Motion Post Blog

Happy 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Motion Post) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:40:51 PST

Motion Post had another fantastic year in 2011. We edited a feature length documentary, Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football which had a very successful national theatrical run.

The film won several prestigious awards including a Special Jury award at the Slam Dance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. It also won Best US Documentary Film at the Traverse City Film Festival, where Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore commented, “I want everyone in the country to watch this film.”

BBBBRRRR!!!! Special Olympics Illinois asked us to go outside to produce a marketing video for their annual Polar Plunge. We interviewed the "plungers" as they got ready to run into the frozen waters. We wanted to show how easy it was to raise money for this awesome charity.

IIT's Institute for Food Safety asked us to produce a Satellite Media Tour for their re-branded Institute for Food Safety. Motion Post put together a turn key production to show off all the work IFSH does to protect consumers.

HOOPS! Veteran ESPN producer Erik Rosenthals came to Motion Post to create a “X’a & O’s” interstitial series for ACC college basketball on ESPNU. Coach K and Coach Roy Williams were some of the luminaries who mapped out their best “buzzer beater” strategies for college hoops fans.

The Once of Prevention and director Chris Guillen partnered with Motion Post to create a powerful fundraising video for Educare, The Once’s national network of early childhood learning centers. We put together a veteran crew that traveled to 5 cities in 10 days to show the fabulous work that this charity has been doing. We got a lot of great footage on this trip and the footage has been helping their communications department leverage it well beyond the scope of the main program.

2011 saw dramatic changes at Sara Lee, Inc. as they conducted a broad divestiture and restructuring to emerge as a stronger and company in 2012. The Bricolage Group hired us to showcase all these changes. We post-produced an ongoing series of videos for their re-branded Meat and Coffee divisions to help keep their workforce informed and motivated.

We completed several local commercials for Abt electronics, Pekin Hospital, Illinois Valley Community hospital and web-ads for Cobra electronics.

We traveled to Thailand and San Diego to produce sales meeting wrap-up video for Molex.

These are just some of the highlights, we helped even more clients tell their stories. We look forward to telling your story this year.

Thanks

Motion Post

Cobra Vedetta

noreply@blogger.com (Motion Post) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:03:23 PST

Lite Fuze partnered with Motion Post to create a content for the Cobra Electronics booth at the Consumer electronics show 2012. Cobra's new radar detector follows the contours of a Lamborghini Gallardo.

Cobra's Vedetta is latest in an excellent line of radar detectors. Cobra wanted us to appeal to adrenaline junkies that buy their products, so we rented a Lamborghini for the shoot. Take a look;

New English-Speaking Patriots

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 10:57:23 PDT

Nice review of Fordson on the SunTimes blog this weekend. Written by Omer M. Mozaffar in Chicago. It was uploaded to the blog by Roger Ebert.

"When my brother-in-law watched "Fordson," he felt chills. A high school football player himself, now a physician who also supports local high school football, he was personally touched watching the players perform their pregame prayers, by reciting the Qur'an. I expect many others will feel the same."

Read the rest.

Motion Post to Host Complimentary Screening of Fordson Doc

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 22:26:25 PDT

Click here to reserve your seat today.

Forest Park, IL based production company Motion Post is hosting a complimentary showing of the feature length documentary “Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football” at the AMC Showplace Village Crossing in Skokie at 7pm on Monday, September 12th.

Created by Executive Producer/Director Rashid Ghazi of North Shore Films, "Fordson" has garnered over 7 laurels from film festivals across the country, beginning with Slamdance in Park City, Utah. Later, Ghazi secured a national release with AMC Entertainment starting September 9th. In August it won Best U.S. Documentary at the Traverse City Film Festival, founded by director Michael Moore. After the ceremony Moore told the filmmakers, "I want everyone in the country to see this film."

"We're inviting all of our colleagues and friends in the Chicago area production community to come celebrate the release of 'Fordson' with us," said Ed Pickart, partner at Motion Post and editor of the film. There will be a reception after the screening, "it should be quite a night."

Shot in Dearborn Michigan in only 10 days in 2009 using Panasonic's popular Vericam HD format, the 92 minute feature was edited and finished entirely using Final Cut Studio at Pickart's Forest Park facility.

"Since we released the first trailer for the film last summer, interest in it has soared," Pickart and the producers were in post production together for just under a year. The trailers for the film, also finished at Motion Post, can be seen on YouTube.

"We follow a predominantly Arab-American public high school football team during the last ten days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan." stated Ghazi. "It unearths the story of a community holding onto its Islamic faith while struggling to gain acceptance in post 9-11 America." That week of primary photography marked a unique overlap of Ramadan, the team's big game against cross-town rival Dearborn High, and the 8th anniversary commemorating the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

Everyone is invited to the Motion Post event on September 12th, but seats are limited. If you'd like to attend the complimentary screening, contact Ed Pickart at ed@motionpost.tv, or call 708-427-1254 to reserve a spot on the guest list.

