American Sailors, a Grooters Productions original production, has been picked up by WGN America and will air nationally on July 4th at 9:00 PM eastern. In addition to this prime time slot there will be an encore airing on July 26th at 1:00 PM eastern. The show focuses on four skippers who competed in the 100th running of the Chicago to Mackinac sail race, the longest and oldest freshwater sail race in the world. See more at www.AmericanSailors.tv
We’re proud to announce the launch of the new Holland Farmer’s Market website! The Farmer’s Market is one of many great attractions in Holland. Everyone loves the market for providing business for local farmers, tools for healthy living to our community, and an opportunity for quality family time outdoors.
We developed, designed, and programmed the site all in-house here at GP. The website informs the public of market events, what’s for sale this month and the months to come, and introduces the vendors, chefs, street performers and market staff.
We love jquery and have used it in many areas of the site. jScrollPane was used for the custom scrollbar. Fancybox displays all the beautiful market photography taken by our own Jeff Grooters, and a home-brew of scripts make links and photos come alive.
What we are most proud of is what the end-user can’t see - the CMS. Through this, the website is easily administered. Here’s the workflow: After logging in, the administrator can navigate to the specific page he or she wants to edit. By hovering over the text, a button appears that can be clicked to edit the content. Once clicked, the information to be edited loads right on top of the page. After editing and saving, the page will refresh and wallah! The changes are instantly seen! The concept is a lot like jeditable but tightly integrated with all the other tables and records that make up the website.
Check out the site and if you’re in the area, be sure to stop by the Holland Farmer’s Market. Tell ‘em we sent you.
Data Management, Stereoscopic Editing and the Farmer’s Wife
Last week, John and I attended the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) convention in Vegas. As much as we try to follow industry technology trends throughout the year, NAB is a great place to see new things up close and get your hands on the latest video and digital film gear. I was there for only two days packing in as many flyers, pens, trinkets, stickers and, oh yeah, knowledge I could into my swag bag. Here is some information on a few of my favorite technology “toys” and observations from the show.
The most major trend I observed at the show was stereoscopic editing and finishing in 3D. So what is stereoscopic editing? It is editing video for 3D presentation on the big and small screen. Creating a film in 3D was previously a very complicated process and now you can edit this footage easily with Avid and almost every other editing system out there. With the increased horsepower of today’s computers, this amazing technology is finally affordable for more than just the big studios. It seemed like every booth was showing 3D options with software and hardware systems. With movies like James Cameron’s 3D feature film “Avatar” opening soon, the popularity of 3D is expanding past the realm of concerts and cartoons and into feature narrative films.
Another trend I observed was the sudden death of video tape and the warm embrace of file based workflows. This is the essential practice of organizing and protecting your data files shot on all the modern video and digital film cameras out today from companies like Panasonic, Sony, and of course Red.
One of the most versatile systems that we saw was called Content Agent from Root 6 Technology.With one button you can create files for web distribution, DVD, and for editing at multiple resolutions. In the recent past, this required multiple pieces of software or hardware systems. Root 6 also allows for organizing and logging these various files all in one smart and concise interface. Very cool.
One final product that caught my attention was a facility management software package called Farmer’s Wife. Their booth has a giant picture of a 1930’s era country woman scooping lard out of a bucket. It definitely set the tone for this company’s fun and functional software. It features intuitive ways to manage scheduling for editors, producers and composers. And it links employee time-tracking and billing into a very comprehensive piece of software for managing the day to day operation of a facility like ours.
NAB 2009 was definitely an important conference for us. It was a fantastic opportunity to see new technology that will help us to continue making excellent media in the future.
I was at the Biola Media Conference on the 25th of April. It was held at CBS Studios in Studio City, California. Not only was it a great location for a conference, it was also a day that brought real players into workshops and general sessions, and left some time for networking and meeting people in the industry. I enjoyed speaking with Mark Zoradi, President of Walt Disney Pictures, Ralph Winter, Producer of X-Men (which opens this Friday), Ken Wales, Producer of Amazing Grace, and Phil Cooke, who has become a friend and who did a terrific job as the host of the event. For anyone interested in media and interested in following Jesus, I would highly recommend this conference. The final speaker was Joe Eszerhas, author of films that have grossed more than a BILLION dollars at the box office. Joe’s testimony is the kind of “Saul to Paul” story that points to the incredible power and compassion of God. The author of films such as Basic Instinct and Showgirls now says, “This cross I wear, it’s not just jewelry. It’s the symbol of the redemption and suffering of Christ. I will wear it and it will give me strength till the day I die.”
New from our sister company Angelhouse Media -
Perfect for Maunday Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Morning, Angelhouse releases the three part “Redemption” and the single “Passover Lamb.” Shot on location in the Galilee, Nazareth, and Jerusalem these films are the very best of the short film format.
“Great original work, high production value, with a haunting tone reminiscent of Gibson’s “Passion” film. Also commend the relative brevity of the FULL version, despite covering a lot of territory, as well as offering it in three parts…”
Jeff Huston
Steelehouse Productions
Watch these films and celebrate Easter by remembering - we have so much to be thankful for.
Also, look at Angelhouse Media’s other Easter selections “The Jesus Egg” and “Cure.”
We provide award winning production, sound design, music, & post production digital services for television, video, print, and web.
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