Re:Frame

Seems like everybody is a marketing/PR, social media and branding expert nowadays. So, many of you may be wondering what are the most important steps to take to get the type of clients you want and receive the type of recognition you deserve?

Wedding Public Relations expert Leila Khalil will break down the myths and truths behind PR and how it relates to the wedding industry with her talk at Re:Frame San Francisco on WeddingPR 101.

With tons of up and coming vendors rising to the top quickly through social media sites and blogs :: how do you stay relevant and bring your brand to the next level?

She will share her tips on the do’s and don’ts on getting press placement in the largest wedding publications, blogs,  and television shows in our industry.

• What will cause a magazine editor to feature you instead of your competition?
• How can I get on a show like Get Married to reach a larger audience?
• Am I blogging effectively?
  

You will have the opportunity in an open forum to ask her pressing questions regarding media and PR and how it relates to your marketing efforts!

In the  meantime be sure to follow her blog Inspired By This and on Twitter

See you in October!

Q: I think many people are curious what steps you took to rebrand you company, specifically did you hire a graphic designer?

My background is in graphic design and visual arts so I was able to make my logo without outside help. Generally speaking, I think it’s a big mistake to rely on ourselves for all areas of our business – especially areas at which we are not trained experts. It’s a little more difficult for videographers to admit they can’t do graphic design or branding because many of us have built successful businesses without being “formally trained” in cinematography. So we think to ourselves, “hey, if I can make movies without a degree in making movies, why can’t I make my own business cards too?”
I think this thought process is a mistake. For example, I outsource the DVD printing and duplicating aspect of my business to an expert because not only is it something I don’t enjoy doing and is time-consuming for me, I know that an outside expert can do it more efficiently, faster, and better than I could do it internally.

If you’re not a designer, don’t try to design. Would you trust a video amateur of hobbyist to do good video?

Q: What tips can you give those thinking of rebranding?

• A brand is more than a logo. It is an identity. Apple Inc has a company identity that goes beyond the iconic Apple-with-a-bite-taken-out-of-it. The company sells itself as a hip, modern, simple-yet-smart, company that makes products that are sleek and ubiquitous to modern life. (It also goes out of its way to create a discipleship of arrogant know-it-alls that irritate the hell out of everyone that isn’t one of them**.) Consider what message you want to convey when people see your logo or company name. Is it customer service? Is it, “cinematic experience”? Is it “Glidecams are awesome”? Or is it – as my friend, Bill Mitchell, once described his style – “meat and potatoes”? Whatever your message is, preach it.

{**This statement does not reflect the views of 3/4ths of The Collective, who believe that once you go Mac…. you don’t go back.}

• Again: Hire a professional. Unless you are a trained professional – when it comes to logo and web design – hire a professional. You might know, conceptually, how the internal combustion engine in your car works, but don’t pretend to be a mechanic. If you pretend to be a mechanic when you haven’t been trained to be one, your car will suck. The same is true for your logo design and brand. Hot Tip: Don’t have the budget? Try bartering or working in trade!

• Be scalable. While one can argue the benefits of being called “Mister Man Videography” (because there’s no confusion about what you do as a company) I think it’s better to be called “Mercedes Benz” than “Mercedes Benz Luxury Cars”. Your brand shouldn’t need a label. McDonald’s is “McDonald’s” without “hamburgers” or “fast-food” attached to the name. Additionally, when you don’t lock yourself down to a specific market (by denoting “videography” or “photography”) in your company name, it allows you to grow laterally without too much redefinition.

Andrew’s Cliff Claven Moment: Did you know Mitsubishi makes cars, rice cookers and fighter jets? Imagine trying to convince a sultan to buy a fleet of your fighter jets when your company is called “Mitsubishi Rice Cookers”.

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Comic Genius.  Caped Karaoke Crusader.  Canon 5D Connoisseur.

Say Hello! to RF Alumni Andrew Hsu of Studio MSV. But don’t take my word for it, check out this 30 second video he created for RF Austin introducing his studio to the crowd.

{Caution: Adult Language Courtesy of Joe Simon}

Now let’s get real : With brides tightening their purse strings this year, many of us are really taking a hard look at our brand presence and finding creative ways to bring in more profits. Having personally watched Andrew’s brand image grow from average to extraordinary {Morning Star Videography = Studio MSV} I thought I’d ask this former video game artist how he was able to evolve and become one of the top studios in the San Francisco Bay Area… the answers may surprise you!

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I only subscribe to two magazines – GQ and Wired.  One teaches me how to look good, and the other gives me food for thought while looking good.

In this month’s (July)  issue, Wired ran an interesting article on Facebook.  And how it’s becoming a serious threat to Google in how people use the web.  For a company so young, it managed to re-direct the spotlight to a social networking site from a search engine.

Oh it will take a while before they eat on Google’s billions in net profit (Zuckerberg hasn’t even found a way to monetize FB),  but Facebook now can help drive traffic to your site, the bottomline being,  the more people know you and see your work, the more chances of getting booked.

