Using Animation for Business

Studio55 bring together specialists in visual effects, motion graphics, animation, we provide everything you’d expect from a leading post-production company. And because we’re also a small sized independent, we’re able to work together with experts in the field of 3D animation giving our clients an exceptional personal service at a very reasonable cost Currently providing services to broadcast television, corporate users, industry, medicine, Studio55 will always provide animation, special effects logos and compositing for our smaller clients who are our best adverts, it’s where we honed our skills.

Vision Mixer – Job description and activities

A vision control technician more commonly known as a “Vision Mixer” selects images from various sources and displays them in a controlled sequence on a screen, basically a “live” edit.

These could be images from a number of cameras in a broadcast environment in a studio, or digital images from graphics computer source showing PowerPoint or digital effects at a conference. The process can be quite involved as images may be layered and mixed with graphics, or text like a name tag (lower third), captions or even the football scores.

Some more experienced technicians will perform under extreme pressure, where expectations and the demands to deliver run high. Sometimes the vision mixer will take direction from a director, but in corporate television or the conference industry it would not be unusual for the technician to be controlling all of the sources as well. Above all a good vision mixer will be able to handle the stress of the moment especially in a live broadcast environment.

There is a great emphasis placed on the correct shot or transition selection at the right time. In a live switching scenario the size of shot from a camera will play an important part in the how the sequence communicates a message or feeling to a viewer, so timing is also very important. Find a vision mixer with lots of experience in the industry.

In music, good coordination and fast reaction times are important, a basic understanding of tempo and song structure is also very useful. A vision mixer will depend on good camera operators and often will not have the time to discuss framing, focus, although we have all worked with a volunteer at some stage in our careers.

Training

We can offer remote learning or apply a hands-on solution depending on your exact requirements. Our mission is to enable companies/organisations to increase productivity and performance through their people. Our In-Company training solution is all about you and your organisation – we can work with you to identify your individual and company wide training needs to deliver a course that meets your needs. Studio55 is a company that listenes to the needs of its clients providing a structured learning process that works. Effective in all areas of Visual Communication, we cover all aspects of broadcast TV production as well.

So if you want to set up a studio, record a broadcast TV show, learn some shooting skills, edit a programme, or simply understand more about the technology and make it work for you, you should give us a call.

List of thing we can train people to do:

* Becoming a TV presenter
* Vision Director
* Producing
* Directing
* Camera Skills
* Audio recording skills
* Lighting a TV set
* Lighting for Video

Whether you are in business, industry, or the arts, we will develop a unique solution to your needs. In addition to a quality product, we offer scriptwriting, editing, design and an energetic creative approach throughout the whole production process.

Advertising

Producing your own marketing videos can be difficult and time-consuming because it requires video editing, cameras, shooting and you just don’t want the fuss of it all……and you just may not get exactly what you want. Fortunately, Studio55 offers a different approach that’s quickly becoming the new standard. It simplifies the video production process and helps you deliver marketing videos in less time, at a competitive price without the hassle, you’ll breathe easier at the end of the day.

Colour temperature

The temperature of a light source affects its colour. Seen through a video camera, a candle will appear orange, daylight will appear blue and fluorescent light usually appears green. Our eyes and brains tend to correct for these differences so we don’t notice the changes.

Colour temperature is related to the colour spectrum of the rainbow – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet (ROYGBIV) where red/orange is cool, low energy (think of a candle flame) and blue/violet is hot, high energy (think of a welders torch or gas flame).

The average colour temperature of daylight is 5600 degrees Kelvin (although it can vary enormously according to weather and sky conditions).

Fluorescent lights approximate to an equivalent colour temperature of 4800 degrees Kelvin but again there are many variations around this figure.

The colour temperature of a tungsten video light is 3200 degrees Kelvin. (This figure reduces slightly as the filament ages, and significantly if the lamp is electronically dimmed).

A video camera needs to be set so that its colour response matches the colour quality of the prevailing light. You can do this by switching in a colour correction filter inside the lens system and then adjusting the cameras white balance to get a more accurate setting. This is fine if the scene is lit by only one type of light source.

If the scene is lit by different sources, for example, blue daylight through a window and orange light from a tungsten light, you will need to use colour correction filters either on the daylight or the tungsten source.

The choice in this situation is to either:

1. White balance to tungsten and put orange correction filter over the daylight source.

2. White balance to daylight and put blue correction filters over the tungsten lights.

Situations can get more complex, for example there may be a table lamp and a window in shot and also a fluorescent ceiling light to contend with in addition to your video lights. They will all appear to have different colours. The rule of thumb here is to decide which is the dominant source and set the white balance to that colour temperature. All the other sources will need to be colour filtered to match that temperature. Alternatively you could decide, for example, to turn the fluorescent lights off or leave the table lamp looking slightly orange, or leave the daylight looking slightly blue.

Colour correction filters will absorb a lot of light and will reduce the intensity of your lamps. A full Colour Temperature Blue correction filter (CTB) for example can reduce the brightness by 75%. Because this is so inefficient, many operators will compromise and use half-blue filters (half CTB). This will shift the temperature from 3200 to 4300, in other words about half way towards a daylight temperature of 5600.

On many professional cameras it’s possible to set the white balance temperature to any value and so it’s possible to choose a point somewhere in between to give the most pleasing result.

In addition to the colour correction filters, it’s possible to select any colour from a whole range of filters. These are designed to be used purely for effect. Any filter will reduce the light intensity to some extent but dark saturated colours will reduce a lamps final output quite considerably. If your intention is to colour cast the entire picture, it may be easier to use a coloured lens filter or tint the picture in post production rather than colouring all the lights. Colouring the lights is more effective if the colour affects only part of the picture – the background for example.