So what are we to do? What are our clients to do? Advertising is as important as ever. Budgets are shrinking and in some cases the competition is shrinking too.

Here are some options:

• Look to what has worked in the past.
• See a commercial you like and do something similar.
• Get a message and stick to it. Then beat it into the ground.
• Get nostalgic, air commercial campaigns from long ago and freshen them up for your client with the addition of their website URL. And Voila!
• Or, my favorite: sit down with your client and ask them questions.

I like to ask a bunch of questions. I may not know a lot about what my client does and they may not know a lot about what I do, but we have that in common. Talking, asking and answering questions creates a-kind-of-magic.

I know going into a meeting with a client that they want easy to digest videos that pack a punch. So, I need to know what they want to say. I will take that info and grind it up… and the first thing I do is try as hard as I can to make fun of the product or service! Privately, I come up with a few horrible ideas (free of Charge!). I wish I could give examples… but that is a trade secret I will not divulge.

Why do this? It's fun, for one. For two, I need to take "the box" that my client created for me by answering my questions, and turn it inside out. It's the way I approach it… right, wrong or indifferent… it makes me happy and I get interesting commercials from the process. It’s a thought exercise. Does this mean I work only with the oils and brushes of comedy, satire, or self-debasing humor on behalf of my client? I wish I could do more of that, but I digress.

There really is no value to thinking out-side-the-box unless it leads your intended audience into-the-box. A creative commercial concept has to have teeth, the fang to inject the message. Wait, that is a bit negative. The needle to inject the life giving medicine of your client's life enriching message. A B12 shot for sales and happy consumers. A good commercial distracts the viewer into a state where they don’t realize that they are being sold something, or at least they don’t mind as much. The smiley face sticker we slap on the injection site… yeah that’s a good commercial.

There is no handbook on creativity and there is no rule book either. Listening to people who are self described as "not-creative" can unleash a wealth of un-tapped creativity, in them and in the mind of us "creative-types."

Below are some basic tips that may already be familiar to seasoned web developers/designers, but are what we consider best practices for designing and building a website.

1. Separate the design from the content.

Back in the pre-CSS days, website layout was accomplished with clever table manipulation. While CSS can cause some frustration due to the inability of certain browsers to properly implement the full specification, it can also be a great tool for controlling layouts and keeping the design of the site separated from the content.

Why does this separation really matter? If the website will never change, it doesn’t. But let’s get real – in that case, the site might as well be in print if it will never be updated. Separating the design and the content makes it possible not only for the original designer/developer to easily make design changes on a site-wide basis, but also allows content creators, developers and designers to easily work together on the same project.

2. Test the site on all of the popular browsers, operating systems and platforms.

Test early and test often. Also, don’t limit the testing only to different browsers on one operating system. See how the website looks at different resolutions, under Linux, Mac OS and Windows on each browser and on various mobile platforms. This is often the most frustrating part of building a website.

Another point of frustration is that there are still a lot of people using old versions of Internet Explorer. Give these tools a try to test the website on all the versions still in use:

• IE 3.0 – 6.0
• IE 7

As a side note, IE 6 and below do not have support for transparent PNGs. If transparency in images that have more than 256 colors (GIFs) is needed (or alpha transparency is required), the best transparent PNG hack we have found is Supersleight.

If every option has been exhausted and the website just won’t work correctly across all browsers, there is always the route that Google took: build a plugin for Internet Explorer to run the Chrome browser in a frame – that’s one way to make a website work in IE.

3. Validate the code. But, don’t rely only on that.

http://validator.w3.org/ can be used to check for any invalid code that may be in the website. Usually this reveals errors like tags that have not been closed or an alt description that has been left off an image. It is good to have W3C valid code – search engines like it and the green “valid” checkmark gives that warm feeling that the site has been coded correctly. However, do not rely on W3C validation alone. Make sure to test the site in all of the major web browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera).

