Jeremy Blanton – Page 14

Is Building Your Own Green Screen Studio Worth It?

Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors, Video

Over the holidays while visiting the ~~out~~ inlaws in northern Atlanta, GA, I had the opportunity to visit with several of my friends. My one friend Ken, recently opened a new business work space where one of the options available is a green screen studio. Since I’ve never recorded with one before, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try my hand at green screen video.

What I found out quickly is that there is an art to doing it, and many skills required to do it properly. First, you have to have a large enough space to shoot in. My office for example would never work to shoot in because it is only 10’x11′. You need a few feet distance between you & the screen. You also need space for the screen to hang flat, and space for the lights & camera. His area is much larger.

Next, you MUST have the right kinds of lights. Ken had 2 softboxes which lit up the subject beautifully. However we didn’t quite have the right lights for the rest. We had two CFL umbrella lights. They did a fair job at lighting the screen but caused a few issues. The first was that they weren’t really bright enough to light up the screen fully. Second, we were then mixing different light colors which can make setting the white balance difficult.

I think that after we spent a while testing, Ken decided he was going to go and purchase either some more soft boxes for the screen or at least just some halogen work lights to light things properly. What I realized after some research is that you need basically two lights on the subject in front of them, two lights on the green screen flooding it with light to remove any shadows. Lastly, there needs to be one light overhead behind the subject for backlighting.

Finally, the camera you use plays a major role in the quality of your green screen video. I tried shooting with my Kodak Playtouch and it looked terrible. Because you don’t have the ability to set white balance, exposure, etc, the person’s skin turned really pale and made them look as though they were a zombie. Also, since the lens doesn’t have the precision focus of a DSLR camera, the edges were very blurry in post edit. When I switched to the DSLR, things got much better.

What kinds of costs do I see needing to be incurred to get a good green screen studio built? Well, let’s break it down:

Lighting- $600-$1,000
Screen- $200+
Large space-?
Camera- $600-$2,000+

So in closing, unless you have the gear required and are not willing to invest in the right equipment to create your own, you are probably much better off either hiring a professional, using a studio like Business On The Spot, or simply skipping the green screen idea completely.

When Promotion Turns To Prostitution

Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors, Social Media Training

Ines Hegedus-Garcia – @ines
@jb140 there’s a fine line bet prostituting your posts & getting quality readership – @chris_smth @phxreguy @tcar @jimmymackin

This was a tweet I received this morning from my friend Ines in reply to a conversation we were having this morning on Twitter about a recent post on HubSpot about 25 Marketing Stats for 2012. The post to me seemed a little thin on content provided as it was basically just a list of statistics. That however is not the purpose of this post.

The conversation started this morning when Chris, Jimmy, Jay, & Todd were discussing the completely annoying use of a Tweet This! link on every single stat on their post. 25 orange Tweet This! links in addition to the regular Twitter plugin seemed a little obsessive to me. My thoughts on the post were that they were only concerned about me sharing it out with others on Twitter. They could care less if I learned from the post, if I commented, or did anything else.

What is interesting though is that while the post is chock full of very interesting statistics that all of those mentioned above would love and share out on Twitter, (It’s what we all kinda do for a living, so interesting stats that back up our points are always valuable and helpful) the conversation turned from great stats, to poor promotion of the post by pimping it out too much.

I wish I could say this is the only example I’ve seen the past few days, but there are more. Just before following the conversation above I watched a video from Gary Vaynerchuk on how poorly the Oprah Winfrey Network was promoting through social media. Here’s his rant:

Don’t get me wrong, social media is a great tool to promote your products and services. I use is solely to build and market my business. But, it has to be done in moderation. If you try using a social network for just promoting you will get nowhere. Some may listen for a little while, but before long, you become just noise they ignore.

Crossing the Line

What is the line where you go from successful promotion to prostitution? That’s a difficult question to answer. I believe it varies. Some businesses can do more promotion than others and get away with it. Others, the slightest bit can turn off your consumers. I think instead of trying to use a formula you need to just pay attention to your sphere. If people are interacting with you less, your traffic is declining, and things seem to be on a downward slope, then maybe it’s time to change.

I know in my business I’ve tested this on numerous times and have found that the minute I seem to be doing more promotion of me, my business and not others everything slows.

The Magic Formula

So, what is the magic formula to promoting things effectively? How can I get all my stats going in the right direction? Well, the answer is actually pretty simple. Spend more time promoting others than yourself. People pay attention to those who help them more than those who try to sell them something. You can build a powerful online community by simply talking more about others good things than how great you are. In return, you are building relationships and trust with that community of followers. Then, when you promote something of your own, you are more likely to receive better results.

In order to get results from readers and your online community you have to first give something to them. If not, it comes across really clear that you are just out to pimp your own products/services/things and could care less about others.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. When do you feel promotion turns to prostitution?