Fleck Media

This is Owensboro

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:53:00 GMT

We recently had the opportunity to work with the Owensboro Economic Development Corporation to produce a promotional video for Owensboro. Personally this project means a lot to me. As a small business owner in Owensboro I can't think of a better place to be an entrepreneur.

With the downtown renovation in full swing, a great Chamber of Commerce and assets like the Center for Business and Research Owensboro has a lot to offer. Our goal for this project was to show Owensboro in a new light. We wanted culture, education and livability to be strong themes throughout, also to give the viewer a sense that there is a lot more to discover here.

Legends and Traditions DVD

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:59:00 GMT

We recently completed work on the Legends and Traditions DVD for WKU Men’s basketball. Few programs today have more to boast about than the people and special moments that shaped WKU Men’s Basketball.

Features include a tribute to Coach Diddle, an inside look at the history and future of the program, 2 new commercials and expanded interviews with some of your all-time favorite WKU legends. This DVD will be a must have for any die-hard WKU fan and will be available soon from WKU Sports.

Diddle Lives "Behind the Scenes"

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:02:00 GMT

Early on in this project we knew wanted to do something really unique to kickoff the upcoming mens basketball season. Who better to inspire WKU's faithful fans than Ed Diddle himself? Here is a behind the scenes look at how we brought the infamous coach back to life.

We started with the iconic picture of Diddle walking out of the stadium. This was the catalyst for the rest of the video. The idea was to transition the coach from the vintage picture into the modern-day arena. The camera follows him as he turns and looks around, the arena comes into view as he envisions the glory days of old. Next we see a vintage WKU team magically appear as they play in the modern arena. Plus we get some words of wisdom about the current team from the legendary coach before he disappears into the hall. It's a very simple concept, but with this project it was defiantly 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration to pull this effect off.

The first step was to match the camera position and focal length of the original photo. This turned out to be impossible because the original camera position was in the bleachers using a long lens. Obviously we could not lay dolly track in the bleachers. We were able to get pretty close by using a 45mm focal length closer in. At this point the mismatch became a "fix it in post" issue.

Since this project involves 3d motion tracking we added some simple gaff tape tracking markers to the walls and floor. This was critical because not only did we need to generate a CG camera from the data, we needed to know the actual location of these markers in Z space in order to build matching geometry in 3d.

Once the shoot was done we painted the real coach Diddle out of the picture and tweaked the image to match the 45mm focal length. The next step was to track the footage and export that data into Cinema 4d. Once the tracking data is in C4d, the basic workflow is to rebuild the structures that exist in the original picture. Then project the original picture on the geometry using a feature in C4d called "projection man" it's extremely intuitive and sure beats projecting on flat planes in After Effects.

At this point we have 3d footage that looks like the original picture and precisely matches the camera movement. The next step was to rotoscope in Randy Johnson our modern day Diddle.

In the middle of the video we thought it would be cool to see legendary players from the past play on the modern day court as if Diddle was imagining it. All of the vintage footage was motion tracked by hand, mostly frame by frame and the movement was applied to a 3d camera in After Effects.

We were honored to work on this project and we couldn't have done it without a really good team. Thanks to Austin Upchurch, Randy Johnson, and Greg Evans.

Sharing knowledge makes us all better at what we do. I'll be updating the blog with more behind the scenes features, so if you are interested stay tuned. If you want to know more technical information about this project such as what gear and software we used, feel free to drop me a line.

Dave@FleckMedia.com

WKU Basketball Breakfast: Fleck Creates Corporate Event & All Media

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:06:00 GMT

We had a great time in Bowling Green, Kentucky this past Friday, October 29th. We planned and implemented this corporate event at the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce monthly coffee hour. The purpose of the event was to kick-off the 2010-2011 season of the WKU Men's Basketball Program.

Thanks to the Bowling Green Daily News and Robyn Minor for their story on the event. The event went off with perfection before 350 attendees and there were lots of people involved to help make it happen. But, not before we had TWO COMPUTERS CRASH the day before and less than 20 HOURS from when the event was suppose to start! Thank goodness it all happen the DAY BEFORE and not the morning of the event. BLESSINGS. Members of both hotel and chamber staffs told us they got lots of positive feedback about the event.
Thanks to the WKU Athletics Department Staff (Ross Bjork, Todd Stewart, Lindsay Thomas, Paul Just and BJ Burton) for all of there hard work, it would not have been possible without them. Thanks also to the Holiday Inn University Plaza and Courey McCubbin at the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce. In the beginning stages of the event, Fleck developed all of the concepts for the event, organized all of the planning, designed the details for the day of the event, wrote the minute by minute, created all of the video concepts, shot, produced and edited all of the video components and wrote speeches for all of the speakers! WHEW!

The project had three primary video components and we were very pleased with final products. All three of the projects were designed to accomplish different goals in the overall program. Additionally, our goal was to design the videos to have a life of their own beyond the event. We always go through this thought process in all of the work we do with our clients to help them receive the best value for their investment. The videos we designed for the event were "Spread the Red", which is part of this post; "Big Red Tracker"; and "Diddle Lives". Because there are other premier times for the tracker series and the Diddle Lives video, we will be able to show those to you after November 15th.

