Earlier this month we launched our new website, and to all of you who helped make Carlson Media who we are today, we want to say a big thank you!
But if a simple thank you isn’t enough, how about a huge discount on green screen work?
For the month of September only, we’re offering “The Talking Head” green screen shoot at a very special price.

This is what you get with your green screen shoot:

• Travel to your office
• Setup of the green screen, including stands, mic, lights, tripod, monitor and camera
• Video shoot of your message (up to 5 minutes long)
• Edit of your video with your logo and choice of background that you provide
• Rendering and compression of HD video for posting on YouTube
• A link to the finished, downloadable video
• You get all of this in a professional 1080p HD format for only $699 + tax. That’s 50% off our regular price.

So if you’re looking for an effective means of presenting yourself, your company or your products, a green screen video can offer that extra little “hook” you’re looking for.
Wondering what a green screen shoot is all about? Check out the video we’ve posted here.

Why should you have video on your website? Perhaps the simplest explanation is that often pictures and text alone aren’t enough to tell a complete story. Even the most carefully chosen pictures and images and the best copy can only partially communicate your brand, demonstrate your products, or evoke an emotional response in your visitors.
Here are the three ways video can enhance your website.

Tell your whole story

Video can capture a story in a way that photos or images alone can’t. While photos are 2-dimensional, video adds many more dimensions, including sound, light and movement.

For the RE/MAX Abbotsford website, capturing the spirit of this Fraser Valley community was a top priority. The job of a RE/MAX realtor is to find clients a home in an area that will suit their lifestyle, personality and budget. They want their customers to feel comfortable and at ease with the location they’ve chosen to live.
Our video successfully showcases the warmth, friendliness and diversity of Abbotsford that dozens of pictures alone couldn’t achieve. Using music, panoramas, and vignettes, our video provides visitors to the RE/MAX website an authentic experience and flavour for the Abbotsford community.

Increase the stickiness of your website

Another reason why you should consider using video on your website is to increase the amount of time that a client spends on your pages, also known as “stickiness”.
Video is particularly effective if your product is difficult to explain, or is rich in features. For many, a page dense with copy isn’t appealing and they’re apt to click away. Video, on the other hand, is an easy way for your visitors to absorb and understand complex content.
For iON Security Products, a company known for its concealed wireless transmitters, we produced a high-definition video that showcases their wireless sensors’ most compelling features to pique visitor interest. The video also has a strong call to action, inviting customers to learn more about iON products.
With video, you can choose what’s shown, and how and when it’s presented, and provide just enough information to get visitors interested in discovering more about your company and your products.

Increase your search engine ranking

Next to Google, YouTube is considered the second largest search engine. More and more people want to have information served to them “on a platter,” rather than scouring through page after page on your website to learn about what you offer.

Using video that is posted on YouTube, and tagged with strategic and relevant keywords, you can drive more traffic to your website. Rather than pushing information at customers, videos can “pull” visitors to a site with content that is relevant and meaningful to them.
Are you doing all that you can to reach you customer? If video is not yet in your marketing mix, we can help.

  Last year we received a few new pieces of equipment. And like most new ‘gadgets’ we were aching to try them out right away. Here are two short video’s we created using our new 35mm adapter & Zeiss prime lenses

Crescent Beach

Cultus Lake

  Since the redesign of our new website, we’ve moved around a few items and some of our post have been misplaced (oops). But back by popular demand are a few of the b-roll shots we took while traveling through Zambia on our shoot with the Village of Hope.

Rural Village

Village of Hope

“Tribal” Dancing

Sunset in Lusaka

  At the beginning of July, Carlson Media was approached by RE/MAX to produce a series of web videos highlighting the different area’s of the valley, starting with Abbotsford, BC. After 2 beautiful days of filming in 30 degree weather, 20 water bottles and a sunburn later, we were able to capture some beautiful footage of this ‘City in the Country’.

  Last week I picked up a JuicedLink DT454 as I was really missing a proper audio monitoring solution for my Canon 5dm2. And overall, I’ve been very happy with it so far!

But being that I’m starting to do a few more shoots with my 5dm2, I really wanted to put it up against my Sony EX3 and see what the difference in audio is going to be? And since I never saw anything comparing the two online, I decided to do my own little test.

  Below is a quick little video I put together testing the two camera’s audio functionality using a wireless lavalier mic. As you’ll be able to tell in the second part of the video, the audio from the JuicedLink DT454 has a bit more static than the EX3 and the compression drops a bit of the low end from my voice as well. I knew it wasn’t going to be as good as my Sony EX3, but for what I’m using the 5dm2 for I think the DT454 will end up working just fine. It’s a decent little box.