For Immediate Release. Contact ed@motionpost.tv for further details or to make a reservation follow this link.

A Catalyst for Change

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:25:48 PDT

Ed says:

We just finished a great project for a marvelous Chicago organization "The Ounce of Prevention". They are focused on early learning programs in disadvantaged neighborhoods through a network of education centers called "Educare". Our favorite production team of Tom McCosky, Bruno Strapko did a phenomenal job with Chris Guillen producing and directing.

Chris Guillen is also a great still photographer.

I love doing work like this.

Thailand

noreply@blogger.com (Motion Post) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:24:59 PST

Jeff says

I recently had the privilege of traveling to Phuket Thailand for Molex's Asia Pacific Sales Meeting. We were tasked with producing several roll-ins for the five day meeting.

Other than the long plane rides I had an amazing experience.
The meeting was held at an amazing hotel the JW Marriott Phuket.

I traveled from Chicago from to Seoul South Korea, 13 hours. Then another 7 hour flight from Seoul to Phuket. I watched a few movies and read a few books and was happy to get to Thailand. We started shooting right away, is it really work when your overlooking a beautiful beach on the Andaman Sea?

I did manage to get off the property and here is a shot of the dinner I ate that night.

I'm looking forward to the next Sales Meeting :)

Forson Reviewed In Variety

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:01:32 PST

Today we were reviewed By Joe Leydon in Variety:

"..deftly balances the feel-good exuberance with the acknowledgment that the young Fordson high schoolers, along with their friends and families, continue to face the prejudices of those who insist that Arab-Americans -- even those who excel at the all-American game of football -- may not be true Americans after all.
Production values are first-rate."

Read the entire review...

Slamdance Special Jury Award

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:23:36 PST

Ed Says:
I'm pleased to announce that last night Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football won the Slamdance Special Jury Award for Documentary Feature.

The Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Feature went to the excellent film "Bhopali". Our sincerest congratulations to the producers of that moving and important work.

Everyone at Slamdance has been incredibly supportive of Fordson. At the awards ceremony they said, "The Slamdance jury was moved by this great American story about life, liberty and the pursuit of football."

The juror who presented us with the award, Adrian Belic (director of the 1999 doc Genghis Blues), was personally very vocal, supportive and complimentary of the film. My personal thanks to him for championing us all this week.

Kudos, congratulations and thanks go to the production team: Director Rashid Ghazi's dogged determination to get this thing done and done right, producers Ash-har & Basma Quraishi's creative guidance, Ruth Lietman's insight providing structure to the chaos of 75 hours of raw footage, our amazing photographers Michael Shamus and Mark Berg for their amazing photography, and to all of their unwavering trust in my input and ability to help bring it all together.

I look forward to the next opportunity I might have to submit a work to Slamdance. I'll always keep an eye on Park City, Utah.

Vilmos

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:04:46 PST

Ed Says:
I'm at Slamdance this week. It's been really fun out here in Utah.

We had a pretty full house on the first showing of Fordson and they were a really receptive audience. Very responsive -- and seemed to cue to all the right places, and then some. It was a total kick watching the audience watch the movie. Second showing was on Monday first thing (noon) with a smaller, more subdued (read: hung over) crowd.

I've been getting stopped by people and complimented on the film. My friend Sue Lawson said yesterday that she had been given a list of top 5 must-see docs, and we were first on it.

I'm not bragging, I'm kinda stunned. All of the other work here is so amazing. Last night without realizing, I sat next to Vilmos Zsigmond (the DP for The Deer Hunter) to watch a showing of the first feature he shot (Summer Children, 1965). The dude shot frakking "Deliverance", and all I know is he's some old guy who DP'd once in 1965. After the screening I turned to him and said, "wow, that was really beautiful. Nice job." He looked me in the eye and said "thanks", like no one had ever told him that before. Then he got mobbed by the press, and I realized he was "somebody".

I think he took the compliment the way he did because when he looked at me he realized I didn't know his work with DePalma, or Spielberg, or Cimino, or Altman.

My point is that we're all just sitting in the dark together, hoping someone likes what we've made.

I changed my flight home. I'm staying here 'til the end of the week.

(We don't normally link to clips that we didn't create, but in this case I'm making an exception. Also, you can buy it here)

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 21:10:45 PST

Ed Says:
Well, we're just chock full o' Fordson lately here at Motion Post. We've been accepted to the Slamdance Film Festival. One of only 18 or so films of the 5000 submitted for this year's event. Wow.

Here's the announcement...

Check out the Facebook fan page...

And the website: fordsonthemovie.com

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:46:39 PST

Ed Says:
We've just released the trailer to a new feature length documentary project. The footage is fantastic and the subject matter promises to be very compelling.

