Green Screen Interviews Feb 8 - 10 During AAOS, San Francisco
Only a block and a half away, a 5 minute walk from Moscone Convention Center during the Annual Meeting of the American Academy Of Orthopaedic Surgeons in San Francisco, we will be conducting green screen video interviews for surgical device companies and surgeons. What is a green screen video interview? It's a technique used for video interviews that allows a video editor to put any background behind the subject you want. This provides the flexibility of the look your art department desires and can be married to the video well after the interview, or changed later for another program.
Marketers' Golden Opportunity For Product Promotional Launches & Technique Overviews
For the surgical device marketer, you have all of your surgeons in one place at the same time during AAOS, San Francisco. This is an opportunity to bring your surgeons for a professionally lit and recorded video interview for:
Product Promotion & Product Launch Campaigns
Technique Overviews
Company Web Site &YouTube Video Presentations
Instructional Presentations & Teaching Programs
Marketing Campaigns of Any Kind
Surgical Device Company Executive Interviews
Product Manager Presentations for the Sales Force
International Marketing Campaigns
Surgeon Interviews to Complete Surgical Video Programs
Video News Releases, Documentary, & TV Commercials
And for surgeons this is an opportunity to promote your practice with a professionally produced video session lit by green screen experts.
We shoot these interviews in the Sony XDCam EX HDTV format at 1080 30p NTSC, and you can either walk with the footage if you bring your own Mac based Firewire 800 external hard drive with at least 30 gigs of free space for each hour session (for footage transport), or have us edit the footage for you at a later date using our simplified process.
Two-Camera Capture Technique
Since most people make mistakes during interviews, and no one wants to look at a single shot for too long, in these sessions we shoot a two camera interview at different focal lengths so editing out pauses and mistakes becomes easier than with a single camera. And the two shots can be used to improve the final "look" and quality of the editing, as in this example:
How This Works - First Come, First Serve Basis Reservations
We will conduct each session on an hourly basis from 9AM to 5PM, ending at 6PM, Sunday October 23rd to Wednesday October 26th. Each hour long session costs $260 per session without editing or compositing. Sessions cannot be broken down into partial sessions and sessions must end at the designated time slot. Additional charges for editing, compositing, and encoding sessions are provided below.
Green screen video interviews are expensive. Often they can cost as much as $1,400 per half-day minimum if you were to hire your own crew with equipment, and that does not include editing. This is a way of reducing the costs by providing an interview station for multiple clients on an hourly basis. And the green screen allows clients from different companies to choose a distinct background from other companies. Still or animated backgrounds can be used skillfully and aesthetically. Backgrounds can be chosen or changed at a later date.
Notify Greg Ondera through Email to be placed on the interested party list. Plexus will send out the Booked Times List Email as sessions are scheduled and slots are filled. Scheduling is done on a first come, first serve basis. Many clients arrange to have their surgeons meet with them at their company exhibit booth and then walk with them over to the studio. You can also call Greg at (415) 507-0333.
How Marketers Can Prepare
Marketers should prepare a set of questions to ask their surgeons well beforehand and have their Regulatory departments approve the questions. All questions should be single-concept questions. Complex or compound questions should be avoided. You will find that simple questions will better elicit a flow of information much more than complex or compound questions. Two pages of double-spaced questions are more than ample. We encourage clients to act as the interviewer (asking the questions), so a set of guidelines will be provided on interview technique. However we are also happy to conduct the interview for you or show you how to do it at first.
Typically 40 minutes of footage can be shot during a single hour session, and as much as 20 minutes or more usable footage can be had from a single session, depending on how well the surgeon delivers audio. These times will vary. This is also an opportunity to record surgeons who are multi-lingual and cover the questions in multiple languages for international marketing purposes.
Editing & Compositing After The Interview - A Simplified Process
You are welcome to walk away with the footage and edit it with your video editing team, but Plexus can also edit it up and composite a background into the interview for you as well. The process of editing involves synchronizing the two video tracks from the two cameras and making a large first cut to send to you for evaluation. This first cut will still have the green screen in the shot. We will send a single DVD as well as an H.264 mpg4 file to you for evaluation in order to make editing decisions, such as which section you would like to keep or delete, or which sentence you would like to delete, etc. You can make as many stand-alone clips as you want. With both the DVD and mpg4 you can locate the timecode IN and OUT points you would like, and from your editing decision list, we can make the fixes for you quickly from our editing bays. We will also supply an audio file of this first cut for you to send through Regulatory in order to identify language Regulatory may have an issue with.
Backgrounds
Backgrounds can be considered at any time in this process, but backgrounds will not be needed until the editing decision list is delivered to us. Once final decisions are made, backgrounds can be composited in. Animated as well as still backgrounds can be used. Typically these backgrounds are developed by your company art department. All artwork backgrounds should cover a 16x9 aspect ratio typical for widescreen HD video. Artwork guidelines will be supplied. An important consideration for all artwork is that in these sessions we are shooting a studio video session, so the atmosphere will still have an indoor feeling. Outdoor backgrounds may not work. Also it is always important to pay attention to the position of the key light on the subject, because the background key light should come from the same direction, if there is a key light in the background. For textures and curtain-like backgrounds, this is not a concern because no key light is used in those backgrounds.
Company Logos & Lower Thirds
We will also edit in your company logo if you wish. Animated logos should be supplied to us in 1920x1080 30p ProRes or XDCam clips. These animations are typically short enough to send on a standard DVD. Or if you supply artwork for a logo and the background for the logo, we can composite these for you into the beginning of the interviews. Artwork guidelines will be supplied.
A "Lower Third" is what we call the lower titles that show the surgeon's name and city of practice. Sometimes animated lower thirds have been produced for other programs. These too can be sent to us for editing into the clips and many lower thirds utilize company branding.
Package Costs:
As mentioned above, you may choose to walk with the footage as long as you bring your own Mac based Firewire 800 external hard drive with at least 30 gigs of free space. If you would also like editing, we will ingest the footage onto our drives for editing at our editing bays later. Here are the cost breakdowns for additional services:
1 Hr Green Screen Session - $260.00 per session
Editing Only 10 Minutes or Less of Original Footage - $1,000.00
Editing Over 10 Minutes of Original Footage - $1,500.00
Both editing packages include all stages of editing, compositing in the background, and encoding to any multiple formats you want. These costs do not include the creation of animation for the backgrounds nor the artwork for the backgrounds. However we will be able to direct you to various sources of stock animation footage and background art if you wish. For your own archiving of the final product we very much advocate Blu-Ray ROM DVDs, as this is the media we will send your final products in. We can also send you the edited green screen footage on these same Blu-Ray discs so you can work on these again in the future. We try to make it as easy for you as possible and facilitate your marketing efforts as best as we can.
Please let us know about your interest as soon as you know, so we can keep you informed as to the remaining availabilities in our session schedule.
Email - Greg Ondera at Plexus Surgical Video Productions or Call 1- (415) 507-0333
