Jeremy Blanton

Creating Cinematic Video Shots On A Budget

We have all seen this amazing videos on YouTube that have dramatic cinematic gliding shots in them. The more videos I saw with these gliding shots, the more I found myself very intrigued in the ability to create my own in some of the videos I’ve begun shooting recently for my clients.

So, I went in search of ways to create that appeal and found that most of them were created by either some sort of dolly or camera slider system. I then of course headed over to Amazon to look at buying the right gear. The average price I saw on sliders/dollies that were of any quality ranged from about $250 and up into the thousands.

But, as I searched on YouTube I had seen dozens of video examples of DIY camera sliders that people built on their own. After watching several, I began creating a blueprint for my design and before I knew it, I was headed off to the hardware store to buy some supplies. I knew the key to this project was going to be to create some way to smoothly glide a DSLR camera and found that the bearings used in inline skate wheels would do the trick. I found a great deal on the necessary amount on Amazon and placed that order as well.

Once everything arrived, along with a few late nights working in the garage, my DSLR camera slider was complete.

I think the end result turned out well, and here’s a video highlighting the design. Also, make sure to check below the video where I’ll give you a full list of parts used to create this DIY camera slider.

Supplies needed:

Inline skate wheels & bearings $22.99 from Amazon. (affiliate)
1- 5″ x 8″ stud plate- $1.84
1- 3/4″ x 10′ conduit pipe $3.98
1- 1/4″ x 4′ Aluminumn Angle $7.17
10- 1/4″ x 1 1/2″ Hex Bolts @ $.17 each= $1.70
1- 1″x6″x4′ Select Pine Board $7.92
1- Bag of Nylon Lock Hex Nuts $2.74
1- Bag of Hex Nuts $1.57
1- Bag of 3/4 Galvanized 2 Hole Pipe Straps $2.09
3- Bags of 6mm 10 count flat washers @ $.68 each= $2.04
1- 2 Pack Of 4″ Hex Tap Bolts $1.26
1- 8 Pack of 1 1/2″ Gripper Pads $3.65
1- 4 Pack of 4″ Stanley Mending Plates $2.48
2- 2″x6″x2″ wood blocks *free (had scrap wood)
4- Self Tapping Metal Screws *free (already had)
1- Can Of Black Spray Paint *free (already had)

Total Cost: $61.43

You can mount just about any type of tripod head to this slider that you wish. I purchased the Fancier 6664H Pro Heavy Duty Ball Head With Quick Release. (affiliate) It seems to have a good weight and is strong enough to hold my Canon t3i with an 18mm-135mm lens securely at any angle I place it.

If you decide to build a DIY DSLR camera slider like mine, leave a comment below and show it off! I’d love to see what you create!

The Best Tweet Of 2012- Congrats @AMCTheatres

Social Media Advisors, Social Media Speaker, Twitter

As the year is winding down I thought it was a good time to share one of my favorite tweets that I saw this past year posted by a major brand. In September, The major cookie brand Oreo sent out a tweet to it’s 50,000+ followers asking:

Ever bring your own Oreo cookies to the movie theater?#slicksnacker

Now, I understand Oreo was trying to be cute and humorous in their tweet to their loyal fans. But, the response that followed back from AMC Theatres was great.

NOT COOL, COOKIE. RT @oreo: Ever bring your own Oreo cookies to the movie theater? #slicksnacker

— AMC Theatres (@AMCTheatres) September 25, 2012

Yes, the tweet back from AMC Theatres was clever, witty, and definitely one that made you chuckle. But, to me, what makes this tweet one of the best of 2012 is much more than the humor side of it.

As I travel around the country as a social media speaker, I often teach classes on how to use Twitter. During those presentations, one of the key points I always try to stress is that Twitter is much more than just a way to advertise your new product. In fact, I normally spend twice as much time covering ways to monitor things on Twitter because I think there is much more value in it.

What excites me more about the response from AMC is that they didn’t just sign up for a social network and started selling, they are actually listening and engaging in conversations. Services like Twitter Search and Tweetgrid are tools that every brand on Twitter need to be familiar with and use on a regular basis to monitor their brand to accomplish this.

Going The Extra Mile

What I found even more amazing with this story is that AMC is going the extra mile in their online monitoring. Many brands might set up alerts for when someone mentions their name, or a product they may sell, but they obviously were also monitory other keyword phrases like movie or theater. To me, this is one of the best ways to effectively use a social media network like Twitter. If they would not be monitor those types of terms it would be almost impossible to see when others are mentioning things directly related to their industry.

While selling movie tickets is part of the revenue AMC Theatres generated, my guess is that sales a concessions generate twice as much revenue as the actual ticket. Think about it, when you go to a movie, do you buy snacks? If you do, you can easily spend twice as much at the concession stand as you do on that ticket. The real question I’d like to know, is if I can find an Oreo cookie at the counter next time I visit an AMC Theatre.

