Help Us Get A Music Video on MTV

Posted 2 weeks ago, under What's New
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Seven/Seventy-Nine recently collaborated with Dayton, OH based beatsmith Ruckus Roboticus on a music video for his new single “Take Me to a Disco.”  That video has been selected by MTV for a contest where the winner will be placed on regular rotation on MTVu.  Help us win the contest and get the video on the air.  To vote, click on the following link:

http://tinyurl.com/ruckvote

In the Vote Now box in the upper right side of the page, select “Ruckus Roboticus – Take Me to a Disco,” then click Submit Your Vote.  It’s as easy as that.  No registration is required.  You can also vote as often as you like so vote early and vote often!  Thank you and please encourage your friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, and casual acquaintances to do the same. 

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Camera testing with the AF-100. Who Needs a Nice Day?

Posted March 2, 2012, under Uncategorized, What's New
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Now that the weather is turning warmer, I thought it would be a great time to post up some footage that I shot a few weeks ago on what will likely turn out to be the last snow day of this winter.  I wanted to create a simple short film…nothing really narrative, but rather a collection of shots that showed the beauty of what most people would consider a pretty miserable day.  It turned out to be a great opportunity to really dig into our AF100 and play with the overcrank/undercrank settings.  All of the timelapses were done in video mode at 1fps with 1/2 shutter. I shot with a pretty flat scene file and graded in Final Cut with Nattress Film Effects – Image Effects with a tweaked custom G Film- Basic effect with a custom slight lens vignette overlay with slight film grain. The sunrise timelapse was sped up 600% in post (from the 1 fps recorded timelapse in camera) and motion blur was applied in Final Cut to give it an even slower shutter feel. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, 1/2 shutter is as slow as the camera can record.

Just about everything was shot on the AF100 with a cheap Vivitar 28-210mm lens – Minolta MD mount (I acquired a lot of old Minolta MD lenses form my Dad…this was a newer purchase, but I stuck with the MD mount since I already had a 4/3 to MD adapter), most of the time wide open at f3.5. I have noticed that this lens really seems to hit it’s sweet spot irised down a bit at about f5.6, so in shots where there was more depth to play with, I irised down to f5.6.

Panning timelapse shots were achieved at 16x and 32x speed setting on a Meade telescope tripod head with a 497 controller. I found that the 16x really gives a nice smooth playback, while the 32x and above gets a bit jerky. The last shot is on the 32x and it’s not as smooth as the pan down head-on traffic shot at 16x.

The lock down timelapse of the city sunrise was shot with the Panasonic Lumix G Vario HD 14-140mm f/4.0-5.8. generally I don’t hate this lens, but it’s definitely more “video” looking than my old school 35mm film lenses. Very sharp. I hate the fact that I cannot maintain constant aperture. I use it primarily as an interview lens because I like to zoom in and out occasionally in interviews to change framing for natural cut points, but once I zoom in just a little bit, the iris quickly closes down. It does maintain a fixed focus point through the zoom, and that’s why I use it for interviews, but it blurs during the zoom. I imagine it is resetting it’s focus as it zooms to maintain a fixed focus distance through the zoom range. I really need a cinema zoom for interviews…I just don’t have the cash for one yet.

Anyway, enjoy, comment, share, and “Like” it if you like it.

Drew

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It’s the end of the Internet as we know it…

Posted January 10, 2012, under What's New
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And I don’t feel fine. Fine is very far from where I am, in fact. Why is that you ask? Well, it all has to do with legislation currently working its way through Washington called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate. Together they could completely destroy the Internet as we know it.

I realize that this sounds like hyperbole, especially considering how in our polarized political environment every new piece of legislation or government action is met with a Chicken Little chorus heralding it as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. To call this “catastrophe fatigue” would be an understatement so I get it if you’re sitting there right now, rolling your eyes, and thinking, “blah blah blah, the world is going to end and we’re all going to die, blah blah blah.”

But seriously, SOPA and PIPA are some seriously screwed up pieces of legislation that will have a profoundly negative impact on the Internet. If you’re not familiar with either piece of legislation, please check out the following links for analysis and FAQs:

CNET.com: How SOPA Would Affect You: FAQ

New York Times Op-Ed: Stop the Great Firewall of America

Stanford Law Review: Don’t Break the Internet

Google

In a nutshell, SOPA and PIPA would allow the government to create a list of sites that are suspected or accused of copyright infringement that are to be blocked by Internet service providers, search engines, ad networks, social media sites, credit card processors, and payment services. This would all be done without so much as a court hearing or a trial. Furthermore, any copyright holder would be allowed to sue any website for hosting any content that infringes on a copyright – whether knowingly or not and for however briefly said content is hosted. As Rebecca MacKinnon says in the New York Times Op-Ed that is linked above, this would make “companies liable for users’ actions. The burden would be on the Web site operator to prove that the site was not being used for copyright infringement. The effect on user-generated sites like YouTube would be chilling.”

