in a minute: YMCA Commercial Shoot via Vimeo

If you shoot high quality video and want to showcase it on the web at a quality better than a highly compressed postage stamp (ala YouTube) there haven't been many easy options.

Recently, I stumbled upon Vimeo, which advertises its ability to host HD quality video for free (albeit, still compressed for the web) and streamline the upload process to something approaching the simplicity of YouTube. What also intrigued me (as a new blogger) was the ability to embed high quality videos right into my blog via Vimeo. So today's blog entry is a test of that feature. Let's see if it works...



in a minute: YMCA commercial shoot from Brad Kelly on Vimeo.


(I'm pretty pleased so far, although I've noticed that you have to click through to the Vimeo site and watch it there to get the best quality. Especially playing full-screen, the embedded version is showing serious compression artifacts, while the full-screen version at Vimeo is crystal clear. Still, it's a marked improvement over YouTube for embedding purposes. Particularly if you shoot HD, since Vimeo is natively 16:9.)



Lately, I've been bringing my still camera to my shoots and snapping a few photos during downtime (provided there is any).


For the behind-the-scenes timelapse, I simply put my Nikon on a tripod and had it shoot a picture every thirty seconds. Then I took those stills (about 700 of them) and animated them into a sequence and resized for HD (1280x720) in Final Cut Pro.

A few minutes to upload to Vimeo -- and there you have it: A production for the local YMCA featuring an Arri light set-up, a green-screen key-effect and a parade of wonderful North Shore talent all in about a minute!

Barry O'Brien, Master of Darkness -- and Light!

Barry is an experienced producer, copywriter, lighting director, editor and jack-of-all-video trades. He runs North Shore Communications Group. He was the guiding force behind this particular production and I'm pleased anytime I get to work with him.

This video was used as part of a campaign that has raised a significant amount of money for the local YMCA.








(photos and text ©bradkelly2008)