4. Learn the common browser bugs (and fixes).

All web browsers have bugs where the W3C specification for the version of HTML/CSS that is being used was not implemented perfectly. Most of the time these bugs reveal themselves in the positioning of content. Learn the fixes for these bugs so they can be avoided in the future. A good reference site for browser specific bugs can be found here: http://www.positioniseverything.net.

5. Use JavaScript rather than Flash where possible.

Flash is a proprietary technology from Adobe Systems. It is a very powerful platform for building interactive mini-sites, games, video players and more. However, flash is often used for graphic enhancements to a website like menu animations or basic website design.

There are two problems with this. One is that everyone viewing the site must have the Flash plugin installed. While most people browsing the web from a desktop PC will have this plugin, many phones (including the iPhone) do not even have a Flash plugin available at all. Most browsers, on the other hand, include a JavaScript interpreter by default.

The second problem with using flash is search engine indexing. While Google now indexes most of the text from flash sites, other major search engines (Bing and Yahoo!) do not.

Because JavaScript is implemented differently in each browser, it can be even more frustrating to develop in JavaScript than in HTML and CSS. Fortunately there is a solution to this. Learn how to use a JavaScript library like JQuery or Dojo. These libraries offer great cross-browser compatibility and plenty of functions for rapid JavaScript development.

6. Use a content management system.

Now, this may not seem like it is a necessity for a smaller site, but often those smaller sites grow much larger over time. Features like blogs, contact forms and other dynamic content are added and the website design requirements change over time. If a website is built in a CMS like Wordpress or Drupal, it is much easier to manage as it changes and morphs over time.

7. Design the site before building. Not the other way around.

I used to design websites as I built them in code. This works to an extent, but most of the time it ends up limiting the final design. Some useful tools for site design are:

• Adobe Fireworks
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Illustrator
• Inkscape
• GIMP

8. Make use of the knowledge of others.

There are plenty of great websites relating to website design and development. Use the knowledge that others have already discovered. Here are a few sites to get started.

• Smashing Magazine
• Nettuts+
• A List Apart

What do you consider to be best practices when designing a website?

We just upgraded a few of our Avid Media Composers to the latest software version 4.0.2. Here are a couple of the gems we’ve discovered in the very short amount of time since installing:

1. Mixing frame rates on the timeline is definitely a huge plus. Besides being able to mix and playback multiple frame rates without rendering, we’ve discovered the SD output to tape looks much sharper than in previous versions. There is no need to render the reformat or export to a 3rd party program like After Effects. We can edit an entire show or commercial in HD (or mixed HD/SD) at any frame rate then simply perform a standard digital cut to one of our SD tape machines. That’s a huge time savings!
2. The transition preservation feature is one of those nuances editors have desired for years. It does exactly as the name states: segments can be dragged without losing the transition, and sequences containing transitions can now be edited into another sequence without getting an error. Although fundamental from an editing standpoint, it may take a bit of time to get used to editing with transition preservation. Old habits die hard.
3. A couple other items of note: the 16 track audio mixer and some updates to Boris Continuum Complete are both welcome additions in this upgrade. You can also view stereoscopic material side-by-side for a more natural line of sight.

Media Composer 4.0 adds and improves upon many of the features in the editor’s arsenal, allowing for smoother, faster workflow and increased creativity. Editors appreciate that and so do their clients!

While we’ve only had a short amount of time to explore 4.0, a few features are noteable. What have you discovered about Avid Media Composer 4.0? What are some of your favorite features?

The Avid DS has incredible capabilities- vector graphics, compositing tools, 3D objects, etc. Yes, everything coming out of a DS looks fantastic. But there is one not-so-fancy feature of the Avid DS that makes it a great editor- a feature that other NLEs need to adopt.

That feature is “timecode boxes” and it is located underneath the timeline. Timecode boxes display timecode data of either selected objects on the timeline or your in and out marks. For a selected clip you can also choose to display source timecodes or timeline timecodes. The important information you need to edit is always right there, quick and easy to find- durations, start and end times, and mark in and out points.

