North Carolina Videographer: Specializing in Wedding Videos and Music Videos

North Carolina Wedding Video Services

2011-07-02T23:43:00.000-07:00

Neofilm Productions has been doing wedding videography in North Carolina and South Carolina since 2004. In 2006 we started using a tapeless workflow and began shooting in High Definition. We still haven't shot a wedding video in high definition to this day because the market hasn't requested it. Nonetheless we shoot what we can in HD, when the option is available. We'd prefer to shoot everything in HD because it's amazing the clarity and depth of feild difference.

Neofilm Productions thoroughly enjoys wedding videography. Every new wedding is a new challange and acquiring the experience builds more and more confidences and expertise. All in all there's nothing more exihilarating than the positive feedback we recieve after each wedding video is completed.

Below is a wedding video demo of a wedding we shot in the summer of 2008. This weding video was shot using only 2 video cameras. We now shoot with at least 3 cameras. We also have acquired some new wireless audio capturing equipment.

Initially Neofilm Productions was primarily covering live music videography. However, wedding videography became so rewarding and demanding that it fast became our speciality. And, about 3 years ago we acquired the right equipment which has helped profoundly.

In the begining, Neofilm Productions didn't have near the computers, software, tripods, cameras that we have today. Everything was completely different just 5 years ago. Within 5 years we went from a single core pentium platform to a Quad Core, from Premiere 4 to the Adobe Master Suite CS3, from Nero to Encore, from a tape consumer workflow to a tapeless prosumer workflow, from 1 camera to 3 cameras. From onboard audio to wireless audio and a zoom h4. From DVD's burning and not burning reliably to burn burning as many as the client requests. From DVD to Blu-Ray. From ok Standard Definition to High Definition. From novice to winning awards.

It's been a long, treturous road on the path of learning, acquiring new hardware, software, equipment, trial and error, and finally we're right where we want to be, right where you want us to be, right here ready to shoot your next movie! And when you're ready for HD, just remember we're right here and we've been ready!

http://www.shelbyvideo.com/
http://www.neofilmproductions.com/

Josh Black: Original Country Music

2011-07-02T22:56:00.000-07:00

I occasionally visit Nashville Tennessee to have fun and shoot some live music. I typically visit my friend Josh Black. And, he's such a great performer that I can't resist shooting him. Only, usually this is spontaneous as this was.

We shot this video in the spare bedroom of his apartment.

Pretty Place Chapel

2011-07-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

I want to say this was the perfect wedding, but I can't. I guess because I'm lucky. So far they all have been. However, I managed to get a sweet picture of this couple at this majestic venue, Pretty Place Chapel. I couldn't help but share this fantastic venue.

For more information on this magnificent location visit: http://www.campgreenville.org/chapel.php

Kudzu by Phil Ruff

2011-07-02T21:46:00.001-07:00

I know Phil Ruff from the band "Mama Said", who I shot some videos for in the past. He came to me to do his song "Kudzu". Initially there were some ideas but he sort of gave me free rein over directing it. I found some spots and asked some friends if they had any location ideas. I ended using a location suggest Sarah Gentry and a location suggested by Chris Evans. Nathan McKee agreed to be the old man that fell asleep in the Kudzo patch. I don't recall who's idea that was;).

Basically everything just fell together. When we all arrived the band was in a bit of a rush. My initial idea to shoot near a water fall was foiled by the direction of the morning sun making that spot too hot.

So, we moved deeper into the Kudzo. I started suggesting the drummer Erik Jensen just plop in different spots as I shot Phil Ruff lip synching to a radio that Erik's terrific significant other Natasha Hays was managing for me.

The train was great timing for one run through of lip synching. I especially like the part where the camera appears to be lifted by a crane.

This was shot in one morning, edited that afternoon, and uploaded to youtube that same day. I had to reupload it the next day because I didn't spell Kudzu right! ha!

Amazing Blues Player, Acoustic Player, both with a band and solo, Zack Rosicka!

2009-12-06T22:12:00.001-08:00

Zack Rosicka is a great performer if there ever was one. His presence on stage captivates audiences. His playing is outstanding and he is evolving steadily to be equivocally as powerful a solo artist as he is a front man for a full band.

