Lately, Tahoe Production House has been helping clients with their Kickstarter videos for crowdfunding their ideas. It’s a neat concept and allows ideas that would normally have a hard time getting off the ground financially become a reality.
So what is crowdfunding exactly? It builds on the idea of crowdsourcing: “The act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a “crowd”), through an open call.” (Wikipedia). In short, crowdfunding pulls together people to fund a project, business, or cause, over the Internet.
Crowdfunding websites are growing in popularity and are allowing entrepreneurs with an idea to get funding from investors, producers, and causes with contributors. Also, social media is changing more than the way we market and communicate, it’s also changing the way we raise money. The way these websites work are fairly simple enough, generally people, businesses, or charities pitch an idea, set a fundraising goal and set a deadline for raising funds. Potential investors can review the pitches and decide if the idea is worth supporting. On many sites investors or funders, are rewarded if the project hits it funding goal.
So how can you be successful at “Crowdfunding”? To catch people’s attention and get potential funders or investors, you need to stand out, and engage your community and close the sale. The first step would be to choose the right crowdfunding site for your project. Each type of site caters to a specific audience. More creative endeavors like video production projects do well on sites like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo. Do you have a more traditional business model? Look to ProFounder. Non-Profits can raise money on sites like CauseVox or FirstGiving. Choosing the right site can make all the difference.
Also, know your target audience and plan ahead. Focusing on a passionate niche to target a specific narrow audience will set you up for success. A target audience might be focused in a geographic area; religious group or share a common background. Planning ahead can help out a lot. The bulk of funding tends to happen at the very beginning and end of a project. That’s why it helps to have things like e-mails or video responses planed out for the launch, middle, and end of a project.
One of the best things you can do is make a great first impression passionately and pitch your project. Get people as excited as you are about your project, but also be informative. Your project name, graphics, and description all are very important to stand out from the others. Once you have the money, have a plan to spend it. Tell people a detailed explanation of how exactly you’ll be using their money and keep all information transparent. People like to invest in a solid plan.
Lastly utilize your social networks. Crowdfunding is different, and people may not be familiar with it, so use what you are already doing to promote your campaign. Also, create some compelling rewards to get people excited about investing or funding your project. People love to be acknowledged. Anywhere you can do this is a great reward.
GOOD LUCK!
Lately, Tahoe Production House has been helping clients with their Kickstarter videos for crowdfunding their ideas. It’s a neat concept and allows ideas that would normally have a hard time getting off the ground financially become a reality. So what is crowdfunding exactly? It builds on the idea of crowdsourcing: “The act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a “crowd”), through an open call.” (Wikipedia). In short, crowdfunding pulls...
read moreRAW is a photography file format that captures all the image data recorded by your camera’s sensor when you take a photo. The image is not compressed like when shooting JPEG. Every singe pixel in the image is exactly the way the sensor recorded it. Try zooming a JPEG. You’ll notice it has “patches” of the same color making up the image. That’s compression. It’s not pretty. With RAW you’re able to produce higher quality images, and correct problems in your images that would be impossible if shot in JPEG.
One of the biggest benefits to shooting in RAW is that you get the highest quality files with the most information possible. You can make the decision on how the image should look, and produce better results. RAW gives you flexibility. You can also record greater levels of brightness. JPEG records 256 levels of brightness, and RAW records between 4,096 – 16,384 levels usually describes as bits. JPEG captures in 8bit, and RAW is either 12bit or 14bit. The additional control over your brightness levels lets you make more adjustments to your exposure, blacks, fill light, contrast, and brightness with out reduction to quality. You also get better detail and you can edit sharpening and noise algorithms in software.
Sometimes you end up with over or under exposed images. With RAW files, you have additional information in the file, so it’s much easier to correct these mistakes. It’s also easier to adjust your white balance. When shooting in JPEG white balance is automatically applied, where with RAW the white balance is still recorded, but because you have more data you can make changes to the image easier.
When editing your photos and making adjustments to your RAW file, you’re not actually doing anything to the original file. What you are doing is telling the RAW file how to save in another file format like JPEG. What makes this great is you never have to worry about ruining an image; you can always start fresh with your RAW file. Also when exporting your images there is a different color space that work best for different situations like if your image is going to be printed or used on the web. When you shoot in RAW format, you can export a single image in multiple color spaces.