Unfortunately, with many NLEs it’s not always that easy. For example, there are many times as an editor that you just want to know how long a clip is. Just tell me how long it is. Don’t make me zoom in on the timeline, pull down a menu, set ins and outs, whatever. It shouldn’t take long to find this out, but with some NLEs it can require some digging. The Avid DS timecode boxes have this information right there with one click no matter what scale the timeline is at.

But the real beauty with timecode boxes is that you can edit with them by typing in new values, either absolute values (a whole new timecode entry) or relative values (add five frames, for example). Combining this with the DS’s ripple command gives you tremendous editing speed, accuracy, and power. This is much better than the manual clip-moving and handle-dragging methods that most NLEs rely on. If you need a clip to be seven frames shorter, instead of zooming in on the timeline as much as you need and then dragging the handle back seven frames, you can just select the clip and type “minus seven” in the duration timecode box. You can also copy and paste values- if you need a clip to be the same duration of another clip just copy and paste the duration timecode box!

Timecode boxes make reformatting a television show a breeze- just turn on the ripple feature, click on the first clip of a segment and enter your new timecode in the start time timecode box. Your whole segment shifts to this new timecode. Or you can type in a new duration for your commercial break segment and the rest of the show will shift.

These are just a few examples. If you have any great uses for timecode boxes, please reply! Now when I edit with another NLE and feel DS withdrawal, the pain I feel is not from missing the Avid DS’s whiz-bang special effects- it’s the timecode boxes.

– Rob Dixon (Avid DS Editor)

Just when I was starting to wonder if Final Cut Pro was beginning to catch up with Avid, I read this quote on Avid’s Facebook page:

“I don’t know anyone doing $200 million dollar movies who is not cutting on a Media Composer system. At this level, where there’s so much at stake, everyone uses it.” – Roger Barton, Editor, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

I personally don’t know anyone working on $200 million dollar movies, period; let alone ones using FCP on $200 million dollar movies. But I do know a screening room full of editors using Avid products on a daily, professional basis.

I cut on an Avid Media Composer in part because that’s what I started on back in 1997. So I may be an old-school creature of Avid habit, but I am acutely aware of many modern differences between these two battle bots that, for me and the clients I work with daily, continue to push Avid to the forefront of the editing world. Let’s briefly explore just a few…

For starters, FCP is Mac only. While that is certainly not a flaw of the editing software, it is a sizeable shortcoming nonetheless (unless you only ever intend to work on a Mac, or interface with other Mac based projects). Most clients frown on the inability to resurrect or even port projects as needed.

While we’re on the topic of projects, let’s chat a bit about media management. Any post house large enough to regularly need more than one edit system could benefit from some type of shared project/media storage device. FCP doesn’t offer a full-on solution to this need, there is an Xsan setup. While this does allow some sharing between edit systems, it requires much more organizational effort due to the fact that FCP is timeline based and not project based. This requires producers and editors to be tirelessly diligent in their organizational skills.

Guardian Studios has a 16TB Avid Unity safely holding all our projects and HD media. The beauty is this: multiple users can access the same project and the same media from different edit systems at the same time. Period. This means the client can walk in with an external HDD (or even a P2 card) and we can instantly pull the media files into the project and begin working. Or, we can resurrect an old project on one edit system while beginning a new project on another; all the while using the same media. From rough cuts in the Media Composer to Avid DS finishing, Avid’s tapeless workflow offers fast and seamless integration into any workflow.

One major time consuming task is the render. While every edit system needs to do some rendering at some point along the way, FCP needs to render when the sequence settings do not match the material. While you can mix formats on the timeline these days, it does not mean that the playback will be in real time. The only way around this is to convert all the material to a common native format. Most clients simply don’t want to sit through a long render or file conversion as they watch their budget click by 1% at a time! Of course with Avid Media Access, Avid’s new application programming interface (API), developers can now write their own codec wrappers, thus providing support for many video formats that has, in the past, been a downside to Avid.