Judge for yourself, here's that trailer:

BrandSmart 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 22:22:03 PST

Motion Post teamed up with the Chicago Branch of the American Marketing Association to produce several videos to draw marketers to their latest thought leadership conference, BrandSmart 2010. BrandSmart featured some great keynote speakers like Jon Pollock, from Polariod and Len Hostetter, from Fed Ex. Motion Post created these videos from thought to finish, working with our creative team and the folks from AMA Chicago.

Six weeks before the conference, we interviewed several AMA Chicago members discussing marketing trends today and why you should attend a conference like BrandSmart. After a day's worth of interview we sat down to cut together several documentary style ads for BrandSmart. The videos went out in the AMA Chicago’s email campaign a month before the start of the conference.

Here is the finished product.

We also produced several “spoof” videos with the help of AMA Chicago Member Megan Gauss. Megan’s day job is with the Chicago Convention and Tourism bureau but she moonlights at Second City.

AMA in Haiti

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:12:04 PDT

Jeff says:

We just finished another project for the American Medical Association. On February 1st the AMA sent Dr. Italo Subbarao down to Haiti. Dr. Subbarao is part of the AMA’s Public Health Preparedness and Disaster Response team. He traveled with members of the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Ophthalmology to assess further volunteer and supply needs.

Dr. Subbarao shot this entire piece with his Flip camera, here is the story.

Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:38:44 PDT

Ed says:

The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center just celebrated it's 1 year anniversary. I can't express enough what an honor and pleasure it was for us to be asked to help create this profile of the museum's first year.

Mission Coffee Can

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:38:12 PDT

Ed says:
The first episode of Mission Coffee Can is being released this week. This series is the culmination of months of hard work by Sinnott Productions and Motion Post for Bunn-O-Matic. This is by far my favorite kind of documentary project -- following interesting people pursuing a dream, not quite sure what we will get, then finding the stories in the footage and bringing it all into focus.

http://www.missioncoffeecan.com/

American Medical Associaion House of Delegates Opening Video

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:18:26 PST

Jeff says:

Four weeks before the AMA convened its semi-annual meeting they approached one of our clients and asked them too produce an opening video for the convention. The video was to highlight the seven planks of health system reform. You can read about their position at the AMA HSR microsite to which we also provide services.

Once the agency had lined up all the doctors we got the crews together. Time was tight, we had to have a few crews working simultaneously, so Tom McCosky and Dave Cosby were hired. The client had also lined up an interview with Joanna Rudnick, a patient that had been denied coverage because of her family history with breast and ovarian cancer.

Once shooting was finished the fun stuff began. We the took all of our interview selects and tossed them into different “buckets.” One bucket for tort reform another for the SGR and so on. After we had all our good takes sorted we looked at all on Joanna Rudnick’s interview and got all of her good takes sorted we knew she would be a good thread for the entire piece. Then we started to weave together the story with Joanna commenting on her situation and doctors responding in kind.

The first reaction from the AMA was very positive and we just had a few minor changes. After we completed the revisions I took the video into Apple’s Color. I really wanted to separate the interviews with Joanna from the doctors, so I added a color tint to the windows and more saturation to the bricks and a vignette.

Here is the original:

Here is the final look:

I also went through the entire piece corrected all the other interviews and b-roll, then returned to final cut to complete the final audio mix.

Here is the final piece.

Beyond the Pedway

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:32:29 PDT

We are profiled the week on Beyond the Pedway.

Beyond The Pedway is a weekly video podcast dedicated to highlighting the creative entrepreneurs of Chicago.

Created by Tim Jahn, Beyond The Pedway seeks to discover creative entrepreneurs and explore their unique story of passion, dedication, and what truly excites them. A song from a local Chicago band is featured during the intro and credits of each episode.

Special Olympics

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 07:56:35 PST

Jeff says:
Genesis of a project:
It always amazes me how many different people I meet at my kids sporting events.

This summer was no exception; my son Jack started playing travel baseball for the Oak Park Eagles. Travel baseball is pretty time consuming with 6 to 7 days a week of practices or games for the entire month of July. Needless to say you get to know the other families very well. Jack’s coach, Chris Winston works for Special Olympics Illinois and asked if we’d like to help him with a pro bono video about an upcoming fundraiser, the Illinois Law Enforcement Torch Run Plane Pull.

After baseball wrapped up, we set up a meeting with Chris to find out his needs for the video: recruit more sponsors and teams for next years Plane Pull. Our producer Stacey Evenson worked with Chris and set up all the details for the production. She recruited our friend and excellent photog Tom McCosky to shoot the plane pull.