  WordCamp Vancouver is a annual conference that took place at the Museum of Vancouver on June 12. It’s basically for anyone who wants to learn, and share, more about developing WordPress sites. Here is the video lineup of everyone who spoke this year as well as a write up each of them. (thumbnail and write-ups courtesy of John Bollwitt & WordCamp Vancouver)

Nadia Aly

Socializing Your WordPress Blog
@digitalkvan

  Nadia Aly holds a Masters of Digital Media from the Centre of Digital Media in Vancouver,BC. Currently she works at Microsoft as an online community manager. She specializes in Social Media practices, marketing and much more. She started developing websites 14 years ago at the age of 12 …..and never stopped……

  Nadia does Social Media with an attitude !! Want to know how to make your blog social? What’s the secret behind getting those fancy retweet buttons and links to share content ? Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, Wibiya ….how do you get the best out of them? Best practices?? Best modules?? This is the place for you to learn how to bring the social world to the front steps of your blog…..and craving to come back for more !!

John Biehler

WordPress Development Environments
@johnbiehler

  John Biehler is a jack of all trades, and can often be seen tromping through the puddles in Vancouver with many of his digital SLR cameras. When not photographing the Vancouver Olympics or random fashion event, John can be often be found hacking away on PHP and WordPress sites while sipping a locally brewed Vancouver beer.

  John will be talking about WordPress-related development environments such as WAMP and MAMP. Using these environments, it’s possible to work on a WordPress site offline and simply merge changes to your live site as needed. John’s talk about WordCamp Fraser Valley on this same topic was very popular, so it’ll undoubtedly be a very informative session if you’re looking to expand your knowledge on how to tweak WordPress sites.

Christine Rondeau, Dave Zillie & Cam Cavers

WordPress as a CMS
@bluelimemedia @dazil @camcavers

Christine Rondeau has been developing websites since 2001. In the past 5 years she’s developed over a 100 sites based on WordPress. Most of these sites have a blog component, but more and more of them are websites that look nothing like WordPress sites.

  With a strong background in project management, teaching, and developing for the web, Dave brings years of experience and tremendous enthusiasm to his work as the principal of dazil Internet Services, a web development and hosting company, with a focus on developing and hosting WordPress based sites. WordPress has been a highly successful platform for Dazil clients, as it is such an easy to use platform, and can be adapted to fit pretty much any type of website.

Lauren Bacon

Being Curious for a Living: How asking questions creates loyal clients (and better websites)
@laurenbacon

  Widgets are awesome, and writing beautiful code is an art and a science. But if you’re spending all your time implementing client requests rather than asking questions, then you’re replaceable — and replaceable doesn’t make for much of a business model.

  Veteran web strategist and designer Lauren Bacon shares the key questions you can ask your clients to turn them into loyal, repeat customers — and to make yourself an indispensable, trusted advisor. You’ll learn how to have more fun at work, create better sites, and improve your bottom line, just by letting yourself get curious.

  A veteran web designer, Lauren co-founded Raised Eyebrow Web Studio with Emira Mears, her all-around right-hand woman (with whom she also wrote The Boss of You: Everything A Woman Needs to Know to Start, Run, and Maintain Her Own Business). The two have been in business together for ten years, and during that time have developed a reputation for helping clients in the nonprofit, government and progressive business sectors use online tools more effectively.

  Lauren started her design career during the web’s infancy; more than a dozen years later, she remains passionate about facilitating online communication and helping people connect heart-to-heart through technology.

Colin Ligertwood

Designing for WordPress
@brainbitsca

  In 1995, Colin made his first webpage and fell in love with the web. Since then, he has made a career of creating fun and professional websites and web applications of all kinds. When not working, Colin enjoys watching the sunset from a picturesque grassy knoll, indulging in fine wine over candlelit conversations on French film, and long walks on the beach.

  Colin will be speaking about how to make sure your website designs work well as WordPress themes. He will discuss several tips and techniques that he uses as a web developer that you should have in mind as a web designer beginning to design for WordPress. Colin will also try to point out some common challenges designers may run into when designing for WordPress.

Amye Scavarda

WordPress and Drupal: Deciding between content management systems for your projects
@msamye

  Amye Scavarda is a project management person for open source content management systems based out of Portland, OR. She works to make websites that hurt less with teams that like to work with each other. She runs a consulting company called Function, and she’s on twitter as @msamye.

  WordPress works fabulously for a wide variety of websites. With the growth in development, even more websites will be able to use WordPress. But what happens when it’s just a little bigger than WordPress can handle, and how do you make the decisions about when to use Drupal? This is also a talk about cross-pollination between open source projects and how it helps grow both communities.