Stopping online piracy is a noble and completely necessary goal. There are some who believe that everything on the Internet should be free, but the bottom line is that nothing is free. If you want musicians to write good music, then you need to compensate them for their time and their talent. The same goes for filmmakers, writers, game developers, and every other creative endeavor.  Artists should be compensated and protected, but, a reasonable amount of sharing is to be expected and should be encouraged.  After all, I discovered Pulp Fiction when a friend loaned me the VHS tape back in 1995 and I now own the special edition DVD. However, using SOPA/PIPA to combat online piracy is like trying to cure cancer with a sledge hammer or perform open heart surgery with a chain saw.

Just imagine what SOPA and PIPA could do to a service like Dropbox, which in my humble opinion is is one of the most useful applications available today. I remember having to email work-related documents to myself in order to work on them at home. Then along came thumb drives which made taking work home a little easier, until you lost the thumb drive, had it crash, or ran it through the washer. Dropbox changed all of this. Now if I want to work on something at home, I just open Dropbox and there it is. Yet in a post-SOPA/PIPA world, services like Dropbox could be blocked if accused of violating a copyright. This means that the simple act of someone putting a few copyrighted songs on Dropbox to share with a friend could potentially ruin it for the rest of us.

Now think about your favorite website or web service and imagine how SOPA/PIPA could affect and or ruin it. What happens when someone posts a clip of their favorite movie on Facebook or a link to an interesting article or great song on Reddit? Or worse, what happens when someone posts a link to a copyrighted picture in the comments section of your company’s website?

I hope you no longer think that I’m exaggerating. I also hope that you’re thinking, “my good lord man, we must do something about this,” and if you are, then awesome. The first thing you can do is contact your representatives in Congress and let them know where you stand on SOPA/PIPA. If you’re not sure who your representatives are, then check here:

http://whoismyrepresentative.com/

Another thing you can do is spread the word. Tell everyone you know who enjoys the Internet what this legislation would do. If you work for a company that does business on the Internet or uses the Internet for marketing, then ask your boss what the plan is with regards to SOPA/PIPA. If you work for a company that employs a lobbyist, then convince your company leadership that that lobbyist needs to be lobbying against SOPA/PIPA.

Blog about it, Tweet it, Facebook it, go tell it on a mountain (an old communication practice that might come back into fashion if SOPA/PIPA become law), just spread the word. If you really want to get funky with the fight you can download Boycott SOPA, an Android app that scans barcodes and tells you whether the object’s manufacturer or publisher supports the act.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/112579-boycott-sopa-an-android-app-that-terrifies-publishers-and-politicians

This country is still a democracy and if we, the people don’t want certain bills to become law, then we can stop it.

-Dan Phenicie

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7/79 Produces Travel Series called “Touring Ohio”

Posted December 19, 2011, under What's New
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Ohio is an interesting place.  It’s a place where cutting edge and traditional stand side by side; where small rural communities are also thriving artist colonies; where the oldest hotel in the state is supposedly haunted and also been visited by 12 US Presidents; but most importantly, Ohio is a place where everyone is friendly and everyplace has a story.  These are just a few of things we discovered while producing Touring Ohio for Time Warner Cable.

Touring Ohio follows host Stephen Samuels – who is an urban planner by training – as he crisscrosses the state looking for all of the fun, unique, and interesting things that can only be found in Ohio.  The show was produced as a part of Time Warner’s commitment to providing it’s subscribers with local, on-demand programming.  So if you have Time Warner Cable, treat yourself to a mini vacation with Stephen by turning to Channel 411 and enjoying a few episodes.

You can view the trailer here:

You can also click here to read what the Cincinnati Enquirer had to say about the show.

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7/79 on the radio – WNKU’s BusinessWise

Posted April 8, 2011, under What's New
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Toward the end of 2010, Dan and I were invited to go on a radio show called BusinessWise, hosted by Tom Cooney and Crystal Faulkner.  They are both partners at Cooney Faulkner & Stevens, one of Cincinnati’s top accounting and business advisory firms.  It was a real honor to be asked on the program.  They regularly have execs and CEOs from major high-profile Cincinnati-based companies.  Guess we can finally sit at the “adults table” this Thanksgiving!