Securing Your Custom WordPress Site

Custom WordPress Sites, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tutorials

As I shared the other day, while I was out of the country, some of my sites got hacked which made for a rather labor intensive Thanksgiving. Once I got things on the sites all cleaned up and restored back to normal, I began looking to see what might have been the place they got into my sites. With the help of Sucuri, (affiliate) we found that one of the vulnerabilities of my site was through TimThumb.

What I had found is that some of the plugins/themes on sites that I had were using versions of timthumb that were out of date. Unfortunately, one of the down sides to using free plugins/themes is that sometimes the developer does not keep things up to date for compatibility and security. Just like for all of us, sometimes life gets in the way, or a new direction opens and other things get left behind.

So, I went on a search to see what was the easiest way to scan everything on your site & find a way to update. I came across a great plugin called Timthumb Vulnerability Scanner that does a great job of scanning & updating. Here’s a quick video showing you just how easy it is:

So, keep your Custom WordPress Site safer and use this plugin to accomplish it! Also, make sure you are are backing up your WordPress site on a regular basis. If you do not know how, or want someone to handle it for you, you can always check out the WordPress backup service I offer.

How Protected Is Your WordPress Site?

Custom WordPress Sites

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday to it’s fullest extent by spending lot’s of time with friends and family, shopping their hearts out, decorating the home and lastly resting enough to sleep off the turkey coma.

For me, my Thanksgiving holiday was spent doing much less fun things. On Thanksgiving eve I logged into one of my sites and noticed it had a few updates that needed to be installed. So, as I normally do, I clicked button to install the updates and everything went downhill from there. Because the sites were not updated in over a month due to me being out of the country with limited to no internet access, the updates did not get installed in a timely manner and it allowed for my sites to get attacked/hacked.

Since the site was on a shared server, the attacks shut down 8 of my sites and took me several days of work to get them back up & running again with the help of Sucuri to clean up the malware. (affiliate) Granted, most of the sites that got attacked were not used for much other than testing things for my clients custom WordPress sites, but some of the ones affected were rather important to my online presence.

In particular, one site I was very upset to see attacked was the new product reviews site I built, New Shiny Object. This site reviews products that you may want to purchase and with it being just a few days from the busiest time of the year for shopping, I wanted this site along with all my other ones back up & running as soon as possible.

Most of my sites had a free backup plugin installed that keeps a copy of the content on the site alone & emails it to you. But, the design customizations, installed plugins, and SEO work does not get backed up in the file it sends. Luckily for me, the most important site was able to be restored quickly & easily because of my recent change in back up services. The new service offers the ability to backup not only the content of the website, but also a full backup of everything to an Amazon S3 cloud server.

A quick download of the file and install back to the server and that site was back online. The other sites on the other hand took countless hours of work on my behalf to restore settings, plugins, themes etc. So, instead of it taking hours like my other sites, New Shiny Object was back up & running in just a few minutes.

Back in July I soft launched the WordPress backup service to my clients as well because of the tremendous value I saw in it. I soft launched it to make sure that I knew what I was doing, and also to really test the system and make sure everything worked the way it said it should. Well, after several months testing around 15 clients and after the events of this past weekend, I think it is time to start offering this service to more and more people.

That being said, here is what the new backup service includes:

Daily database backups to an Amazon S3 server with the 14 most recent days saved.
Full site backup (database, files, plugins, theme customizations, the works) saved on Amazon S3 servers every two weeks. (most recent 2 full backups kept minimum)
Full Restoration service of site in case of attack.
Daily email notifications that site has been backed up.
Email notifications if there is an error reported during backup.
Access to Sucuri Malware scanner inside WordPress dashboard to scan your site for malware manually.

Pricing for this is being offered as either month to month or annually. If you have more than one site you would like to have backed up, your second site is less.

Get Started:

Returned and Recharged!

Custom WordPress Sites, Social Media Speaker

Wow, the past month has flown by. My trip away was beyond amazing & life changing. Not only did I get to make an impact on lives of others during the past month, but I also got to see some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been in the world. The photo to the right was one I took while in Cape Town, South Africa.

While I was gone I decided I would start my Thanksgiving early and start reflecting back on this past year and some of the things I’m thankful for from the past year. Since I had over 50 hours of time spent on airplanes over the past month, there was plenty of time for reflecting and planning for the future of the business too.

First, I looked at my goals coming into 2012 and what goals I accomplished. A big goal I had for 2012 was to increase my opportunities to travel the country as a social media speaker. In previous years, I was asked to attend maybe 5-8 conferences in a year to present. However in 2012, those numbers increased dramatically. This year I traveled to over 20 cities all around the country to share as a social media speaker. I would say this goal was definitely accomplished.

Another goal of 2012 was to help more people realize the value of WordPress for their website solution. During 2012 I was able to share with thousands how awesome WordPress can be through webinars, conferences, and company meetings. In addition, I also helped over 30 clients get their own custom WordPress site designed. Overall, the goals set for 2012 were pretty well met, or even exceeded.