Tris Hussey & Catherine Winters

WordPress 3.0 and Parent/Child Themes
@trishussey @catherineomega

  Tris Hussey is a long-time technologist, blogger, and writer, after picking up blogging on a whim in 2004, he quickly became both a professional blogger and a leading expert in business blogging. He has been a part of several Web 2.0 startups from blogging software to blogging agencies and continues to write, blog, teach, and consult. In addition to giving workshops and speaking at conferences, Tris also teaches social media, blogging, podcasting, and WordPress at UBC, BCIT, and elsewhere. His first book Creating Your Own Blog: 6 Easy Blogging Projects to Start Blogging Like a Pro was published January, 2010 and his second book, Using WordPress, is due out July, 2010.

  Using parent-child themes and theme frameworks isn’t new in WordPress 3.0, but there are more options available. Tris will be discussing what those options are, as well giving a brief look into the shiny new WordPress 3.0.

  As a longtime blogger and WordPress user, Catherine is looking forward the exciting changes coming in WordPress 3.0. As an long-time advocate for usability and open standards, she recommends WordPress users everywhere update old themes, throw out old code, and listen to her talk at great length about how happy she is to use
get_template_part().

  At WordCamp Vancouver, Catherine will tell you why you should be using a child theme after you upgrade to WordPress 3.0 , as well as how you might go about doing so.

  In the past, Catherine’s worked in social media, as a Second Life developer, and technical writer. Today, her interests include cycling, sushi, and sans-serif typography.

Mark McLaren

Get Found Easier and Grow Your Business: 5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress
@mcbuzz

  Right out of the box, WordPress makes websites and blogs that are highly optimized for search engines as compared to traditional HTML and content management system (CMS) websites. Learn how, with a little extra time and effort, you can take your WordPress site to the next level of search engine optimization. In this elementary-level presentation, Mark will show you the basics of keyword research and five essential techniques to optimize your WordPress pages and posts for better search engine rankings.

  Mark was a speaker at the first WordCamp Seattle (2009) and presents regularly to Seattle business groups on search engine optimization and social media marketing. He is the President of Seattle search engine optimization and online marketing firm McBuzz Communications. Mark offers free WordPress tutorials and support on his blog, Business Blogging 101.

Dave Olson

Art and Technology are Old Pals
@uncleweed

  Dave Olson is well known personality in the Vancouver technology scene, and is currently a technology evangelist at HootSuite, the company behind one of the #1 web-based   Twitter clients. Dave is a passionate and well-traveled speaker, and closed out WordCamp Whistler with his talk “Are you Worthy?” last year.

  By exploring technological innovations from tubed oil paints and graphite pencils to telegraphs and mountain bikes, Dave will explain how scientific innovation spurs the creative process and how to balance the cranial hemispheres to foster the seemingly opposed disciplines of both building a publishing platform and producing compelling content using WordPress.

  A couple months ago we had the opportunity to film the second annual F5 Expo in Vancouver featuring Malcolm Gladwell, author of Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, & What the Dog Saw. Apart from Malcolm being the big draw to the conference, many people in the audience thought that Tod Maffin spoke just as well and with just as much passion. Here is a clip from Tod’s keynote address.

(Profile of Tod Maffin, courtesy of F5 Expo)

  During the web 1.0 craze, Tod Maffin was a top-flying CEO of a technology company. Worth millions on paper, he led a frantic life that included running his publicly traded artificial intelligence firm while at the same time hosting a national radio show on CBC Radio One about technology. He was working 16-hour days, non-stop.

  And then, everything crashed. Tod was crippled with a devastating depression and addiction which all but destroyed him — all the while, struggling to appear to be managerial to employees and colleagues, and happy and healthy to his friends and family.

  Today, Tod is an inspirational example of fighting back, recovery in action, and learning how to live sanely in our busy techno-driven life. In the summer of 2009, Tod was featured in Esperanza Mental Health Magazine as an “Everyday Hero.”

  Tod’s story is emotional — at once funny and poignant, sad and hopeful.

  He’ll show attendees how to be “strategically crazy” — managing teams with insight and vision, without letting the business life run their “real” life. It will speak to each person in the room who feels they’re overworked, they’re doing it to themselves, and they don’t know how to stop.

(photo courtesy of Jeremy Lim)

  Tonight we were able to film this months “Third Tuesday” meetup which featured Rebecca Bolwitt, John Biehler and Kris Krug. It was another great meetup that covered how bloggers (and users of social media) were treated during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games and what can be changed for 2012.

