This is The Biz Media’s head of production, Justin Brennon Smith, trying out the office’s new T2i with a manual focus on the most feisty of subjects, Yoshi.

The lense being used in this video is not designed for moving subjects, so focusing takes a lot of… focus.

We are currently hotly debating our next camera purchase.  To Seven or to Five Dee? that is the question.  Until recently the 7D from Cannon was the gold standard for commercial quality 1080p video, recently cannon updated the firmware on their 5D line to allow for similar performance, complicating matters.

Now, the 5D is the higher-end of the two cameras, shooting with a full frame sensor – enabling better low-light and enhanced depth of field.  The 7D on the other hand has dedicated video buttons and a more established quality, which experts consider very close to 35mm film.

We are pretty much set on the 5D for it’s low light capabilities and enhanced audio capabilities, but we are still torn. or maybe we should just get a pair of T2is

What is your advice? please comment below.

With the production of the the TEDx Toronto teaser, which was launched today we wanted to present

“The  universal nature of the TED conference with a Toronto aesthetic”

As is clear with the final product, we took  this motif quite literally.   The infinity of space intercepted by our favorite TED talks, ideas about the human condition spiral in to form our pale blue… err… red dot.  Unsatisfied with stock Toronto time-lapses, The Biz Media crew camped out for 5 hours at Poison St. on the east side of the Toronto Harbor to capture the sunset.

View Time Lapse TEDx Toronto in a larger map

We used the Cannon 7D to capture a series of 460 photos from a Cannon 7D, snapping one photo every 30 seconds from 7pm to 11pm, we were able to try our new Intervolomintor.  When we first started shooting, our shutter speed was set at 1/2000 of a second, by the end we were shooting at 13 seconds a frame.  We actually can’t wait to try this again, this time from the Toronto island with a complete 24 hour cycle.

The Biz Media will continue to produce all future video content including a multi camera live stream of TEDxToronto, bringing the world to the ideas of our fair city.

While the shakes weren’t felt at The Biz Media office — we work in a concrete box — The Biz Media writer Josh Saltzman was rattled while at home.  He captured great footage of the whole ordeal.

Dear Mr. Jobs,

As professional video editors and animators, our work-flow depends greatly on our ability to render and encode in a timely manner.  The lack of any Mac related announcements at WWDC is disconcerting for my production studio as we would like to upgrade our Mac Pros and Apple Cinema Displays.

The current revision of Mac Pros were released almost a year and half ago and the accompanying 30″ cinema screenhit the market almost 4 years ago.  We have been considering purchasing PCs because of the availability i7 Hexacore processors, which would really help with our rendering times.  Of course we are currently committed to Final Cut Pro, which will pose a problem.

Since we use Adobe’s After Effects and the rest of the Creative Suite, we are considering a move to Adobe Premier.  This will be painful to say the least, but in the end it could save a lot of time and thus money.

It’s clear that recent the slew of Apple hardware released is generating much excitement and high regards and for good reason. Your iOS based hardware units, including the iPad and iPhone are solid and revolutionary.  Business is good at Apple, new and existing  customers are buying your products in droves. You must remember one thing though, your professional users have always been your most loyal customers, ignoring their NEEDs for faster  high-performance hardware is frustrating.

It appears that Apple is slowly moving away from fostering platforms prime for digital media production and towards media consumption and hobbyists.  The “just works” ethos is fine but digital media professionals, especially in the video and animation space also need a assurance that things work effectively.  It’s not obscene to believe that the i7 Hexacore processors will reduce rendering time by significant percentiles, this is why we can only wait so long.

To tell you the truth Mr. Jobs, the longer I have to watch a progress bar, the less thrilled I am to have (be) a Mac.

Regards

~The Biz Media

Unmarketing, AKA Scott Stratten, served up a stellar keynote without notes, a mic or even notes to an enthusiastic crowed on the roof of the Merchandise Building in Toronto.  Scott’s blunt and in-your-face approach to social media was appreciated by most everyone, even the most jaded in social media/ communications professionals present.

