By Olivia Turnage



The Lucy Daniels Center is a community resource located in Cary where children from birth to age 12 can find help to meet specific needs. Therapies, in-home assistance, counseling for parents and families, and the Lucy Daniels School make up the largest area provider of children’s mental health care in the Triangle.

Each year, the Lucy Daniels Center hosts a fundraising event, Expressions, at the Umstead Hotel and Spa – which we have been fortunate to be involved with for the passed two years creating videos for the event. After getting to know the Burning Oak Studios experience, they couldn’t wait to do more videos

We collaborated for several months to develop the perfect message – a video that would reach out to parents who might be struggling for answers, as well as expressing to the community why the center is so important and how to get involved. 

After a full day of filming interviews and b-roll, our editor came up with a 45-minute first draft. Now obviously this wasn’t the final video, but you have to start somewhere! I would much rather be in a situation where you have too much good footage than not enough. In the end, it was cut down around 6 minutes and explains what a family can expect when coming to the Lucy Daniels Center.

My favorite part of any shoot is getting to interview people. In this case, it was the staff, board members, and families who told their stories. It isn’t always easy to get people to open up on camera, with all the crew and lights in your face, but I enjoy a challenge! And when you see it all come together, that long day of filming is definitely worth it. Plus, we have enough footage for a documentary if they wanted one… Wink, wink.

Check out the video below!

By Will Campbell

In video production having a client request a “DVD copy” of a final video or some footage is not that uncommon. And yet, whenever I follow up by asking if they want a Video or Data DVD, I always get the same response: “Uhhhhh…” which I often translate as “What’s the difference?” A DVD is a DVD, right? Not quite… So what IS the difference between a Video and a Data DVD? Really, it’s just how you/we/I burn the disk on the computer. But the real difference is how you plan on using the DVD in the future.

Video DVDs are exactly what you’d expect – a disk that plays a video file in your DVD player, just like you’d buy from the store. To accomplish this, we export the final video in a format that can be read by our DVD-creating software. We build DVD menus, sometimes add chapter markers so you can skip around the video, or maybe make a continuous loop to be played in a business lobby, or a store display demo – whatever fits the specific needs. But the important thing to know is that you need a DVD player or a computer with a DVD drive to watch it.

A Data DVD is essentially a disk-shaped hard drive that stores files, video or other, typically used on a computer.  Standard DVDs have a 4.2gb capacity, so you can burn that amount worth of data files onto the disk. And they are not just limited to video files. You could use a Data DVD to backup all your photos from your latest vacation, or make a copy to give to friends or family. Or maybe you just need an extra digital copy of a video, but it’s too large to send online – Just burn a Data DVD and you can copy that digital file from the disk to your computer. Think of a Data DVD as a 4gb thumb-drive. The only downside is that you can’t erase the information and re-use the disk later. Once it’s burned, the data lives on that disk for good.

So when a client asks for a DVD, the real question is “What do you want to do with this DVD?” Another thing to consider is making sure you have the equipment to use the DVD. Sounds like a silly thing to say, but we are seeing a shift in technology where smart-phones and tablets can do the same job as a laptop, and many new computers don’t even have disk drives. These are all important things to consider when asking for a DVD copy. Who knew it was such a loaded question?

By Michael Goldstein 

In the world of video marketing, the options are vast, the pricing confusing, and the results at times are hard to measure.  In addition to all this, there are more video production companies to work with then there are Christmas flavored lattes, and they are all promising you the same thing; “We make the best videos.”

Yet, despite the similarity in claim from one company to the next, you might find while shopping for a video production one thing seems to change considerably, cost.  Where does this magic number come from?  Is someone trying to rip you off?  Does this company make crap videos?

I cannot speak for all video production companies, but in an attempt to de-mystify cost of production, I thought it would be helpful to go over the basic things that can raise, or lower the cost of making videos.  In this series of blog posts I will break down individual things to consider regarding keeping your shoot in budget.

Length: 
Whenever a client asks me how long their video should be, my answer is always the same- As long as it needs to be, and not a second longer.  Unless you are working within a television commercial time constraint, web videos really have no limit. So, why not talk it up?  You have a great product or service, so let’s do a song and dance for the next hour, throw it up on You Tube, and let the people see your business for the glory that it is!  Problem is, it is very unlikely people will stick around to watch the whole thing.  And if they can see the total running time of the video is long, it might turn them off to watching it at all!

Brevity is key, especially with promotional videos.  Keeping your video production short and sweet can not only save you money, but it will increase the likelihood that a potential customer or client will watch the video all the way through and get your message across to them.  After all, if a video falls in the woods, and no one is around to see it, does it really make a difference?