Zack has been blowing the minds of audiences since he was extremely young. I think he started performing live around 14. I met him when he was about 16 when he was performing on a downtown street with Contagious Blues Band. Having worked for many bands and been an advid promoter of great music I knew right away that I wanted to follow Zack Rosicka. The whole band was good, but he was great!

A few years later I saw them again in Shelby and this time I latched on. I began building a rapport with the whole band but had my sights set on Zack. I pushed him to start a trio when I realized they were looking for a new singer. I knew that as karasmatic as he was and powerful on the guitar as he was that if he could sing a little here and there and keep it simple and smooth that would be all he needed. I assume it was coincidental, but after suggesting it several times and even making him a website just for the fun of it to express the idea of the Zack Rosicka Band further, well, it wasn't long before Contagious Blues Band became nothing more than the Zack Rosicka Band.

I videographed them about 15 or more times playing live shows and in studios. I did website work for them, created promotional material, and more. I did everything I could because I believed in their potential so much. Then Zack left Contagious Blues Band and moved to Florida. For me this seemed the demise of Contagious Blues Band. I tried to work with them some after they lost Zack, but it just didn't feel right anymore.

Fortunately, Zack and I became better friends after he left. So, I drove to Nashville Tennessee to film him there with his new group, the Zack Rosicka Band from Destin Florida! Only having been together for about 6 months they were already going to Nashville to play 3 nights in a row 5 hours each night. That's a lot of material for a new band, but they were as tight as the greatest bands ever.

Zack currently has a 3 peice as well as his solo act. Unfortunately i wasn't able to capture his 3 peice but i did capture his drummer playing a couple of songs with him the first night. Zack is also working in the studio to get some original tracks down. I'm very anxious to hear it! Zack is considering moving to Austin Texas soon to further his career in music.

Windows 7 Premiere Pro CS4

2009-12-05T06:33:00.000-08:00

Alrighty, I've been needing to upgrade to a 64 bit operating system for some time and the time has finally come with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. Now I am getting the most out of my Premiere CS4 and entire Adobe Master Suite!

Windows 7 is not just smoother and faster and cooler in regard to it's basic interface and program operation, it's got some nice new system features as well that help you assess your systems performance in unprecendented ways and other nifty things.

The installation of Windows 7 Pro 64 bit was a fast and smooth process. At first I wanted to play, I immediately installed the Adobe Master Suite CS4 and anxiously opened Premiere. Premiere Pro CS4 wasn't on the Microsoft list of compatible websites at all, it wasn't there at all!!! So, I had no idea if it would even work. Well, it did, but with a bit of jumpiness during playback. So, I installed the drivers for my NVIDIA GeForce 8800 640 Mb Video Card and wahlah! It's as smooth as ... Another great thing is that Premiere doesn't need to render to preview basic transition effects now, it renders in real time, or should i just say it's clips on the timeline are viewable without rendering.

So, now I'll be able to take my RAM to the max. Next on the shopping list will be 8 gigs of DDR3 1333 Corsair RAM. I'll have to sell my 2 gigs unfortunately even though they're the same because they have to come in kits... so hopefully i'll make some after spending some.

Alrighty, time to finish that baptism video I'm working on in my shiney new OS.

Jazz Duo Derek McCoy and Justin Owen-Head playing Four on Six

2009-08-31T20:42:00.000-07:00

On August 29th I went to Atlanta to videograph a Baptism at a Catholic Church near Marietta Georgia. Derek McCoy, a friend of mine from Lawndale, North Carolina, happens to live in Marietta Georgia. He and his bassist, Justin Owen-Head, were available to do a little shoot.

Derek arranged a location that was almost what we needed but definitelly sufficed. We spent most of the time setting up. The room was a bit too small. This sort of shoot definitely needs more room for the back light and to create the sort of desirable depth that i was reaching for and didn't quite achieve. But, we made the best of the situation and did rather well. It helped that these two Jazz players were one take performers, esp. when the heat of the 2400 watts worth of halogen lamps were cookin'!

We shot about 8 songs. I used a 3 point lighting system, at least tried to. Due to the size of the room limitation I had to shoot at an angle putting the black 10 by 12 black drop up in the corner and shooting at that corner. I put up 3 cameras in the corner, one tight on mostly Derek with a mere shot of the bass, one wide, and one on which I manned.