We’ve been so busy making videos since the original airdate that we forgot to post it up on our blog for anyone who missed the original broadcast…until now!

Enjoy,

Drew Money
Creative Director
Seven/Seventy-Nine, Ltd.

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Congratulations to the 2011 Cincinnati Addys Winners. Now Let’s Talk Video

Posted February 21, 2011, under Uncategorized
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The 2011 Cincinnati Addys (the Cincinnati Advertising Awards) took place this past Saturday at the Carnegie Arts Center in Covington, KY. This event showcased and recognized some truly amazing work. If anyone doubts that Cincinnati is home to top-notch creative companies and is thus a global hub for consumer marketing, then the work on display at the Addys would have gone a long way in erasing those doubts.

Mike Zitt from Mike Zitt, Inc. deserves a round of applause for making the event a success. As the 2011 Addys Chair, Mike was responsible for everything from encouraging Cincinnati’s advertising community to submit their work to planning Saturday’s event. Submissions to the Addys competition have been on a steady decline over the past several years, but to Mike’s credit that trend was reversed this year. Attendance was another success for the 2011 show. I’m not sure what the final attendance number was, but I didn’t see any empty seats at the Carnegie on Saturday. The venue was filled with an energetic crowd and there seemed to be more inter-agency mingling than in years past.

This success was due in no small part to the eclectic mix used to encourage submissions and attendance – including the Creatives for Creative Creative rallies that were held outside of various agencies in the fall. Web videos produced by Seven/Seventy-Nine were also a part of the mix and it should come as no surprise that the remainder of this email will be about the role those videos played in promoting the 2011 Cincinnati Addys. When Mike approached us about using video we were on board without hesitation. After all, the role of video in general and web video in particular is tantamount to gospel here at Seven/Seventy-Nine.

The first video was emailed to the advertising community in the fall of 2010. This video featured Addys host Brandon LeBeau taking the viewer on a tour of the Carnegie and giving them a taste of what to expect. The next video went out just after the first of year. It provided a behind-the-scenes look at the Addys submissions and judging processes while also reminding people that the Addys were fast approaching. The final series of videos went out one-a-day during the week of Addys. These videos provided tongue in cheek advice from Brandon on topics ranging from what to wear to the Addys to how to get to the Carnegie Arts Center. The overall affect was a certain energy and buzz about the 2011 Addys. The tone of some videos suggested a lighter and more laid back affair than a stuffy black tie awards show while others suggested a fun, energetic, and contemporary event. The goal was to get people excited in advance of the event and based on Saturday’s crowd I would say it worked.

Video is a very affective way to spread a message because people are, by nature, visual communicators. Reading and the written word are relatively recent developments in the grand time line of human history. Literacy and the written word have only become available on a mass scale in the last few centuries and for centuries prior to that reading was reserved for the wealthy and the ruling classes. People communicated by seeing and hearing for thousands of years. Video, and the ease with which it can be shared on the Internet taps into this fundamental human characteristic.

People are hard-wired to watch things. That very fact is why video screens are everywhere these days. You’re sitting in front of one right now and your cell phone can most likely double as one. They’re in cars, grocery stores, elevators – I have even seen them in bathrooms above the urinals. Video alone isn’t going to make or break a marketing campaign but given the power of the medium and the numerous options for distributing video, it’s definitely something that should be in the mix.

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7/79 Makes the News!

Posted February 4, 2011, under Uncategorized, What's New
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From the Cincinnati Enquirer – Front page of the Business section
Publish Date: Feb 4th, 2011
Story by Enquirer Reporter, Laura Baverman
Original online article at Cincinnati.com

Dan Phenice (Left) and Drew Money are partners in the Norwood video production firm Seven/Seventy-Nine, Ltd. Here, they’re shooting a commercial for Jellystone Park Camp Resorts.

Good video producers can make even the padding under Astroturf look cool.

Video, after all, is about finding a good story in just about anything.

That’s the mantra of Dan Phenicie and Drew Money, who left the corporate world a year ago to start Seven/Seventy-Nine Ltd. at the Hamilton County Business Center in Norwood.

Shooting video had for years been a hobby of the two college friends, who both were born in July 1979 (hence the name).