Obviously, I am an avid Avid proponent, and not just because I cut my teeth on a first-gen Media Composer. In fact, if there was time, I could probably think of 200 million reasons why I edit on an Avid Media Composer every single day.

So let’s hear your thoughts. I gladly welcome any Final Cut Pro users to counterpoint this discussion.

National Spots move the camera, local spots point the camera. There is a difference -allow me to explain. A moving camera shot immediately says to our subconscious mind something along the lines of “Wow, that’s cool.” It’s simply that the camera is showing us something in a way that we can not experience in normal life. The camera is moving up or down, swinging over the heads of people like a bird in flight, gliding through a room smooth as silk – its movement is taking us as an audience somewhere special. As an audience we expect and demand Dynamic visualization, or at least we crave it…

Flat camera work resembles our own normal experience. A camera on a tripod is like a person sitting in a chair. Look left, look right, look up, look down… it’s flat. It is expected. The reason that I chose flat to describe this way of shooting video is this – video shot in this way creates a two dimensional image for a two dimensional media (TV) for a client/audience that is accustomed to viewing the world in three dimensional space.

Dynamic camera work gives the impression of three dimensional space in a two dimensional medium. This convincing illusion happens when the foreground and the background move in relationship to each other showing us the distance between them.

Not every shot has to be dynamic. It is also not true that every spot has to have dynamic shots.
This is part of the creative process to decide how best to utilize our tools to make your message make an impact.

Tools for Dynamic Camera work available at Guardian Studios.

• Cam Mate Jib Arm: This camera crane can be built out as short as 8′ to 30′ to give huge movement. With its robotically controlled head, the camera has complete freedom to get the shot.
• Glide Cam: This harness mounted piece of gear is worn by the Director of Photography. Walk, run, forwards, backwards, complicated choreographed moves, inside and out… all super smooth.
• Dolly: This platform is simple yet highly effective tool to move the camera across the ground in a variety of ways to “sell the shot”.

I feel that we as an audience instinctively sense the difference between Local and National commercials; let’s try to articulate the difference. I will share my thoughts about the differences I see and then you tell me your thoughts and your own independent musings.

Below, I have listed a few key differences between Local and National Spots. These are not rules or even theories, in the scientific sense, but some aspects that I watch for when creating a commercial.

The usage of graphics

Local spots use graphics more liberally than National. Local spots want to convey more specific information than National spots. The easiest way to put more information into a spot is to add textual graphics. Don’t get me wrong though, there are spots that are “heavy” on the graphics that work in both National and Local spots.

Fact Laden Scripts

National spots tend to dance around facts or delicately nestle them in tidy packages within the spots. Local spots seem to use every opportunity to articulate the facts throughout their spots. However, there are exceptions and both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages.

What’s my motivation?

Typically national spots want you to “feel” and local spots want their audience to “learn”… in a nutshell. Both of these approaches can backfire. Make the audience feel too much and they may not learn. Try to give too much info and your audience may turn the channel, space out, ignore your message, or simply not be able to remember the info.

Best Least Memorable Commercial?

We have all had this conversation:

“I saw this hysterical commercial last night! Did you see it?”
“What was it for?”
“I don’t remember… but it sure was funny!”

The flip side is confusion that comes about by trying to educate your audience to fast. This can be due to a fact heavy script and/or over use of graphics to explain your business and services. Pick a message, boil it down to its essence, and wrap it up in an exciting package.

The Solution?

When we consult with our clients, we strive to give the client a balanced commercial with appropriate levels of National “Feel” and Local “Learn(ing)”. By focusing on the core message and relating it to your audience, we focus on making a memorable spot that leaves them with the core lesson – your website, business name and/or your custom jingle rolling around their head for days.