When you are shooting professional photography, you should be providing your clients with the highest quality possible. Most issues that can come up while on a photoshoot can be manipulated in post if its shot in RAW format.
RAW is a photography file format that captures all the image data recorded by your camera’s sensor when you take a photo. The image is not compressed like when shooting JPEG. Every singe pixel in the image is exactly the way the sensor recorded it. Try zooming a JPEG. You’ll notice it has “patches” of the same color making up the image. That’s compression. It’s not pretty. With RAW you’re able to produce higher quality images, and correct problems in your images that would be impossible if shot in JPEG. One of...
read moreThis week’s audio blog from the audio team at Tahoe Production House is about having a good engineer to do your project. I have seen, experienced, witnessed, and worked with many engineers in my career since the 70′s. Not mention as many the artists. Some were really good, and some not so good, and some that really need a lot of help. No one engineer or artists knows it all. Most artists however, know just what they are looking for or want and how to get there. Others have no clue and leave entirely up to the engineer. The later is mostly for this blog.
A “good”audio engineer should understand what the artist wants in the final product be it recording or live. Then the audio engineer should know or have a good idea of how to get to that final goal. This is where his tool bag comes in: from audio training, knowledge of equipment, experiences, “Brian Files” as I spoke about in the blog #4, hands on experience with operating the gear, and even learning from past mistakes. You can’t be a pro audio engineer and not have made some mistakes. Having a good engineer or producer, and or both, along with what the artist wants to hear, is key to success.
You can have the best gear in the world and without a good engineer, you’ll likely not be successful. You may get lucky here and there, as it has happened, but there is nothing like an engineer with knowledge of technique. From the discussion about the final product before even starting any recording or live show set-up. And there is a technique to having a discussion before anything happens. Knowing what to ask and how to ask it is key to get the info you need. This is generally the starting point for a successful project.
Now with the above said, I have done recording sessions on the fly many times. In other words, there was not too much discussion at all. Instead, it was “let’s just start and see how it goes”. In these cases, the artist did not have the whole project in mind nor did the producer. However, they were pros and could play and sing very, very well; they had gone through the recoding or live show process many times. Also from the starting point I spoke of earlier, I knew what my gear could do and what it could not do. I knew my limits from an engineer’s point-of-view and what would probably work well in this situation or that. This all came from the above-mentioned preparations.
Be as prepared as you can and whenever possible, use a “good” audio engineer. It will be a big part of the key to a successful final product.
TPH Sound Team
This week’s audio blog from the audio team at Tahoe Production House is about having a good engineer to do your project. I have seen, experienced, witnessed, and worked with many engineers in my career since the 70′s. Not mention as many the artists. Some were really good, and some not so good, and some that really need a lot of help. No one engineer or artists knows it all. Most artists however, know just what they are looking for or want and how to get there. Others have no clue and leave entirely up to the engineer. The later is...
read moreTahoe Production House was asked by the music band “Ghost of the Robot” to do the production for their upcoming live broadcast Stageit.com show.
Have you heard of Stageit.com? It’s an online concert venue where performers can broadcast live and interactive experiences directly from a laptop, while offering unique fan experiences that are never archived. Performers can make money by performing, and can be in any location. The fans get to know their favorite performers, and get to request songs, tip, and make comments, as well as meet other like-minded fans. Because it’s virtual, you can watch the concert in your underwear.
Ghost of the Robot consists of band members James Marsters on lead guitar and vocals, Jordan Latham on lead drums, Kevin McPherson on lead bass, Sullivan Marsters on lead guitar, and Charlie De Mars on lead guitar and vocals. They all sing. The band formed in 2002 utilizing members from Soccer Hooligans and Power Animals.
Over 400 people viewed the live broadcast on their computers via Stageit.com while Ghost of the Robot performed live on a virtual stage at Tahoe Production House.
