The VirtualStudio.TV Blog

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  What to Wear at a Green Screen Video Shoot

  10th May 2012 by Rachel Willis Be the first to comment

  People visiting our green screen studio in Cambridge to make their videos often ask me what to wear before they arrive. It is a very good question to ask because there are a few clothing items and choices that do not mix very well with videos created using a green screen studio.
  
  When someone stands in front of our green screen we magically (it’s not really magic!) take out all of the green from the image, and replace it with one of our virtual studios. The reason the screen is green (or sometimes blue) is simply because it’s not a colour found in the pigment of our skin. As a result when you remove this colour you will always be left with a person in the shot which is a good start to making a video. If you do wear anything green, part of you will become invisible which isn’t such a good look!

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  5 Reasons why stock video footage is great!

  5th January 2012 by Jamie Huckle 9 comments

  Now some puritans among you will argue that stock footage cheapens video production and should be avoided at all artistic costs. I’d argue that stock footage is so good now that it can only make a production richer, more creative and ultimately, your client happier. Stock footage of course does have to be used sympathetically and blended into a final production piece to be effective – there is no need for space travel in the CEO’s annual video report...

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  5 Reasons why you need to have videos on your website

  27th September 2011 by Sean Malone 2 comments

  Following the launch of YouTube in 2005 there has been an explosion in the growth of web videos around the world and in the next 24 hours more than 3 billion videos will be watched on that site alone!
  
  We love producing Internet Videos andVirtual Events for our clients and really enjoy working in an industry where there is such a huge range of companies offering different creative video solutions for people all over the world.
  
  There are thousands of different uses for online video but I have listed below my 5 reasons why you need to have videos on your website.
  
  1. You want to communicate a lot of information in a few seconds; what your products, or services look like and the kind of people you are. All of this can be done in a punchy 60 second video clip, rather than more than 200 words of text. Due to the huge increase in email traffic and squeeze on available time in recent years, people today and in the future are far more likely to take the time to view a video than read a page of text...

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  How to get permission to film in a public place

  22nd July 2011 by Sean Malone 24 comments

  After years of shooting corporate videos in the streets of Britain and America, here are my top ten tips for getting permission to film in a public place:-
  
  1. Don’t ask: get the camera out and start filming. The chances are that nobody will challenge you, and by the time that they do you’ll probably have finished shooting the scene anyway. In the UK there are no laws to prevent anyone filming on public streets. Trespass is not a crime it’s a civil matter. In most states in the USA Trespassing is a misdemeanour; and in order for someone to be considered a trespasser a sign must be posted and the person must be asked by the owner or a Police Officer to leave and refuse to do so.
  
  2. Understand a bit about the law: Trespass on railway property, electricity sub stations and places like military installations is a criminal offence. Unreasonable obstruction of the highway (pavement) is also a criminal offence. In both cases a successful prosecution would normally depend on you being given (and failing to respond to) a reasonable request to comply with instructions and exit the area. When filming in London be aware of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008: an offence is committed when there is a reasonable suspicion that film footage is intended to be used to provide practical assistance to terrorists.

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  The use of Internal Communications videos set to rise in the UK

  27th June 2011 by Sean Malone Be the first to comment

  We run Leadership Communication Workshops all over the world, and last week, delegates attending our Workshop in Seattle from one of the world’s biggest IT companies told me that they are routinely producing short videos for internal communication bulletins, training programmes and marketing case studies. The scale of their video production is jaw dropping. Five years ago external production companies were producing 5 videos a year for them, today they are producing 5 videos a day for themselves!
  
  The big question is why has this growth been so explosive and is it set to continue? The answers are threefold:-

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  The Best Mistakes on Live TV : YouTube Blopper Clips

  18th May 2011 by Simon Malone 3 comments

  Since starting VirtualStudio.TV I have a much greater respect for people working in live TV. They have nowhere to hide, everything that is said or done goes out to a huge audience and when the inevitable mistakes do happen, they can sleep easy knowing that it will be uploaded on YouTube in seconds for the world to see!
  
  I have been through a few videos on YouTube and have shared a few below which show that when things go wrong on live TV, they often go very, very wrong!

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  3D Projection Mapping : The Best YouTube Video examples

  18th April 2011 by Simon Malone 35 comments

  3D projection mapping is a relatively new form of projection that is being used to transform the look of buildings, monuments and geographical features around the world. Incredible advancements in projection technology have now enabled marketers and creative agencies to project 3D animations and effects on to existing 2D surfaces.
  
  This method is still in its infancy and as a result there is not a great deal of technical information available on the internet to help explain the origins and the ins and outs of how it is done. In researching this post I could only find an article from Wikipedia which describes 3D projection mapping as “any method of mapping three-dimensional points to a two-dimensional plane”. That definition makes it sounds a bit dull and boring so I have included some video examples to show how impressive this new visual innovation really is.
  

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