A recent on-location video production shoot. What made this different was the location. Just upstairs from the Avant Studio is a kitchen. The client needed footage of a promotional product that required a kitchen look and microwave. The footage is part of a commercial to be aired in multiple national TV markets as well as online. Bon appétit!
Tag: avant
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Life After Manson Documentary hits NY Times OP-DOCS Page
A resounding Congratulations to producer, Olivia Klaus Moro and her documentary “Life After Manson.” A nine-minute section from her documentary made it to the NY Times OP-DOCS last week. The documentary quickly became the top choices on Hulu and Vimeo. Clark Severson is credited with Cinematography and Avant Productions is given Special Thanks for their role in the production. This month is the 45th yr. Anniversary of the crimes. For more about the full length documentary go to www.LifeAfterManson.com or on Facebook at Life After Mansion. Watch the 9 minutes here.
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Bringing Still Images to Life
It’s always fun when a client brings us a challenge: “We have 50 product images, 2 logos, 3 taglines and we need to sell our new product we are launching. Can you make us a video?” Of course we can! We love these kind of projects, and our latest one for the Jorg Gray Watch Collection is going to be a blast. Bring in some great stock music, load all the images up into our video editing system, and let the magic happen.
So how do you communicate a message of time? For our job, it’s always about telling a story. Show, don’t tell, is what we always remind ourselves. Whether it be a 30-second commercial for a local business, or a high definition production in our green screen video studio in Orange County – we are always helping our clients tell a story.
At AVANT, we approach every project with the same goal: to make our client’s message unforgettable. And we achieve this with out of the box ideas ideas, unstoppable creativity and two decades of technical expertise. After all, this is what we love to do – Create. Connect. Define!
So, whether it’s a new promotional video for your upcoming product, a new design and development for your company’s website, a green screen shoot in our video production facility, or a DVD duplication job we’ve got you covered.
Let us help create your project.
Let us help you connect with your audience.
Let us define your story!
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Discovery Channel joins the AVANT Team
At AVANT, we’re not just about the latest corporate video or green screen studio shoot. We’re also take on the task of changing the world too. Yeah, no biggie!
So, now the entire nation with be impacted, not only with our video production services in Orange County, but also by the fruits of our labor of the last 10 years is this mission of making a difference. Our team were the ones behind the directing, producing, cinematography and editing of the award-winning documentary, Sin by Silence that will be airing on Investigation Discovery starting this October. We hope that you tune in and watch not only our experience and talents, but also the conviction of our hearts to help who are trapped behind prison walls.
Sin by Silence is a story of empowerment when all odds are stacked against you. A film that tells the story of women who are domestic violence’s worst-case scenarios: women who have killed their abusers. An incredible journey of women who overcame the odds to journey from victim to survivor.
78 million homes could be watching. Will you?
Make sure to tune into the broadcast and do something incredible for Domestic Violence Awareness Month! We spent many long days or many long years filming at the California Institution for Women, and we are thrilled that Discovery has joined us in airing our independent documentary to the masses. As Henry Schleiff, president of Investigation Discovery, stated, “We are proud to bring this powerful documentary to television, to share with audiences the harrowing stories of these women behind bars. Instead of fighting a system that does not fully comprehend the complexities of abuse, these courageous women chose to fight to change laws for battered women nationwide. Through the premiere of this documentary, we hope to extend their message and champion their crusade to stop the cycle of violence.”
So, make sure to tune in and check out ID’s page on the film and check your local listing for showtimes. It’s a story you will never forget…and you’ll be able to see the AVANT’s team on the end credits!
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Vanguard University Lighting Workshop
Lights. Camera. Students!
We recently had 20 Vanguard University students at our Orange County video studio to learn the basic of good lighting and beyond. These future filmmakers got a boot camp style seminar on how to create fast, simple and effective lighting techniques without a big budget or crew. AVANT’s Executive Director, Clark Severson, was off and running with creating real-world situations through demonstrations and hands-on practices with setups of our production facility’s lighting grid, equipment and green screen. The result? These students are now confident in creating polished and dynamic lighting that set the mood and capture an audience.
What started with questions like, “where should I put the light?” or “how do I get rid of that shadow?” Well, with Clark’s expertise and over 20 years of lighting video projects all throughout Orange County, these students left the AVANT studio with a head full of great ideas for their next project.
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Voice Overs Done Right
At AVANT we pride ourselves on the quality of our work and the care and attention we give to every project. No where is this more evident than in our meticulous handling of voice over sessions.
Recently we recorded voice-overs as part of an ongoing project for a children’s educational DVD series. The producers wanted a variety of voices to be represented, male and female, old and young. How young you ask? Joining our regular voice-over talent pool was 9-year-old Olivia, performing her first-ever professional voice-over session.