“The video portion of the show used three JVC GY750 cameras and a Tricaster TCXD300 Live Production Switcher. The Tricaster was able to generate virtual sets for the bands background, as the they were actually standing on an 18 foot cyclorama green screen. One virtual set was a Star Field with 3 different angles, for the three different cameras angles, and the second set was an all white background. The Tricaster was also used to for opening and intermission graphics, as well as playing back several video bumpers from its internal Digital Video Playback and Recorder. A stereo mix from the 24 channel Presonus audio board was input into the Tricaster as well. The entire mixed (audio / video) production was output to an AJA Ki Pro Digital Recorder in ProRes 422 (HQ) for editing in Final Cut Pro. The three cameras were also recording the band with the native green screen background for later compositing in After Effects.”
- Tim Whaley, Production Director Tahoe Production House
“This show was an exciting new adventure for us at Real Audio Workshop and Tahoe Production House. Not only was it a pleasure to work with Ghost Of The Robot, it was also a blast to do a live show over the Internet via Stageit.com We have never done anything like this before, but we are glad that we did it! This whole concept is exciting because it allows us to provide studio quality audio with the feel and audience participation of a live performance. It is the ultimate fan treat in my opinion. We will be looking forward to doing future shows like this in the near future and I hope many will come very soon.”
–Joshua Carlson, owner of Real Audio Workshop
This was an amazing experience for the band, for the fans, as well as Tahoe Production House. The band made thousands of dollars on this concert and it was well worth the production value!
Tahoe Production House was asked by the music band “Ghost of the Robot” to do the production for their upcoming live broadcast Stageit.com show. Have you heard of Stageit.com? It’s an online concert venue where performers can broadcast live and interactive experiences directly from a laptop, while offering unique fan experiences that are never archived. Performers can make money by performing, and can be in any location. The fans get to know their favorite performers, and get to request songs, tip, and make comments, as well as...
read moreOn March 7th, 2013 Facebook announced a “major” redesign to their News Feed. The red-designed News Feed is still in testing and will be rolled out over the next few months. Many people have been able to sign up for early usage. (To view the Facebook News Feed page, go: to https://www.facebook.com/about/newsfeed.)
In short, the three main components of the redesign are: 1)desktop to mobile device consistency 2) a greater emphasis on photography and video 3) providing users with multiple streams in their News Feed (similar to the Goggle+ layout) that enable them to organize and sort through the various types of “relationships” and “activities” they engage with on Facebook.
As of the announcement, the different types if News streams are “News Feed,” “All Friends,” “Close Friends” “Following/Pages” ” Photos” “Music” “Apps” and “Games”
The multiple news streams have brought up many concerns as it appears that users will have the ability to only focus on their “All Friends” stream….this is a stream that does not allow posts from a users business Pages. Instead, if a user would like to view the Pages they are followings posts, they have to manually switch to the “Following” feed. Additionally, it is not clear how Sponsored Stories and Promoted posts will be displayed across these multiple streams.
Due to upcoming release of the redesign the News Feed, I believe that right now is not the best time for small businesses to make any long-range strategic decisions or financial commitments related to Facebook social media marketing. From a marketing perspective, there are too many unknowns about how the redesigned News Feed will impact brand and business Page’s Facebook marketing tactics moving forward. Because the redesigned News Feed is still in a testing phase, even the social media “experts” are not fully equipped to provide meaningful guidance on how a business Page needs to rethink their marketing efforts to accomodate the changes to the News Feed.
The are a lot of questions that need to be answered. For example:
Will small business need to establish and dedicate a monthly marketing budget just for Facebook “advertising” costs. If so, how much should this budget be and how does one determine an ROI for this monthly investment?
What will the targeting and content strategy need to be to ensure that paid-for content by a business page is meaningful and relevant as to provide value to Page Followers?
Additionally, with the shift to placing greater emphasis on photos and videos rather than text only posts, what does this mean for business that don’t have deep photo or video assets? Whatkind of investment will a business have to make to get some sort of catalogue of higher quality images for use in Facebook marketing? In order to compensate for a lack of “great” product photography, a small business needs to be much more selective with the type of posts they make on Facebook to ensure that they include great photography. This will require a bigger time commitment of staff for weekly content post planning.
In summary, until the News Feed is rolled out to a broader audience, I do not recommend making any big decisions about Facebook marketing. Stay tuned.
