Recording a Piece of Life With the Media Team
When you pull out a camera and hit that red button that starts recording, your only purpose is to hold on to that moment so that you may return to it somehow. To show others that “this happened and here’s proof of it”. But when they are behind a camera, they capture a piece of the world forever.
They are our media team: Bogdan, Mitch, Marco, Gaëlle, Daniel, Rodrigo, and Louis. And they are the people who record and produce video and audio content for Dephion, including Habtic content.
Team lead, Bogdan, was happy to explain to give us an eagle-eye view of what the team is usually up to. “The team is producing ample projects, from scratch to a finished product ready to be implemented in any medium. With in-house experts in cinematography, set lightning and color correction, 2d VFX/GFX and editing, audio recording, and music composition we are able to overcome any challenge that comes our way.”
Find someone who feels about you like Bogdan feels about cameras.
The creation of each new video also takes a little more work than hitting a red button and later letting Instagram sync that Reel for you. “It always depends on the project, but all steps fall under one of these three main categories: Pre-production, production, and post-production. And the complexity of each category is influenced by the time we have to produce it.”
Once the team is handed a script, the team rolls up their sleeves and pre-production begins.
“In pre-production, we start by making a shot list and then a storyboard that will clarify how many locations are needed, the number of actors, how we need to plan the day or days of shooting, and needed technical equipment.”
Once the plan is in place, the team rolls up their sleeves a little more and production starts.
“The shooting of the video is the production step. That day, or days, is focused on recording the right images by getting to the location with the needed equipment, and setting up the shooting area, that is, the set. We do this by moving stuff around or using props and setting the lighting and the equipment. Then, we record the required scenes. Afterward, we get the equipment back together and clean the place or return it in its original state.”
But, since they are not quite done, their sleeves aren’t ready to return to their original state. It’s time for post-production.
“Post-production is a different beast, starting with getting all the recorded footage in one place and followed by the editing process. It can include visual or graphical effects needed, like VFX / GFX, color correcting, music composition and sound effects, voice-over, encoding, and delivery in different formats. They are all part of it.”
We can all probably take a fairly educated guess about what they mean by color-correcting and adding sound effects, but what exactly are VFX and GFX? Time to pull out the geektionary.
VFX stands for visual effects. This refers to the images not present during shooting that are added, manipulated, or enhanced for the final product. GFX is about motion graphics like titles, typography, names, and such.
It was only last year that the media team was working on an interactive video for Habtic on the topic Emotions at work. “For this project, we were shooting in our green screen studio, this technique allows us to change the background and environment in post-production without needing to actually go to a certain location.”
The attention to detail needed to deliver just a single perfect shot in a scene composed of many moving images is nothing short of astonishing. Think only of how many of us noticed they never did unroll their sleeves.