They’d write and produce short Quentin Tarantino-style feature films or quirky commercials for Christian Moerlein Brewing Co. and events like Over-the-Rhine’s BockFest. Others liked their work and by January 2010 they had enough of it to quit their jobs. Phenicie had been in politics and marketing and Money, product design.

Today, the pair has quadrupled the workload and plans to hire additional staff.

They’ve filmed Jellystone Park Camp Resorts commercials that aired in movie theaters before last year’s Warner Brothers production, Yogi Bear. They’ve produced videos of physicians explaining surgeries for Private Health News, also in the HCBC. Those are distributed to patients and families prior to an operation. And soon, they’ll begin filming a travel show for Time Warner Cable’s local On Demand station.

The documentary-style turf padding video was created for a client of the downtown ad agency The Creative Department.

And a new license with a technology company called Veeple in California now lets them embed interactive links in videos on YouTube or a web site. It could provide clients a new way to advertise products or services during videos. They’ll soon test the technology through a series of web shows featuring a pair of local entrepreneurs sharing tips and horror stories of starting a company. Coffee mugs, for example, could link to advertising for a coffee shop.

“We want to use video in ways people don’t think about,” said Phenicie.

Phenicie and Money have a team approach for any project. Phenicie is a strong writer and networker. He writes scripts and handles sales for the team. Money is the guy behind the camera and the computer, guiding the creative direction of the video and its editing.

They spend time with clients before a shoot, outlining goals for a video project. Who is the audience? Is the client trying to sell a product or service? Will the video just provide information? Is it for television or a web site? Does the client want it to spread through social networks online?

“We understand how to take a message for a client and apply it in the best way,” Money said.

They also work to save clients money during production.

Operating on a shoestring budget when producing was just a hobby has forced them to be creative in their techniques. They rent rather than own all the highest tech digital video equipment. They create the effect of two cameras while using just one. And they’ve determined unique ways to maximize light during shoots.

“We found our own techniques that make our videos look like they cost twice as much as they do,” Money said.

The men are making money and investing back into the company these days. They hope to soon have time to shoot for fun again too.

“We want to be useful for business and industry and produce good videos, but use that income to create artistically compelling stuff,” Money said.

Share your thoughts and story ideas with me via Twitter @laurabaverman or e-mail lbaverman@enquirer.com.

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Web Video: As Significant as the Invention of Print

Posted September 23, 2010, under Uncategorized
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Chris Anderson gave a great talk about how web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation — a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. It should come as no surprise that I agree 100% with what he says.

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More Good News From Our Friends

Posted September 22, 2010, under Uncategorized
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Another client of Seven/Seventy-Nine has been awarded a major grant.  This time our friends at Dress for Success Cincinnati have received an award of $109,000 from Impact 100, a Cincinnati initiative in which women pool individual donations of $1,000 to give significant sums to local nonprofits each year.  Dress for Success Cincinnati will use the Impact 100 funds to launch a new mobile outreach program through a Mobile Suiting Unit van that would expand its ability to serve women who have difficulty reaching the downtown location.

Again, congratulations to Dress for Success Cincinnati and keep up the good work.

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HealthBridge Receives $13.8 Million

Posted September 3, 2010, under Uncategorized
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Congratulations are in order to our friends at HealthBridge for the recent announcement that they will receive $13.8 million from the Department of Health and Human Services. The money comes through the Beacon Community Program and will help develop and implement innovative, health IT-related strategies for addressing major health problems in communities served by HealthBridge.  HealthBridge, as you may know from this video produced by Seven/Seventy-Nine,  is a leader in helping doctors offices and other medical practices purchase and implement electronic medical records systems.

The 16 county region covered by HealthBridge is only one of two areas in the United States to receive this funding.  The entire team at HealthBridge is highly qualified, innovative, and motivated with lots of passion for the job they do.  That coupled with an effective communications strategy, which included a video produced by Seven/Seventy-Nine, most likely played a large role in the decision to award them this funding.

A well produced video that connects with people on an emotional level can convey a message like no other medium.  Producing a great video is a powerful tool that can help move you and your organization closer to achieving goals.  You can play a video at a meeting or conference and take the audience to a place outside of the meeting room without ever leaving  it.  You can also post a video on the Internet and make your message available to anyone anywhere all the time.  Video can give people a sense of who you are and what you do before ever meeting you.

But I digress.  It’s easy for me to digress when it comes to talking about video because I love talking about it almost as much as I love producing it (total dork, I know).  We here at Seven/Seventy-Nine are very happy for our friends at HealthBridge.  Keep up the good work!

-Dan Phenicie

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