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DMJ Digital
Media creates a recruitment video, in DV, for Salomon Smith Barney
by Beth Marchant
Av
Video Magazine
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DMJ Digital Media, a full-service editing and post-production facility in New York City, is experiencing a corporate renaissance of sorts. Surprisingly, says owner and producer David Jasse, many of the company’s new Fortune-500 clients have established in-house media departments. Jasse, a former editor for CNN, MTV, CBS and Fox, says many of his new clients are turning to outside contractors because they are finally recognizing the need to bring network-television production values to internal video projects. That was especially true for DMJ client Salomon Smith Barney, which needed a video to showcase the firm to media-savvy college and graduate students during a national recruitment tour. |
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The investment firm’s internal media department contains an in-house studio, control room and Avid editing suite, but those tools are taxed by a daily programming show that is broadcast to employees. Jasse, who served as producer and director for the 90-second spot, tapped into the media department’s extensive video-asset library. New footage was shot on location during company events. “I got some of the coolest shots during a lecture series by operating a remote auditorium camera locked into the ceiling,” says Jasse. “We also used a Sony DVCAM for pick-up shots from funky angles.” |
Though Jasse still shoots in the Sony Betacam SP format for much of the DMJ’s network and agency work, he has been shooting in DV for an increasing number of projects. “DV is not only cheaper,” he says, “but it is more effective than Beta in a lot of ways. I did a traveling video for New York City recently and booked a Beta crew for three days. But I couldn’t cover everything—Beta wasn’t portable or practical in that case. I’ve found that if you shoot with DV in good light at the right time, you can’t tell the difference between it and Beta.”
Jasse
typically edits video projects in one of DMJ Digital’s two Avid
editing suites using Avid Media Composer and Adobe After Effects and
Photoshop. For the Salomon Smith Barney project, however, he relied
on the talents of Mikael Zerbib, a contract producer and developer of
After Effects plug-ins, to turn the assortment of provided assets and
new DV footage into a slick final product.
Zerbib configured a dual-850 MHz Canopus DV RexRT, with an MPEG module, with his own color-correction plug-in and “film-look recipe,” he says. Using the system’s built-in real-time effects tools, Zerbib created and added several building signs that reflected recent Salomon Smith Barney acquisitions. “Before I used the Canopus system, my film-look plug-in used to take hours to render,” says Zerbib. “Once I can upgrade the Canopus to a 1 GHz or Pentium IV system, I will probably be able to use the plug-in in real time.”
Jasse says the final piece won over the folks at Salomon Smith Barney. “They were thrilled. They said their videos never looked so good.”
Recruitment officers from Salomon Smith Barney will use the video through March 2001 to launch presentations to prospective employees at 50 of the United States’ top colleges and graduate schools, including Harvard Business School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Copyright © 2000 Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
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