Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

30
May
13

We Want Pure Storage All Night Long (Too)

By lisa Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

Pure Storage is a silicon startup convincing the world that they don’t need disks to spin anymore.

The world and all of its servers can be driven on flash.

Exclusively.

We Want Pure Storage All Night Long (too) from Studio B Films on Vimeo.

Making of the Video

We met the Pure Storage crew last year when we shot their video in homage to the Dollar Shave Club. Real life monkeys on set and transforming an old server into a beer fridge? It was love at first collaboration.

We were excited they came back to us this spring with a new challenge. All we had to do was be funny AND be funny in the first :05 seconds – just like we did last year. Being funny brings in more viewers and boosts search results in Google. Funny. So, let’s see. Make a funny video and make sure it’s funny in the first :05 seconds. Again.

No problem! (gulp)

Our esteemed client Matt had great ideas involving a used car salesman technique to help drive home the ‘pure storage guarantee’. We played with multiple ideas during our frisbee brainstorming sessions (newly installed at Studio B). We pitched a few well-received concepts (pun intended). However, it all changed when freelance copywriter Joe Morgan showed up.

Oh, We Love Our Storage

“Let’s make it about love. Or the end of an era, the end of an affair.” He proposed.

He was right. And we found ourselves with a premise where we could experiment with great actors.

 

 

 

 

Our casting sessions had us laughing immediately. Joe nailed the dialogue after collaborating with frisbee players Aaron Barry (Creative Director) and Jane Selle Morgan (Director). Aaron took it to another level with the ‘All Night Long’ line (which is what Pure Storage is leading with on their website).

Camille (Producer @ Studio B) brought it all together beautifully. One of our favorite Production Designers – Shayla Dopp – did a fantastic job in transforming a conference room into a psychologist’s office. DP and Studio B Founder David Collier brought the right lighting, lensing, and other DP magic.

DP David Collier

And then there was the brilliant cast: Darren Bridgett as the psychologist and Ryan Drummond as the Storage Admin. “Their talents and comedic timing gave us the chance to speak in the craft of acting. They made my job easy.” Director Jane Selle Morgan said post shoot.

A lovesick Ryan Drummond

Two talented editors finalized the show in post production: Julie Caskey took the first pass and weaved the performances together; Rebecca Grace finished the job by creating a whole new beginning and incorporating her own fun ideas. We took a victory lap over at Colorflow for color grading and we are very pleased with the results!

Let’s summarize. Frisbee, laughing, casting, laughing, shooting, laughing, editing, laughing. Clearly we had a blast.

Producer Camille & Director Jane with the Actors

Credits:

Creative Director: Aaron Barry
Director: Jane Selle Morgan
DP: David Collier
Producer: Camille Goldberg
Writer: Joe Morgan
Production Design: Shayla Dopp
Editors: Julie Casky and Rebecca Grace

Cast:
Darren Bridgett – psychologist
Ryan Drummond – storage admin

15
May
13

We’re in this with Annie’s – for Good

By lisa Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

They really do believe in goodness.

 

Berkeley is no stranger to dodging synthetic foods.

That’s why we were thrilled to partner with Annie’s Naturals to help raise awareness around a mantra we can easily ingest: If it’s not real, it’s not Annie’s. 

 

 

 

 

When Kraft received bad press for using artificial ingredients in their foods (yellow dye #5 and #6) – Annie’s agency Veneer sought our expertise to showcase their opposing mission to reassure their customers. This heartfelt piece celebrates parents who refuse to feed potentially toxic foods to their kids.

Who better to deliver the message of good from the ultimate guardians themselves?

Behind the Scenes

Prepping the first scene in Oakland, CA.