Recording such a young actor is about the same as recording an adult. Careful microphone placement produces a naturalist sound and our fully isolated “room-within-a-room” voice over booth does the rest. That and some patient direction from the control room nearby.
Our facility was originally built in the mid 1970’s as a production facility for live television programs and we at AVANT have benefited from the amazing room design and construction techniques that were used back then. Our sound room literally “floats” inside the surrounding building, isolated from the surrounding outer walls, greatly reduced sounds that would be transmitted from outside.
Add to this the latest in digital recording technology and computer-based digital audio workstations and you’ll see why we take voice-over recording to the next level. At AVANT we’ll make you sound fantastic, whether you’re 9 or 99.
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Transforming Live Events
We love it when we can get out of our video studio in Orange County and load up our high-definition cameras and equipment for on-location video production. Yet, live events can be tricky. We have to stay focused on the task of transforming an empty room into something memorable. Whenever a client comes to us to bring a live event to life, we know that it needs to be a total experience. From setting the right mood with stage and lighting, to correct audio equipment and speaker positioning and making sure the visuals projected on the screens from our cameras can be seen by every attendee.
Well, practice makes perfect and this week’s event for CWS Capital Partners is a production they have been counting on us to deliver excellence for, for the past 10 years. While this live event of their annual investor’s meeting may only last for a few short hours, we make sure to capture every moment in high-definition to add another dynamic to the evening. Not only does this allow for us to project the image of each speaker onto two 20-foot screens for the entire room to easily see, the “recorded event” can be shared and relived for years to come no matter how technology advances.
At AVANT, we are always thinking ahead for our clients – how can your project be “future proofed”? How can your video expand and connect even further than you ever dreamed? Give us a call. We’d love to be a part of the team that brings your ideas to life!
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Images Come to Life
At AVANT, we love going beyond our green screen studio to shoot video productions on-location. Our recent high-definition video production for Ambassador Advertising, a five-minute promotional video set to music, was just such an opportunity.
The concept for this latest video centers on a young couple expecting their first child. While looking through a family photo album, they reminisce about the past and anticipate the future. We were able to take this project to the next level by developing the concept of photographs coming to life, giving the audience a glimpse into this young couple’s life.
The shoot itself went amazingly well. The real challenge was in the post production phase of video editing. Our effects team employed advanced motion tracking techniques combined with good-old-fashion hand rotoscoping to add post production images to the live video shots. All the hard work was worth it to see the still photos perfectly integrated with live video.
Yet, the most interesting part of the shoot was that our lead actress was actually pregnant and only a few short weeks away from her due date. With such a narrow time window we worked hard to finish shooting all of her vital scenes. With some quick and efficient prep work in setting up equipment and redressing the set, we were able to maximize our shooting time, and less than a month later we returned again to shoot her and her husband with their brand new baby boy.
The results were inspirational and the memories will last a lifetime!
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The Art of a Green Screen Shoot
We recently had True Entertainment in our green screen studio in Orange County to shoot a new video production. Typically their teams are working on their new shows like “Real Housewives of Atlanta,” but today they came to Avant for a new video to add to their long list of reality and documentary programming.Yet, with each green screen video shoot, we have to anticipate every step of the complications that could come up. We always have to discuss the green spill. Is it too dark, too bright, uneven, the right shade of green, or should we bring in the blue screen canvas? At Avant we take pride in our experience to give our clients the best lighting for each scene…especially in those trouble areas like the hair.
We have tested our lighting equipment, and dialed in our high-definition cameras, to make sure that every project that comes our of our video studio facility in Orange County is the best it can be. This ensures that each and every one of our clients walks away with a clean image to head to their post production phase. Yet, most of clients don’t finish their green screen project with just the shooting. They continue their project by stepping from the studio and into our editing facilities so that the start and finish of their project can all be completed under one roof. We apply our same talents from the studio into the video editing bay to make sure that every video comes out with the best key possible to pull the green for an incredible image for broadcast or the web.
Because after all, green screens are the wave of the future. Can’t live with them. Can’t live without them.
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Video Production On-Location
One of the perks of having our video production facility is getting to go beyond the studio and record video on-location all around Orange County. Such was the case with our most recent high-definition video production in beautiful Newport Beach overlooking Beacon Bay and Balboa Island. AVANT teamed up with Ambassador Advertising to shoot a five minute promotional video set to music.
A noteworthy piece of equipment that we used during the shoot was the jib. With smooth vertical and horizontal motion, we were able to pick up flawless shots perfect for creating the scene. We definitely achieved our “glory shots.”
All around, it was a successful day of shooting and a great way to kick off this music video for one of our first video productions of 2011. Take a look at the preview below…