SPREAD THE RED
On this video, we worked with Austin Upchurch as our Director and Director of Photography of the piece. The piece is certainly a "feel good" production which takes fans from some of the early beginnings of WKU Basketball to interaction with the current team and Coach Ken McDonald. Thanks to Coach McDonald, his staff and the team for their participation in helping to make the video a success also. If you were not a Hilltopper fan before, you will be after you watch the video. When you watch the video above, we want you to feel the tradition and the overall legacy of the WKU Men's Basketball Program.

BIG RED TRACKER
When Big Red came to events when he first came on the scene back in the early 80's, he always made an entrance. We felt like we needed to marry the latest technology (the Big Red Tracker, a satellite we created that is dispatched to find Big Red) with live action to bring Big Red to this event. It was great green screen work by our team and you really believe Big Red is at each of our exotic locations! And finally, when Big Red made it to the event we had the assistance of Bowling Green Harley Davidson and Robert Brown to help make the arrival at the event special. Check out these videos after the 15th of this month.

DIDDLE LIVES
Finally, this project was great fun too and it pushed us to near insanity! But, the end result was just exactly what we were all hoping for....Coach Diddle joined us though video for the event. We basically took a famous picture of Coach Diddle and "brought the picture to life". On this project, I served as producer and director. Dave, Austin and I all worked on how the concept worked and we all worked hard to bring the famous coach to life. And, again we called on the multi-talented Randy Wayne Johnson to serve as Coach Diddle himself. He also provided his voice talent for Coach Diddle in the piece too. Greg Evans was there to help make sure everything was tied together just right. Great guy, TONS of talent.

Dave will be posting a behind the scenes post after the video premiers on November 15th on our site so be sure and check back to learn more about how we made Coach Diddle come to life.

Finally, I would just say how much we enjoyed working on the event and all of the elements of the event which made the project special. Wes Strader was THE MAN in hosting/MC the event. While I had known Wes for years we developed a closer relationship as we pulled this project together. Thanks to Ty Rogers, Jim McDaniels, Johnny Oldham, Jim Martens and others who helped to make the video projects and the corporate event a success. And again, be looking for the behind the scenes post on the Diddle Lives video later this month.

Pulaski County Schools Safety Video

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:15:00 GMT

We just finished up a very interesting project for a school system in Southcentral Kentucky. Our challenge: Develop a relatively short video concept that would serve two different age groups; k-5^th grade and 6^th grade thru 12^th grade. The school had always had individual teachers develop their own individual presentation on this topic.

So, while the information was “generally” the same, the presentations probably were not consistent. With myself working as producer for the project, Randy Wayne Johnson serving as creative writer and Austin Upchurch serving the roles of director of photography, shooter and editor, we took on the task. The goal was to basically communicate that there are choices we all have to make in life and the choices you make in your youth can have impact on the rest of your life.

The video was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II using the steadi-cam. The kids were interviewed prior to the shooting days to get a sense of their abilities. For the most part, due to schedule restraints and school almost coming to a close, the kids had to basically learn their lines on the spot. No promoter, no note cards, just suck it up and spit it out. We thought they all did a great job.

The school system is very excited about the project and developed a set of handout materials for the young people and presentation materials for the teachers. These are some screen shots of some of the kids who were featured in the video. Thanks to Austin, Randy and the Pulaski County School System for their involvement in this project.

Kickin' Off The Season

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:09:00 GMT

I got a call from one of our clients back a few months ago to work on a project which I knew would be a blast! Houchens Industries, one of the largest ESOP companies in the country asked us to help them kick-off the WKU Men's Basketball season at the Bowling Green-Warren County Chamber of Commerce Coffee Hour on Friday, October 29th of this year.

Of course, we said YES and what a fun project this has been! I really can't tell you any details at this point but I can tell you the project gave us the chance to work with WKU legends like John Oldham and Jim McDaniels. We also got to interview recent memory maker Ty Rogers from the 2008 team too. Without giving away the details of the project, here are a few pictures from the interviews. I had the chance to get to know Jim McDaniels when I served with him on the WKU National Alumni Board and we became great friends. I have known John Oldham it seems like all of my adult life and always knew of him. It was great to get to sit down and visit with the guys to hear about their past and present passion for WKU.

Another added bonus was the opportunity to work with the WKU Athletics Staff on coordinating all of the activities associated with the project. The new AD, Ross Bjork is on a mission and he certainly is working to refine the vision he has for athletics at WKU.

Thanks to the team that worked on this project overall, my partner and our creative director Dave Docimo (check out the demo reel on our site), I served as producer on the project, Randy Wayne Johnson was our writer, Greg Evans did everything and Austin Upchurch was our triple threat director of photography, shooter and editor. Great team, great work. Another very exciting project and we look forward to updating everyone on the project once it is complete.

First Blog Entry

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:17:00 GMT

Hey, welcome to our first blog entry! We have now been a company for about 15 months and it has been crazy! We have had a chance to work for a diverse group of companies and we have enjoyed every minute of it. We have learned a lot about ourselves and have grown both professionally and personally. We continue to challenge ourselves with every job we take on and bring a fresh set of eyes to every project. We always think about what we need to accomplish for our clients, but also what we want to learn and accomplish from doing the project too.

In our blog, we will tell you about projects we are working on, things we are learning as we go about branding, identity and marketing. We will also share ideas about what you can do to be more effective in promoting your business too. Plus, we’ll be sharing information about new technology resources and gear we use to get our job done. As we grow and help companies succeed, we will share those stories too. Thanks for visiting our website and we hope you subscribe to our blog.