What to expect in 2013?

Seeing how there are only a few weeks left in 2013, I figured while I had all that time on the plane without much else to do, it would be the perfect time to start planning ahead for the coming year and setting goals. Here’s a few of them so far:

Just like in 2012, one of my top goals is to secure more opportunities to present at conferences as a social media speaker. I’ve already began signing agreements for conferences in 2013. If you have an event coming up or a company you would like me to come speak to, feel free to contact me to discuss presentation topics, rates, times, etc. I want 2013 to be my busiest year yet of travel.

My next big goal for 2013 is to help even more people in getting started with WordPress. To accomplish this there are several things I’m implementing. First is the public launch of a new WordPress starter package I’m offering. I soft launched this product at the beginning of October at a conference and the responses were great. This low cost option is perfect for someone getting started with wordpress. It features a basic blog setup with design and all the plugins you would need to get your site running for a one time setup fee. You will hear more on this over the next few weeks. Of course, I will still be offering the custom WordPress site option for those who want something more involved than just a basic setup.

The third goal for 2013 is to help people protect their WordPress sites from being attacked. While I was gone on my missions trip, some of my sites were attacked and hacked. I’ve spent the past three days over Thanksgiving getting them all restored and back running. Just like the starter WordPress sites, I soft launched a WordPress backup service using Backupbuddy that I provide to clients on a monthly basis this past year. In 2013 I plan on offering the service to everyone to help keep their sites secure and safe. One of the worst feelings in the world is having your site go down and no backup in place.

Unlike the free backups I install when building a site, this one backs up everything on the site, not just the content. That includes the plugins installed, design customizations, SEO work, etc. In addition, it saves the backup of your site to an Amazon S3 storage cloud server so everything is safe from an attack on a shared server. In my instance, I had 8 domains on the shared server and all 8 were taken down by the attack. Currently I have around a dozen clients using this service and hope to increase that number dramatically in 2013 to keep everyone protected.

The next big thing I want to get back to doing more of is webinars in 2013. When I started the company back 3 years ago, it was one of the main things we offered. We offered at least 2-3 webinars each and every month. I pay good money each month for software and don’t always use it to it’s fullest potential. So, be on the lookout for more webinars in 2013. Some will be free, some might cost money to attend. I also hope to do more webinars in 2013 with special guests. If you have a topic or want to do a guest webinar in 2013 with me, feel free to contact me to discuss your topic and schedule. As they become available, I will post them to my upcoming classes page.

The final goal for 2013 is to write more. During the past year I became lax on blogging on my various sites. In 2012 I created a product review site that has set dormant for months now. I hope to begin contributing more there as well as adding several guest writers there as well. I also help to take one of my personal blogs that have set dormant and turn it into a place to start sharing more of my images I’ve been taking. Don’t worry, I also plan on adding many more tips, ideas, and helpful hints here to increase your business online.

Over the last year I’ve found myself really enjoying photography and want to share some of those images with others. I have not yet decided on which site I’m going to convert into more of a photo blog, but when I do, I’ll let you know. One thing for sure, I hope that in 2013 I’ll get back into the habit of sharing more quality content with my readers.

So that’s it, that is the game plan moving into the new year. I’ve got a bunch on my plate, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I look forward to what the new year holds and the things that are to come!

Unplugging For The Next Month

Social Media Advisors

This may be one of the most emotional posts I ever write here on this site. I write this post with tears streaming down my face. I just packed up my two amazing kids and dog in the van and the wife just headed out to take them to her parents house in Georgia for the next month. As I shared here a few weeks ago, my wife Katherine & I are leaving on a missions trip Monday morning.

I know that we are doing what we are supposed to by taking this missions trip. We have worked so hard to prepare, but never once did I think how difficult it would be to say goodbye to your babies for a month knowing you will be thousands of miles away, in totally different parts of the world with very minimal ways of communication.

I’m hoping that through technology like Skype, Facebook chat, and Google Hangouts to at least be able to talk to them and see them some while on our trip. Of course, that is all dependent upon us having some sort of internet connection.

What does this mean for my business while I am gone?

Well, with us being out of the country means my cell phone will be shut off. International rates are astronomical and would cost entirely too much to call clients while I am gone. By now, most of my clients are aware of me being gone, and know to contact by email any emergencies. If and when I get a connection, I will try to respond to those in need. If you are inquiring about hiring me to speak, consult, or build a website, I will be returning all those calls starting November 19th.

I know this is a long time for everyone to have to wait for responses, and for those of you who know me, have worked with me in the past, you know I’m almost always available. This will definitely be a test for me to be unplugged for the next month.

For those of you who may wonder where I’m going, or want to follow along with our trip, I hope to update our missions site internet permitting. Or, you can visit http://sendustosouthafrica.com.

See you all in a month!