Some notes:

1.  Upload videos directly on Facebook if you’ve secured the rights to the music.  (Fat chance).  So upload only videos with a very small chance of getting sniffed by the copyright bots (instrumentals, obscure indie bands).  The value of uploading videos directly to FB is that you have the ability to tag other people.  Maximizing viewership.

2.  But then you used The Fray’s latest song or Celine Dion(?!) and afraid your account will get suspended by the powers that be.  Don’t upload it then.  Just make a NOTE.   Why a note and not a link? Because you can’t tag friends in  links!  Only notes!

3.   Just imagine if you tag 5 people in the Note (or Video), and they average around 100 friends each,  your video’s viewership exponentially increases!  Of course you don’t know everybody who attended the wedding, so make sure at least you remember your bride and groom.  Tag them and kindly request your bride to tag people in the video.  She’d be more than happy cause everybody who’s in Facebook loves being tagged.

4.  Make as many friends as you can.  Add even ones you don’t know (who invite you).  These are all potential visitors to your site.  If you’re the one inviting, I suggest having at least one mutual friend first so you don’t send out that stalker vibe.  You can always click ignore in the news feed if you don’t want to know what they ate for lunch.

(Six out out my 2,538 friends are hot.  The rest are videographers)

5.  Make sure you ride the excitement of the wedding day.  When the most number of people greet and write wall posts.  Take advantage of the “wedding high”.    Don’t wait to post until it’s waning.  People who do SDEs and NDEs are at an advantage here.

6..  Use Analytics to track down the bump in your site visits and give yourself a pat in the back.  You can Facebook some more or you can start editing videos.  (Below are stats for my site from May 28-June 27).

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Oh,  Bruno makes the cover of GQ this month.

Well here it is… our little experiment shooting with 2 5D’s at a wedding.  First let me say that we did not charge this couple full price.  It was a last minute booking and Alex & I were already scheduled to shoot a wedding up in Santa Barbara.  I told them the only way I’d agree to it was to be able to shoot it experimentally.  They were cool with that.  Jeff (one of Elysium’s main shooters) was the primary cam using one of our 5D’s with the new firmware. It was probably the 2nd time he’d ever shot anything with it. (He also edited this piece). I rented another 5D for the 2nd shooter since I was bringing our other one with me to S.B.  Well it turned out that the rented cam did not have the firmware update (I assumed it had) so those shots are not as killer as the other cam’s.  As a challenge, I did not give them ANY backup video gear (I am so mean!) – I wanted them to use the cams for ALL video and audio.  Turns out that the audio was hard to deal with since all I had was beachtek adaptors and no way to attach the mic’s without wires everywhere, etc.  All of our lav’s have velcro on the backside which attaches to the batteries on our videocameras. I am about to update my cams with this firmware: Magic Lantern as well as add some velcro to the camera.  We’ll see if that helps.  I think that will add the last bit of what we need in order to do this FOR REAL (and charge accordingly) next time.  The other main challenge was having enough CF cards and battery power for an entire wedding.  As you probably know, the batteries for the 5D are extremely difficult to find (if anyone knows a super secret place to get these, please post it in comments!) so I bought a battery grip in order to use AA batteries for one of the cams.  Jeff said that it went through a set of batteries in 15 minutes!  Pretty crazy!  As for the CF cards, I’ve spent a fortune on many SanDisk Extreme IV 16gb cards as recommended by Bruce (There is rebate on them right now) although it was definitely cheaper than buying EX1 SxS cards!  I also bought a couple nifty CF card wallets and they had plenty for the night without having to offload during the wedding.  For lenses they mainly used the 24-70mm f/2.8, 16-35mm f/2.8, and 70-200mm f/2.8.  They shot on monopod or tripod the entire day so I was pleased to see that the footage wasn’t too shaky.  I’m excited to try stabilizer’s next but didn’t want to give them this job being the first one and all.

If you have any interest in seeing what it’s like to shoot with this camera, or try out different lenses/stablizers with it as well as other accessories, you will have an opportunity to do so in an INTIMATE atmosphere at Re:Frame San Francisco.   In fact, I bought the 16-35mm lens after trying it out at RF Austin and by seeing what the footage looks like. Having a chance to “try out” gear is one of the coolest parts about Re:Frame and in San Francisco it’s going to be even better with REAL organized shootouts with Philip Bloom’s incredible expertise as our fearless leader

I’m proud to present the first feature on RF Alumni – Kenneth Stillman.  An unlikely choice but he has  some great things to share …(then you realize it’s not so unlikely)

I started watching the show Lost on ABC not too long ago. It’s a show about the survivors of a plane crash who end up on this mysterious island in the south Pacific Ocean. They eagerly await their rescue but soon find out that the pilot tried to turn around and in doing so took them thousands of miles off course, so the search parties are looking on the wrong place.

When asked to write for the ReFrame blog I thought that this scenario is a perfect metaphor for what I see happening with wedding videographers and their websites.

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