 

Since there was a sense of urgency to leverage Annie’s Natural’s brand in contrast to other companies that don’t – we had to move fast. We had to concept, cast, shoot, edit, and deliver the video in 2 ½ weeks…at least 3 ½ weeks quicker than our normal production cycle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Director Jane & DP David working their magic, naturally

 

The most difficult task on the table was finding a pregnant woman in 48 hours. With the help of the Veneer ladies, Annie’s stellar crew, and the Studio B team – we pulled off an incredible shoot in a beautiful home. We hope you liked the result.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what’s it like to produce a video for a company whose mission is to turn good into more good?

It’s awesome.

25
Jan
13

Yoga, Dance, and Fitness-Fueled New Year’s Resolutions

By Rachel 1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

After the success of our first collaboration with The Dailey Method it was an honor to produce Jill Dailey’s second DVD, “Dailey Now.”  They  released their DVD just in time for the holiday season and the timing couldn’t have been better! With the start of the New Year, everyone is excited to start fresh with those fitness-fueled New Year’s Resolutions. The Dailey Method mixes yoga, dance and pilates to sculpt and tone the body. We certainly got our workout, both in production and the editing room.

The full day shoot included three cameras, two dollies,  a jib, a truck full of lighting, a tri-caster switcher and lots of healthy snacks. With several hours of footage in the can, our editor dove in to the cut, choosing the best shots to highlight each and every movement. Soon enough, we had a DVD.

It was a pleasure to work again with Jill and her inspiring team. We can’t wait to do it again.

 

20
Aug
12

Hammer Time at Studio B!

By Jane Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

A few months ago Outside Lands Music festival approached us in search of a funny and engaging ‘announce video’. It is apparently common practice for music festivals to find an entertaining way to put all of the band names into a video and use it as a tool to announce their line-up. We got pretty excited for several reasons:

  1. We all love the Outside Lands Festival
  2. They said there was a good chance that MC Hammer would work on the video with us.
  3. It’s fun to try to be funny

So we got right to work and pitched a few concepts.  The one that emerged a winner (as in Hammer himself chose it) came from the brain of Studio B’s Creative Director Aaron Barry. The video reveals the back story of how MC Hammer became The MC Hammer with the right moves, right pants and fancy tag line.

As you can plainly see, there were several production challenges along the way. They included, but were not limited to: creating a 70’s house set, finding a record shop to shoot in, casting talented actors to  play MC Hammer as a boy, his Momma, the prom dates, construction workers and the record store boys, fitting wardrobe for all and  — the icing on the cake — creating the perfect cake to write band names in icing of course! Oh, and we had to make it  happen in like 3 days. Thanks to Stars agency for submitting such great talent and Rachel Speirs for her amazing cake decoration magic and all-around production coordination.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since my house is stuck in time, the 70’s house location challenge  was solved pretty easily with the help of some very creative art direction from Shayla Dopp. Director of Photography David Collier and the Red Epic brought down some gorgeous images. It was an all hands on deck project for Studio B and was super fun shoot day, even though it was pouring buckets for most of the afternoon.  Fun fact, you can see and hear the rain in the construction scene.

And… if you’re wondering… the answer is yes! MC Hammer was a true pleasure to work with. Be sure to watch to the end of the video for the bonus hilarity with him in my kitchen!

See you all at the Outside Lands Festival!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Credits:

Creative Director/Writer: Aaron Barry
Producer/Director: Jane Selle Morgan
Director of Photography: David Collier
Production Manager/Icing Goddess: Rachel Speirs
Art Director: Shayla Dopp
Editor: Kevin Oliver

Cast:
MC Hammer: as himself
Record Store Boys: Michael Campbell & Griffin Skylark
Little Hammer: Kishaun Lewis
Mama: Tanee Osborne
Auntie: Ms. Lewis
Prom Boy: Jamany
Prom Girl: Taylor Jones
Construction Workers: Kevin Clarke & Chris “Tex” Fountain

Music:
Beck  “Mixed Bizness”
Fun “We are Young”

Special Thanks:
Joe and Graham (70’s house)
Dave’s Record Shop in Berkeley
The entire production crew!
And of course, our clients at Superfly Presents/Outside Lands!