On March 7th, 2013 Facebook announced a “major” redesign to their News Feed. The red-designed News Feed is still in testing and will be rolled out over the next few months. Many people have been able to sign up for early usage. (To view the Facebook News Feed page, go: to https://www.facebook.com/about/newsfeed.) In short, the three main components of the redesign are: 1)desktop to mobile device consistency 2) a greater emphasis on photography and video 3) providing users with multiple streams in their News Feed (similar to the...
read moreI would to talk about a very special “tool” for use in audio recording which is a signal processing program we have been using very recently. It is call “Melodyne”. The program comes from a Germany-based company called, Celemony. The inventor is Peter Neubacker. The program is nothing less of one of the most amazing tools I have ever used in recording to this date. This is by the way, an award-winning program. Once I began to use it, I understood why. It comes with the Persounus Studio One program as the “Essential” version of Melodyne. One of the first times we used it was to fix vocal parts where the intended note was missed, or was very difficult for the signer to reach.
The “Melodyne” program allows you to change the pitch of a vocal, or even an instrument or fix parts of the vocal that were off key. If your singer missed the entended note in a passage, no problem. Melodyne easily displays the vocal passage, then shows it on a chart where the problem or problems are. You can click on the note, thus hearing the note while also seeing what key the note is in and easily slide it to where you what it. The display even shows where the intended note was probably supposed to be. It is that intelligent. This can be done with guitar, bass, string instuments, horns…the list goes on.
This is only the scratches the surface of what Melodyne can do. Timing errors on all the above can be fixed as well. The program is easy to learn and use.
Josh and I have done lots of vocal repairing without the need for the vocalist to come back and record over and over again to get it right. It also will create harmonies. This combined with the skills of good hearing from our engineers, is outstanding. The corrections sound very natural. No side effects as I have witnessed with other programs. This is a producers, engineer, and musicians dream come true.
A great benefit of Melodyne is that it helps saves time in the studio, which translates to saving money. I will say however, it will not replace the way a person sings something in the first place, their tone, inflections, or emotions. Nothing replaces that. Remember it’s a “tool” not a replacement. But a great tool, like a great Mic, or pre-amp.
If you upgrade to the “Editor” version which allows great repair functionality, it is without a doubt a must for any studio in my opinion and we have it. Come by for demo. Call and set up an appointment.
Below are links to Celemony to give you an idea of how it sounds and works.
Follow this link:
http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=videos#top
Click on the Melodyne essential tab…. click “Note detection, melodic” (4:37) It’s a bit down the page.
Now the “Editor” upgrade:
http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=videos#top
Just look down the page a bit and click on “Fine-tunning vocals” (5:08).
I would to talk about a very special “tool” for use in audio recording which is a signal processing program we have been using very recently. It is call “Melodyne”. The program comes from a Germany-based company called, Celemony. The inventor is Peter Neubacker. The program is nothing less of one of the most amazing tools I have ever used in recording to this date. This is by the way, an award-winning program. Once I began to use it, I understood why. It comes with the Persounus Studio One program as the...
read moreTahoe Production House was lucky enough to be involved with THS Visuals and TLC Chanel to film “Amazing Bathrooms” this past week, and wanted to share some video interviewing skills with you. Sometimes this can be a difficult and tedious task depending on the comfort level of your subject, but here are some basic tips to help you get a great interview:
Keep your energy up through the interview and your subject will too! The more you put into your interview the more you will get out of it!
Tahoe Production House was lucky enough to be involved with THS Visuals and TLC Chanel to film “Amazing Bathrooms” this past week, and wanted to share some video interviewing skills with you. Sometimes this can be a difficult and tedious task depending on the comfort level of your subject, but here are some basic tips to help you get a great interview: The biggest piece of advice would be to prepare your questions before hand. Have a list of questions that you have thought about prior to meeting your subject that have to do with the...
read moreTahoe Production House is proud to announce our new website design for Lake Tahoe Chocolate Shop, South Lake Tahoe. www.LakeTahoeChocolateShop.com
Lake Tahoe Chocolate Shop is South Lake Tahoe’s only locally owned, family operated chocolatier. All of their hand-crafted chocolate and fudge is made on site at their South Lake Tahoe retail locations.
