel1080 is off to LA today to shoot the remaining 3 careers
of it's final wave of production. a Designer for Ralph Lauren, an HR Manager, and a Career Manager
More to come later.

11 awards brought home last night for Best Educational Series

Best in Editing, Directing, Graphics, Lighting  and Director of Photography for an Educational Series

The Gala, presented by the Florida Motion Picture & Television Association (FMPTA), was held November 5-7, 2010 at the Hilton Orlando/Altamonte Springs. The three day event is held annually to honor and highlight outstanding achievements in motion picture, television, audio recording and digital media productions created in Florida over the past year. FMPTA is the oldest trade organization in Florida, founded in 1973.

CaerusPoint’s series, called Major Decision, swept all 11 categories that it entered. Judging is done by Emmy, Grammy, Oscar nominated and/or awarded professionals across the country. Scoring forms are tallied by an independent CPA.

The company won the following categories within the production type of Education:

• Best Education Program
• Leading Actor
• Leading Actress
• Script (Short) – Produced
• Director
• Director of Photography
• Lighting Design
• Sound
• Editing
• Production Design / Art Direction
• Graphic Design

“Major Decision is a series that we are very proud of, and the FMPTA awards are a great complement to all the hard work our team has put in over the last year,” said CaerusPoint CEO Kobie Pieterse.

“To be awarded in every category we entered by such a prestigious organization is a true testament to our product and we hope for this to ultimately help us reach more students across the country,” added CaerusPoint President Chris Botha.

Major Decision is an education-based series of entertaining videos (appealing to a diverse audience) that dissect each highlighted career in less than a half hour in the form of an up-beat hosted show, and feature an informal in-depth interview of a professional in that specific field. This offers a high school senior or first-year college student an accurate “day-in-the-life” depiction of a career in an exciting and positive platform. The series provides present-day, real world guidance from an expert within his or her area of expertise. The Major Decision career guidance video library spans twelve popular industries and showcases up to five careers within each industry.

The unique informal in-person interview style, comprehensive career coverage and proprietary career ranking system set this series apart from other career guidance programs. The series helps boost post-secondary education and helps reduce dropout rates by educating America’s youth about the array of careers that are available today.

Production and Post Production by Pixel1080. For more information on Pixel1080's services contact Douglas Howard, email Douglas@pixel1080.com or cell 321-277-5279.

New Demo Reel Completed

It was finally time to get the demo reel done. Here are a few of soooo many clips that made it in the demo.
Hope you like. Leave comments!

Wave 3 Production Completed - on to Post!

We have just completed our 3rd wave of careers for CaerusPoint, LLC. Schuyler Osborne was director this time and C. Douglas Howard was Director of Photography. Devindra Ramdehal - second camera, Seth Cohen and Kat Small - 3rd camera, Rick Alexander & Lee Day - audio, and Kari Larsen of About Face Design Team & Kat Flynt did our location makeup.
Some fun challenges with lighting on these careers, and we were in a couple louder settings with the Veterinarian and the Bio-Medical Engineer adding a little more ambience. It is time to start editing all this juicy footage and bang out some HD!

We shot mostly in the Orlando area and a Bio-medical shoot in Atlanta.
Here are a few shots of the different careers.

Janette interviewing a Banker of Seaside Bank

Michael interviewing a Transportation Manager of CHEP

Janette and a Veterinarian

Michael and PR Executive Mark Jerkins of Higher Advertising

Michael and our Bio-Medical Engineer

22 Episode careers project

We have been contracted by CaerusPoint to create 22 episodes of careers aimed at High School and College students. The careers are everything from Industrial Designers to PR firms to College Professors.

We are using the latest technology on the shoots...2 Canon 5D mark2 cameras and a 7D to do the shoot in HD (1920x1080). The ability to shoot with a smaller footprint and low light will give us a unique advantage to "get the shot" without the demand for large lighting and larger crew. We are also using LED lighting, which is less invasive and cooler on the talent.

The shows will have a 5-7 minute "Studio" performance by the two hosts. One of the two hosts will go in the field and do and interview with a professional in the industry of about 12-15 minutes final footage (a day in the life of) and then return back to the studio (5 minutes) to discuss and rate the career on it's various contributions to life, balance in life and even "Green Impact" towards the environment. Show is formatted to potentially go to televison as well as delivered on DVD and online for schools to have for their counselors and career instructors.
We will wrap on this early December of 2010. If all goes well we will be shooting an additional 33 beginning early 2011. 
Check out the blog for updates.