25
Jul
12

Sephora Pro Brushes

By studiob Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

In June, we were given the opportunity to work with Sephora University to create an internal training video. The goal for this video was to get Sephora employees excited about their new, in-house line of Pro Brushes, and we were excited too!  We really wanted to represent the brushes with elegance, and we think the end result was just that:

The video was shot in Downtown San Francisco at the Sephora Test Store. We were lucky to be able to work with one of Sephora’s top of the line Pro Artists, Eric, and Sephora’s lovely Collection Trainer, Marisa, who hosts the video.  Enjoy!

 

Credits:

Producer/Director: Rachel Speirs
Director of Photography: Mike Epple
Gaffer: Art Aravena
Sound: Greg Miller
AC: Sierra Haworth
Grip: Jeff Schwinghammer
PA/Talent: Chelsea Grey

Editor: Rebecca Grace
Motion Graphics: Karen Hansen

 

27
Jun
12

Customer Story: Michele hearts Adobe Photoshop Elements

By Jane Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

Earlier this year we were kindly welcomed into the home of Michele McGraw and her family;  they live in a suburb outside of Washington, D.C. Michele is a Mom, Blogger, and entrepreneur who uses Adobe Photoshop Elements to manage and edit the family photo library.  They were so gracious to let us shoot them from sun up to sun down (and beyond!) as we captured the chaos, laughter and straight up logistics of life with four kids, a dog, cat and busy Mom and Dad.

For this customer story, we used an ‘audio’ only interview approach, so instead of capturing her voice on video, we only rolled audio during the interview process. This approach creates a sense of intimacy where we get to know the character only through her voice as we see her going about their day. The combination of a fantastic local DC based crew, warmer than usual weather for January, and a sweet family made for a very nice shoot. Editor Kevin Oliver brought his A game, and it’s always a pleasure to work with our friend Jeff Severtson from Adobe. Next month we’ll be shooting another Photoshop Elements customer story with Jeff Severtson, which we are all looking forward to!

Credits:

Producer/Director: Jane Selle Morgan
Director of Photography: Jim Ball
Editor: Kevin Oliver

Star: Michele McGraw

14
Feb
12

Adobe Youth Voices Aspire Awards Video

By aaron Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

After finally getting the music rights settled from The XX, the Adobe Youth Voices video that we spent many days concepting and animating is live!. You can watch it here or see it on the homepage of their site (http://youthvoices.adobe.com/f). This piece quickly turned into a labor of love for us because Adobe was offering us so much freedom and creativity in the approach and it was an opportunity to support a foundation with a mission to empower youth and promote social change. Can’t argue with that.


From the website: The Adobe Youth Voices Aspire Awards celebrates the extraordinary work of young media artists from around the world by recognizing top talent in media production. So the goal of the video is to inspire these kids to want to get out there and make something cool and get their work seen (and maybe snag a nice prize, too).

In casting, we met some amazing kids through Destiny Arts (a theater group that David is currently filming for a documentary) and through a girls group that our very own Rachel Spiers leads on the weekends. Through auditions, we found our 3 characters (a musician, a designer, and a photographer / filmmaker). The next challenge was to create a unique graphics style for each of their environments that tells a story about their creative work. While we wanted each character to really be affecting and transforming their environments (rather than just looking around at neat graphics in their world), we also wanted to show some evolution of their work over time. After several rounds of boards and motion tests, we landed on a style for each. Finally, we wanted to wrap the ending back to the branding of the event by transitioning back into a sketch world that we hinted at in the beginning.

We’re really proud of this piece and feel totally grateful to have clients like Adobe to bring us in on such a fun and challenging project. If you know any youth that would like to submit, you can send them here to register: http://youthvoices.adobe.com/awards/submissions/

19
Jan
12

Time to Get Down to Business

By studiob 2 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

Small business owners, meet Michael Bush — serial entrepreneur and start-up expert.  He’s on a mission to help small businesses everywhere succeed. His vision: a brand new web-start-up that will teach entrepreneurs everything they need to know to successfully run a small business, complete with finance tools, a support network and a series of video lessons filled with an MBA worth of tips and tricks for the small business owner.