The Chocolate Shop offers a huge array of chocolate creations such as their signature favorites like Dark Chocolate Covered Bacon, S’mores, Tahoe Bark, Handmade English Toffee, Chocolate & Caramel Dipped Pretzels, Chocolate Gummy Worms and so much more. They also specialize in finely crafted Truffles, Fudge and Caramels.
In the past two and a half years, The Chocolate Shop has opened two new retail locations, one at inside the Montbleu Resort and another at Stateline near Dart Beverage.
The owner, Doug Rousse, felt the final step in his growing retail business was to make his chocolate available for online purchase and delivery anywhere in the United States by creating a brand-new website design for the business.
Tahoe Production House chose to build Lake Tahoe Chocolate Shop’s new website on WordPress to help keep costs affordable for the Chocolate Shop new website. The beauty of using a Content Management System website platform like WordPress is that there are endless third party developers and applications available for free or at very low costs to make a simple website very robust and user friendly. We integrated a popular third party e-commerce platform into the WordPress website framework to enable the Chocolate Shop to sell their merchandise online, easily update their inventory, track and fulfill their sales and more with no need for the Doug’s staff to understand backend html or css coding.
Additionally, by choosing a Content Management System for the new website design, Doug and his staff have the ability to make simple updates to website pages and mange and publish their own blogs without having to re-hire a “webmaster” every time they want to make simple changes… thus keeping the long-term costs of website management low.
Be sure to visit their new website at www.LakeTahoeChocolateShop.com !
Tahoe Production House is proud to announce our new website design for Lake Tahoe Chocolate Shop, South Lake Tahoe. www.LakeTahoeChocolateShop.com Lake Tahoe Chocolate Shop is South Lake Tahoe’s only locally owned, family operated chocolatier. All of their hand-crafted chocolate and fudge is made on site at their South Lake Tahoe retail locations. The Chocolate Shop offers a huge array of chocolate creations such as their signature favorites like Dark Chocolate Covered Bacon, S’mores, Tahoe Bark, Handmade English Toffee, Chocolate &...
read moreI’m going to cover the concept in audio recording of “knowing what you want to hear”. This is very critical in audio recording and yet is all too often left out when recording a song or project or doing a live show.
This takes preparation, experience and experimentation. So start now if you do not have a “Brain File” in your brain as to what you want a song or a note or an instrument to sound like. This applies to audio recording and live performances, from musician to engineer, to producer, to system tech, to guitar tech and so on.
Far to often, I have experienced when the above-mentioned personnel does NOT have a good idea, ahead of time, of what they want something to sound or should possibly sound like. For example: I have in my “Brian File,” I a sound for a rock kick drum. I can hear it right now as I am typing this. In fact I have many different sounds in my “Brian File” for just this one instrument and type of music and year it was roughly produced from Country, Jazz, Pop, Rap, Rock, and the other types of music and the years they have gone through. They have different sounds for just this one instrument. Remember, it’s a starting point. As an engineer, producer, and player, I am not claiming that I know the exact year that a rock kic drum was produced as it changes over time and from band to band. I have not heard or experienced them all, but I do have a clear “Brain File” as to where to start. You get the picture? This is what makes music so unique and keeps us all coming back for more. This applies to ALL instruments, vocals, and audio of any type.
Having a starting point of what you want to hear, in frequency, content, tone, and overall sound, will vary from instrument to instrument, to the players, the mic’s, sound systems, pre-amps, speakers, and the entire audio path from beginning to end. Even the cables. I will go so far to suggest that the AC power or even batteries used in foot pedal devices have been sworn by many a “top grade pro musician” that they hear the difference when they change these things. This comes from that specific “Brian File” they have. Their focus is that deep! I encourage of you, no matter what capacity you’re in, as far as the audio is concerned, no matter whether you’re a producer, player, engineer, drum tech, guitar tech, to have that file in your brain for a starting point. Then move on from there to your end goal.
Another aspect to hearing what you want, is to hear what you don’t want. This is equally important, yet difficult for lot of people. What does that mean? Here is one example: a “mechanical” sound produced by a kic drum pedal. There is a potential sound you don’t want to hear in every audio path and situation. Beware of this as well. Create this “Brian File” as well. It will come in handy!