I started out with the wide static shot wide enough to view the subjects entirely. But after the first song I tightened up the wide camera to only include the upper boddies of the performers. This made the shot clearer of course but wasn't really the look I wanted. But, I had to work with it the size of the room limitations. Because the room was small i had difficulties separating the subject from the background. As a result the wide shot had too much viewable background from the shallow field depth.

About half way through I switched to manning a different Camera and liked that combination of perspectives better. But, all in all I feel like it could have been better. I guess everyone feels like they could do better though. Even the performers after each peice expressed they felt it could be better, and I being the lay musician I am thought their performance was completely perfect, as perfect as can be.

Derek is a great player, and he plays with the best around. I am anxious to get the other videos edited and even more anxious to video them again!

Music Video: Josh Black's "We Had a Good Thing"

2009-07-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

On July 18th Josh Black of 30 Aut Sixx came to my home studio for Neofilm Productions. I recorded Josh playing his song "We Had a Good Thing". First we did the audio tracks separately and then the video tracks separately. By the end of the day we had edited everything together and put it up on YouTube.

We wanted to include some b-roll over the video. We discussed putting some scenes of him observing he's exgirlfriend walking through the park, a shot of him writting a letter, etc... but we were happy with the way this turned out for now and decided to save that for a version of the entire band playing this song.

The video immediately, within 2 hours, had 314 views. But, for some reason they apparently got stuck on 314 views and stayed like this until Monday night when i decided to take the video down an reupload it. I hope that never happens again!!!

Defining Our Market! Carolina Wedding Videographer

2009-06-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

Neofilm Productions has more narrowly defined it's market. Recently we have acquired the domain name carolinaweddingvideographer.com and have started moving to acquire other url's of this nature. The fact is, we specialize in wedding videos. Yes, we do a lot of other videos too throughout the year, but all in all when the day is done, when the year is up, in retrospect we do more wedding videography in the Carolinas than anything else.

In the past we have been posting music videos more than anything. This is because the general public is more likely, at least it is our assumption, to be interested in watching music videos than someone, whom they probably don't even know, get married.

It is a common understanding that is best practice, to have a business that specializes in one thing, at least initially anyways. And we feel it is important that the public understands our capabilities so they will take advantage of our expertise in wedding video productions.

In the end www.NeofilmProductions.com will invariably stay the same and is currently our only active site. But, www.CarolinaWeddingVideographer.com will be up soon and will specifically be designed to showcase our wedding video services and optimized toward that market.

So, stay tuned for our new site!

Live Country Music Video: North Carolina Videography

2009-06-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, the daunting task of fixing that which is broke has been slightly achieved. Last night I was up all night editing a video that didn't appear salvagable, some High Definition video of 30 Aut Sixx playing at Pine Grove Golf Course. This was not easy.

Because I’m playing in this band it’s impossible for me to manage the video camera(s). We were playing outdoors and the camera closest to the front of the stage was on manual exposure. I intentionally did this to get the temperature of the exposure just right.

The problem began when the sun started to set and the exposure didn’t adjust. Well, I was playing guitar and totally not even thinking about this. Consequently, after about an hour of playing that set daylight got darker and so did that camera. As a result that camera was darker then the rest. I liked the way we did Gunpowder and Led and how we looked playing it. So, I turned the brightness up on that camera and the contrast. I liked how that looked so I turned the contrast up on the other cameras and wahlah.

Because the 3 cameras were in a static position I decided to make it more interesting by creating some motion as if someone was panning, tilting, and zooming. So, I took the High Definition video that was cut up and put it into a standard definition timeline. Then the video was all scaled like more than twice as big. So, I began scaling, changing position, and occasionally rotating, fun stuff. But, it’s very time consuming because High Definition editing of AVCHD is hard work on a processor/system.

Despite my have a very high $ computer system, I had to render out each and every effect and/or fade/transition before I could see how it really looked. Needless to say, I guess needless to say, it wasn’t until 7 am that I could go to bed knowing that this was uploading…

Another silly thing about all of this was we were supposed to play a totally different song but I thought we were playing Gunpowder and Led so I just started it and everyone went along for the ride. But, they let me know after words!!!

Oh, and I may have some more coverage of this event soon to put up, maybe, maybe not, stay tuned my peeps… especially on my youtube channel.