We recently teamed up with Michael to turn the video portion of his vision into a reality. With Michael’s business-know-how and our video-know-know, the result (in our humble opinion) was a pretty great mix of high quality video, killer motion graphics and top-notch lesson content!  Check it out:

In addition to 11 beautiful, fact-filled video lessons, we also created two mini-docs about Michael and his teaching philosophy for the website. What better way to introduce the man to the world? Here’s a sneak peak:

In the end, the Michael Bush and the 8 Factor team walked away with over two hours of polished video footage, and we walked away with our MBA (Michael Bush Advice) on how to run a small business! In fact, inspired by Michael’s lessons, Studio B recently put our own Vision, Mission and Values down in writing and we’re all striving as a company to focus on the things that matter most. It’s all part of our new year’s resolution to be a better, faster, leaner, meaner small video production company.

 

 

19
Jan
12

A Cheeky Video to Make an Audience Blush

By studiob Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

 

We love working with companies that aren’t afraid to push boundaries. So it was quite a treat to have Benefit cosmetics come to us with a special task: “Show our product in a way that will make our audience blush!”

We got right to the drawing board shooting for something silly, sassy, and a little bit racy. Starting with their fun and beautiful marketing imagery, a lovely angel sitting in heavenly light, we imagined what this Angel’s back-story might be. How did she get there? What was she like before she became an angel? How did her face get so darn glowy? We rounded out the cast with one sleazy devil, an God who’s more than (s)he seems. Added a dash of comedy. And finished with some divine cosmetic product placement.

The result, we think, is heavenly:

A little shout out (harp strum?) for Amanda Huelse who wrote and produced, Joe Morgan who wrote the dialogue, Jane Selle Morgan who is our resident comedy director and David Collier captured the magic as the Director of Photography. Our new motion graphics artist Devin Earthman and his team of troublemakers created Heaven under the direction of Art Director Aaron Barry after Eli Olsen cut the picture.
The Studio B Team sure feels the Benefit of having such a heavenly, funny client!

 

11
Jan
12

New Year’s Resolutions

By admin Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: ,

Happy 2012 everyone! With the new year rolling around, we’re all brimming with New Year’s resolutions around here. Here’s a peek at the plans:

David (Owner/CEO/DP): “My New Year’s resolutions are to sponsor and run a half marathon with the studio b team, create a company retreat, to get my kids to put the dishes in the dishwasher, and to take more creative risks.”

Jane (Producer/Director): “My New Year’s resolution is to do yoga and meditate every day. Stress management all the way, baby!”

Aaron (Creative Director / Post Sup.): “My New Year’s resolution is to make a piece of furniture by hand, and forage for seafood with the crab net that I got from my wife for Christmas.”

Rebecca (Editor): “This year, I’m going to sit down and write creatively in my journal every night. I used to write a lot, but I haven’t in a while. It will be fun to see what comes out!”

Kevin (Editor): “Uh, I’ll get back to you.”

Tim (Post Production): “I’m going to be a better husband. I don’t know how I’m going to quantify that one. I guess I’ll have to ask my wife. I think I have to listen better.”

Devin (Motion Graphics / Post Production): “Half Marathon!”

Rachel (Production Coordinator): “This year, I’ll tackle the backyard garden. Hopefully, I don’t kill everything in my path!”

Alrik (Rentals Manager): “To be able to do reps of 20 pull ups! Currently, I do three reps of 4. I gotta get that number up!”

In the sprit of getting carried away with things, we set some goals as a studio too!

We resolve to:

  1. Do a mini-makeover of our website
  2. Establish an annual company retreat
  3. Get organized with basecamp
  4. Run a half marathon together!
  5. Not loose or break any rental gear in the year 2012!

There it is all in writing. Now we’ve got to stick to it!
What are your new year’s resolutions? What’s the likelihood you’ll follow through?

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