This will save you time, but will also produce a better product. If you are working for someone or new to working with them, get to know how they play, their gear and what they like in what they’re attempting to do. Better yet, what they want you to do. This applies to producers big time. Try to hear their “Brian File” then put that into use with them and others. Over time, the more you do this, you will have acquired a great file base.
Have a great day,
Wayne
I’m going to cover the concept in audio recording of “knowing what you want to hear”. This is very critical in audio recording and yet is all too often left out when recording a song or project or doing a live show. This takes preparation, experience and experimentation. So start now if you do not have a “Brain File” in your brain as to what you want a song or a note or an instrument to sound like. This applies to audio recording and live performances, from musician to engineer, to producer, to system tech, to guitar...
read moreOn January 15, 2013 Facebook announced Graph Search, a majorly enhanced search tool that will enable users to perform highly complex searches within Facebook; unlocking the behaviors and interests of their peers to produce meaningful and layered search results.
Using semantic search technology, Graph Search is designed as a Natural Language Search Engine. In contrast, Google and Yahoo rely on a series of keywords strung together to produce search results:
“[Facebook] Graph Search and web search are very different. Web search is designed to take a set of keywords (for example: “hip hop”) and provide the best possible results that match those keywords. With Graph Search you combine phrases (for example: “my friends in New York who like Jay-Z”) to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that’s been shared on Facebook. We believe they have very different uses.” – Tom Stocky and Lars Rasmussen, Facebook.
Facebook stresses that this is a very early-beta testing phase for Graph Search. Currently four main categories areas for searches are being tested:
So a People search might look like this, “Friends that were born in Los Angeles;” an Interest search might look like this, “Friends that cycle and ski;” a Place search could be, ”Indian Restaurants my friends have checked-in to;” and a Photo search, “Photos of Lake Tahoe.”
Even though testing is in its infancy, many top media outlets that focus on social media marketing, have been playing with and forming initial reactions to Graph Search.
The Social Media Examiner put together a thorough step-by-step review of Graph Search in its infancy:
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-graph-search-review/
If you don’t have time to go through the Social Media Examiner’s review, here are the key takeaways they’ve formulated based on their first experience with Graph Search.
1. It’s a better interface into a lot of data that we’ve been able to access for a while. Facebook is making it easier and is using it to help users discover commonalities with friends and discover places to visit.
2. In several places, results show that Page likes are a proxy for “wisdom of the crowd,” and are given preferential treatment over those not as fortunate. This is important for marketers—Facebook considers likes to be valuable social validation and a driver for recommendations. Contrast that to Yelp, where a large number of positive reviews are considered to be premium social capital.
3. It’s clear that Facebook regards Pages with more fans to be more important than those without. Watch for this trend to continue and for Facebook to make social search more data-driven.
4. Page likes are “link-building” in the context of Facebook. Today you have to optimize your content for feedback to show up in the news feed, but that could very well extend to mobile devices and social search on Facebook and possibly beyond.
5. Brand-building is going to be tougher in a few years than it is today. It will only get harder over time, so there’s a case to be made for action to be taken now to build an active and engaged audience on Facebook while it is relatively inexpensive and easy.
6. Status update and comment content is largely untapped as a data resource in this version of Graph Search. It’s a huge opportunity that will certainly make Graph Search a richer experience for users.
7. For businesses seeking leads and customers, Facebook is taking its first steps to capture and calculate how its local listings and discoverability features result in sales. Attributing Facebook actions to more leads, sales and profit is an important theme for Facebook moving forward. Graph Search can and will ultimately help with that.
8. Finally, any person who changes privacy settings to Private is going to be largely undiscoverable in Graph Search. That may not be a big deal today, but could become one as Graph Search becomes a richer and more important part of the Facebook experience.
As more reviews and reactions continue to roll-out, we will put together a summary of key implications of Graph Search and the future of Facebook Marketing for brands and small businesses.
On January 15, 2013 Facebook announced Graph Search, a majorly enhanced search tool that will enable users to perform highly complex searches within Facebook; unlocking the behaviors and interests of their peers to produce meaningful and layered search results. Using semantic search technology, Graph Search is designed as a Natural Language Search Engine. In contrast, Google and Yahoo rely on a series of keywords strung together to produce search results: “[Facebook] Graph Search and web search are very different. Web search is designed to...
read more