Taken from the Third Tuesday meetup site:

Rebecca Bolwitt is:
co-author of the new book, “Blogging to Drive Business”. She has been blogging about Vancouver since 2004 on Miss604.com, and podcasting since 2005. In 2008 she co-founded sixty4media, offering social media consulting services from custom WordPress themes, audio serivces for podcasts, video screencast production, as well as event liveblogging and blogging tutorials.

John Biehler is:
an E-Business analyst, a technologist, a consultant, conference speaker, a trainer, a photographer among many other things. He also has a mega-awesome voicemail greeting. Along side Kris Krug and others, John spearheaded True North Media House initiative – a media collaboration campaign to encourage social coverage of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Kris Krug is:
a fashion, music, and portraits photographer, technologist and author based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He is currently working on several projects including photography, teaching, and consulting about new media and the internet. With John Biehler and others, Kris spearheaded True North Media House initiative – a media collaboration campaign to encourage social coverage of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

  Well, this is what you’ve all been waiting for. THIS is what’s taking place instead of our boring old “let’s get together for drinks” meetup. Rob Imbs, Benjamin Eckstein and Carlson Media have been planning a Charity Poker Tournament for a little bit now and I must admit, it’s going to be INSANELY good! Let me give you a little run down on what’s going to be happening.

  We’ve got a giant room booked at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas which can hold up to 150 people for the night. (And fyi, we are expecting it to pack out) The buy-in will cost $60 and will include free drinks. But wait, that’s not all… We also have some celebrity film makers coming as well. Philip Bloom, Rodney Charters ASC, Shane Hurlbut ASC, and Kevin Shahinian who will each be hosting a poker table. And just when you thought that wasn’t enough… we have HUGE prizes.

  Apart from the thousands of $$$ that can be won at the event, you can also win prizes if you ‘knock out’ a celeb, Rob, Ben or myself. And these prizes aren’t just something simple like a gift certificate to Starbucks… but we’re talking real film gear! Like new SmallHD Monitors that will be launched at NAB, Zacuto Z-Finders, Steadicam Merlin, Glidetrack, Jag35 DSLR Cage + Follow Focus … the list keeps growing and YOU keep benefiting.

  But your not the only one getting a piece of this action. We’ll be donating 1/2 the proceeds of this event to the American Red Cross Haitian Earthquake Relief Fund. So apart from the great time you’ll be having at this event, you’ll be helping some real people in need at the same time. And it’s this reason why we’ve been able to get so many amazing sponsors to donate their products for this event. Everyone wants to be able to help in anyway they can. So to all the sponsors who have graciously donated their products for this event… a huge thank you to you as well!

  So, how can you get involved. Easy. Just send an email to signup@ALLINfilm.org (or just fill out the form below) and we’ll reserve a spot for you at the tournament. You can also read about the event here: www.allinfilm.org

Details:
  Where: Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Poker Lounge (4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas)
  When: Monday, April 12 @ 8pm
  Buy in: $60, this includes free drinks
  Prizes: Case & Film gear will be awarded to the top finishers. Knockout prizes will be awarded throughout the tournament to players who knockout our headliners or table leaders.

Prize List: … so far. It’s growing everyday!
          Zacuto Z-Finder ($400 value)
          (x2) Zacuto iPhone Shooter ($600 value)
          Jag35 DSLR Cage ($149 value)
          Jag35 Follow Focus ($135 value)
          GlideTrack HD (1 Meter Long) ($500 value)
          (x4) SmallHD Monitors (New model being released at NAB) ($3200 value)
          Schneider Optics 4×4 Kit (with 5 filters) ($550 value)
          (x15) Schneider Optics Lens cleaning kits (Cloth + Spray) ($400 value)
          Kessler Crane CineSlider ($1000 value)
          Tiffen Steadicam Merlin ($800 value)
          Letus Mantis Support Rod System ($1200)
          Redrock Micro Ultraport DSLR Bundle ($440)
          Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro ($200)
          Cinevate Uno DSLR Rig ($875)
          F-Stop Academy, x15 training DVD’s ($1,500)
          AJA IO Express ($1,000)
          Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 ($1,200)
          (x2) Lite Panel MicroPros ($900)
          Red Giant Software Trapcode Suite ($900)
          Redrock Micro MicroShoeClamp & Rails ($200)
          (x2) Zacuto Point & Shoot ($180)
          (x15) Lens Pro to Go Gift Cards ($750)
          (x15) CRAM Compressor Pluggins ($600)
          Philip Bloom Training ($500)

Total amount of prizes donated by our sponsors so far: $18,264.00

  Hope to see you there!