Interview with Bio-Medical Engineer

We had the opportunity to interview a Todd C. McDevitt, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Petit Faculty Fellow for the Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience - Director, Stem Cell Engineering Center on Friday. 
The crew flew up for the day and shot on location at Georgia Tech. The Doctor and his team were doing stem cell research for regenerative medicine and tissue replacement after injury or disease.

New Family Member to Pixel 1080

Overview

The HXR-NX5Uis a handheld camcorder recording 1080i, 1080p, and 720p AVCHD, and standard-definition MPEG-2, on solid-state storage. It weighs about five and a half pounds and is generally the same size as other HD handycams; in particular it’s very, very similar to the HVR-Z5u, being about an eighth of an inch taller and wider but an eighth of an inch shorter than that tape-based camcorder.The HXR-NX5U uses the same lens, sensors, and many operating controls of the HVR-Z5u, but differs by adopting solid-state recording and dropping all pretense of backwards-compatibility: its HD images are recorded as AVCHD and its SD pix are stored as MPEG-2; there’s no HDV or DV/DVCAM recording, and there’s no FireWire port on the camera since there’s no use for it. 

Sony has made GPS-enabled Handycams before, but this may be the first professional video camera with geotagging as a standard feature.

The HXR-FMU128 is a 128GB solid-state drive. It snaps onto the right side of the camera and lets you capture 688 minutes of 24 Mbit/sec AVCHD and two channels of linear audio: that’s over 11 hours! Drop down to 5 Mbit/sec video with Dolby compressed audio and you can cram over 51 hours of media onto the FMU.

• 20x G-series zoom.
• ISO 400 nominal sensitivity (ISO 200 at -6dB gain).
• 800+ TVl/ph resolution with acceptably smooth, natural detail.
• 1080i, 1080p, 720p, and 480i recording.
• Interlaced and true progressive modes.
• Killer EVF and very good LCD; good peaking control.
• Best-in-the-business viewfinder data displays.
• Sensible ergonomics and superb, silky-smooth lens servos.
• Sony Steadyshot with several “firmness” settings; Active Steadyshot.
• Comprehensive Picture Profile tweaks, most with 15 steps of adjustment.
• Very good shotgun mike included along with good built-in stereo mike; flexible audio input options.
• SDI and HDMI outputs.
• Standard RCA jacks for composite and audio outputs.
• Dual memory slots accepting low-cost PRO Duo Memory Sticks.
• Optional Flash Memory unit for 11+ hours recording time.
• High-quality, full-raster 24 Mbit/sec AVCHD recording with linear PCM audio capability.
• Expanded focus function can be used while recording.
• Camcorder can be upgraded to 60Hz/50Hz “world cam” capability (contact Sony for details).

A great member to Pixel1080's family!

Information from an article by Adam Wilt ProVideo Coalition, Jan 03, 2010

Redfish Outing On An August Evening

Mosquito Lagoon, Cape Canaveral, Florida - Sunset
Redfish - Horseshoe Crabs - Small Sharks - and one Big 14' Alligator!

CaerusPoint Trailer

Trailer - CaerusPoint from Pixel 1080 on Vimeo.

United Way of Central Florida

A Pro-bono we did to for the United Way. Some of our community leaders helped in sending this message to the community.

United Way - Heart of Florida United Way from Pixel 1080 on Vimeo.

Scheiner Law - Ft. Myers

Scheiner Law - "Family" :30 from Pixel 1080 on Vimeo.

Producer Jennifer Foster of Foster Productions looking
in view finderwith Schuyler Osborne running camera.

We shot this commercial for Foster Productions in Ft. Myers Florida. We started our shoot on a Wednesday night and wrapped on Friday afternoon, transcoded the footage on the ride back to Orlando and edited all day Saturday.

They loved it - no changes!

This was shot entirely on the Canon 5d Mark 11 and edited in Final Cut Studio 7.

Some of the shots were with the Cine-slider, all others on the 5d rig.

Studio Time

On left Producer Kobie in center Schuyler directing and
on couch Michael & Janet far right.

We are in the studio shooting careers 6-10 next week.

CaerusPoint Project

We are well on our way with a 22 episode career paths series of videos aimed at Junior year high school students up to first and second year college students. We are shooting with the Canon 5D and 7D cameras and getting amazing results. The native 1920 x 1080 format give us huge capture with any lens that can be attached to the Canon ES mount.

I can truely say the ability to switch out between all our prime lenses makes shooting DOF (depth of field) visuals look cinematic.

Take a look at our Industrial Designer interview.

Industrial Designer Career Interview from Pixel 1080 on Vimeo.