Scott manages to explain in a colourful and entertaining manner that perhaps social media isn’t for some people…  and some people are idiots.

The Biz Media thanks all who were able to make it out to our first #TheBizMedia Sessio;  you are all wicked awesome.

This is a segment of our info-graphic story board

At The Biz Media we have been authoring an ultra-secret internal project concerning the state of online video.  We have finished the research, sketches and script.  We are now entering an animation phase.

The style is going to be an info-graphic video that uses a lot of simple but effective vector art.

We decided to build a series of “art boards” in Adobe illustrator, which were each 1920 x 1080. On each of these cells or key frames, we include drafts of our vector elements and with the audio script below in black and beside it an action script in red.

This is the first time we at The Biz Media have drafted vector art boards, usually we use pen and paper.  There are some things when putting something like this together:

1.  Have each art board as a separate layer and turn them off when not being used, this will ease the load on your computer

2.  Use no rasterized graphics or textures, these will really slow things down… a lot.

3.  Have very large spaces between cells for notes and animation stages.

4. Have a fast machine, Macbooks will not cut it.

Here are the settings used for this job.   Let me know if there is anything that you see to optimize it.

Rob Borts reflecting on his first video project lead:

One of the projects I’ve had the recent pleasure of being a part of was the Crohns and Colitis Foundation of Canada’s PSA, which announces their annual “Heel’N’Wheel-a-thon.”

Before I started production, I thought it would be a simple, straightforward project to coordinate and collaborate with others upon.  As I learned from having to wait nearly 4 months for a meeting with CCFC’s representative, very rarely is it ever that simple.  From this, I learned one lesson above all others; very rarely will things go exactly as you had initially anticipated them to.

In addition to client services, actual production of the video proved  to be a challenge as well.  I learned that it takes teamwork to manage an entire shoot. I found it especially difficult to give the speaker supportive criticism concerning her delivery in between takes of the shoot, since I wasn’t really sure what to be looking for myself.  I was also more concerned about her placement on the green screen as well as getting the exact shot I was looking for.

When I got into the editing, I was beginning to have doubts in my ability to deliver on a satisfactory final project, however I maintained my level of determination.

One of the issues I faced with the usage of the Final Cut Pro program for this project was the unbearably long waiting period for rendering to occur.  It seemed like every miniscule change I made, would affect the entire piece, and would cause an annoying 30-minute waiting period minimum.  Another issue was how to make the transitions between sentences seem smooth and unnoticeable.  I think I can safely say, I learned a few new ways of doing that from this project.

After facing the many technical issues imbedded in the final cut program, as well as learning how to coordinate my team on the shoot and the people who were organizing the project, I had my final product.  This project was one of the biggest learning experiences I’ve had in my time interning here, and I hope I can have many more opportunities like the one I was given with the CCFC project.

As a recent graduate of high school, I have found interning at TheBizMedia to be both a challenge and an enjoyable experience.  Over the past few months, I have been working closely with Justin and the rest of TheBizMedia crew to help film and edit videos.

There are a few milestones we have hit in our two years as a business – there are many milestones we hope to hit in the years to come. This milestone is one I never thought we would hit. It’s the ultimate declaration of fanhood. Today I am proud to be a part of the coolest company I know. And also a little bit weirded out.

Thanks to:
Ryan Dury for documenting this.
Nate Kogan for being our biggest fan – hands down.
Andrew Galea for helping out.
New Tribe for making one of our new favourite pieces of art.

Nate’s website: http://www.natekogan.net/

Here is a picture of Ben showcasing the magazine that was given out at The Art of Management conference. We had a full page ad in the magazine and while print is not normally our cup of tea – we thought this was a pretty good use of a page. By complete fluke we chose a similar font to the Marcus Buckingham article next to our ad. I’m sure many people read our article thinking Marcus Buckingham wrote it. Mwahahha!

He didn’t though.

Dima Beznosov, our good friend and regular script/copywriter wrote it and the art direction was done by Alessandro Würgler.