Production:
The event included a couple of dozen 20 person teams from area law enforcement and fire departments as well as a number of local businesses. Each team played a tug-of-war with a UPS Airbus A300 aircraft (weighing more than 198,000 lbs.) at the Lynxs Cargo Area of O'Hare International Airport in Chicago all for the benefit of Special Olympics.

Stacey and Tom showed up at 7am and worked straight through a beautiful sunny September day. They recorded interviews with Mayor Richard M. Daley, Tom Reasoner director of the Illinois Law Enforcement Torch Run and many of the event participants. Tom really delivered some great footage. Great close ups of the participants pulling the rope, beautiful wide shots of the plane and the people.

Post:
After the event Tom delivered about 45 gigs of 720P30 P2 media to Motion Post and it was my job to make it into something coherent. I usually just go through all the footage and interviews to get a first impression, taking notes as I go. From there I’ll start to get my themes together, team names, plane pull techniques, how fun the event was, etc. With all the interviews categorized, I started to put together the show.

I decided to do a little montage at the top to create a little drama and excitement for the event. From there I figured I’d talk about the Special Olympics just in case a viewer did not know about the charity. After the brief Special Olympics introduction, I’d move into the event, showing the audience how fun it was to participate. For music, I grabbed a jazz track for the body of the show and an uplifting guitar piece for the end. Then I figured I needed some heart beats for the beginning along with a an uplifting track to help create the tension.

The first cut went over very well with our clients at the charity. They changed around a few bites and added a little voice over to the end. After making the changes I moved the entire sequence into Apple’s Color to color correct and finish the show. I really like taking the time to play in Color; the footage looked great originally but Color was able to really get the best out of each frame, adding more blue to the sky and pulling down the luminance on the concrete of the tarmac.

Take a look at the final product.

The Critics, Episode 2

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:40:56 PDT

Our new editing project for Zacuto Films.

All of the [CRITICS] episodes can be found here.

The Critics

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:36:25 PDT

Ed says:
In our new editing project for Zacuto Films, [CRITICS], film/video veterans, Steve Weiss, Director of FilmFellas & Critics, and Philip Bloom, a London based Cinematographer and Filmmaker, come together as dueling co-hosts to candidly critique web based video content.

[CRITICS] is an eclectic mix of personalities, perspectives and laughter.

AMA Virtual Town Hall, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:04:48 PDT

(Motion Post and it's employees do not represent the AMA or speak on it's behalf. My opinions are my own and are not necessarily those of Motion Post or the AMA or it's affiliates or anyone else for that matter.)

AMA Virtual Town Hall

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:17:17 PDT

Ed says:
I'm working on a series of "Virtual Townhall" videos for the the American Medical Association. I generally don't allow my political views to mix with my business, but I have to say I have been VERY impressed by their stance in these pieces on the subject of health system reform.

Right now they are starting a major push to raise the level of the conversation and express their own take on the subject. I'll post more links as I am able.

(Just so we are clear -- Motion Post and it's employees do not represent the AMA or speak on it's behalf. My opinions are my own and are not necessarily those of Motion Post or the AMA or it's affiliates or anyone else for that matter.)

Kittens in Paper Bags

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:11:33 PDT

There has been a lot of talk in the last couple of years about "Viral Video". I've seen a number of producers try to sell the concept to small businesses in an attempt to somehow leverage the power of the internet on the cheap.

As Michael Hoffman's article points out, this rarely works.

The people who are most successful on YouTube aren’t focused on making a single viral video. They are making a series of videos with a character or a set-up that is interesting and brings people back for more. In other words, they are building an audience through regular production of videos that tell stories. That’s what you should be thinking about. By investing in many videos over a long period of time, you are also much more likely to hit on one that attracts others to join your long-term audience.

As I was doing research to create an article about our observations and experiences at Motion Post in working in this new field of Web Series (FilmFellas produced by Zacuto Films is one of the best examples), I ran across Michael Hoffman's essay on Beth's Blog that captures our thinking exactly. One quick note: the essay is primarily concerned about "Non-Profits", but really the concepts are true for any business.

So read it over... Then give me call, we don't produce "viruses", we help you create fans of your business.

...
Ok, in spite of all that, I can't resist. Let me introduce you to Moru:

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:11:48 PDT

I've now edited a lot of interesting FilmFellas episodes. Today Zacuto released one of my favorites so far. Check it out.

Time Travel

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pickart) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:21:51 PDT

Ed says:

This is kind of a sneak preview from my roughcut of episode 1 of Cast 4 of the FilmFellas series. (This clip is not full resolution at this point.)

The sentiment that John Goolsby expresses in this clip is pretty inspiring. I've been editing for 20 years and I never thought of what I do for a living in quite this way before. I like the idea that I can provide "time travel" for my clients.

I don't really do Wedding ~~Video~~ Films, but this show has sparked a new respect for it in me.

The final cut of this episode will be released August 5, 2009 here.

I'll be linking to the full episode once it's released.