Total Media Group San Francisco Creative Design

Happy Holidays

/ December 20th, 2009

We’re in full throttle during this holiday season at Total Media Group, working with our clients to produce their video’s and events to launch the new year.

We’ve been fortunate to be part of some fantastic and interesting projects over the last year, from producing awesome Live Events, compelling Video for internal communications, marketing and SEO, developing new iPhone Applications and custom Video Games for trade shows.

We couldn’t do it without your continued friendship and support.

Have a wonderful and safe Holiday Season!

The Total Media Group Team

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2009

Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology / October 26th, 2009

- Megan McKenna

The Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing is by far the most jaw dropping experience I get to have at work, and this year was no exception. With record breaking attendance levels of 1600 women – and a few men – from all over the world, we could feel the excitement just by walking through the halls (which was slow going with that many people!).

The GHC is a conference for women in computing of all stages in their career and education, to meet and network, learn, revitalize, and share stories. I went out to interview as many women as possible throughout the event on a variety of topics for the folks at the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology to use in their video marketing efforts. I was honored to interview college students about why they came to the event, tenured teachers on the importance of retaining and attracting women in technical fields, CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies that support women in technology, and the research director from ABI on what their research means in working towards change.

I attended last year and in addition to asking questions of the attendees, Jerri Barrett, VP of Marketing at ABI asked me to help get every person we speak to say the phrase “I am a Technical Woman!”. The goal was to create a video that would help the stereotype of women in technical fields.

We put the video together, and it was unveiled before the keynote on the 2^nd day of the GHC 2009. I was floored at the response. There were cheers in the audience, and my crew and I were approached by many people wanting to be part of the video in the future. Moreover, the video quickly went viral, thanks to Jerri’s introduction of the video. She asked the attendees to “link to the video, Twitter it, post it on Facebook, and help it go viral”. They complied. Every hour more and more views were logged on YouTube. The excitement and enthusiasm surrounding this two-and-a-half minute video was amazing.

You can view the video, linked to the ABI YouTube site here, or go to the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology website at www.anitaborg.org.

Designing the Neil Young Archives - Article in Creative Cow.com

/ August 19th, 2009

-Megan McKenna
Total Media Group and Creative Director Toshi Onuki were recently highlighted in a 6-page article for Creative Cow Magazine - a popular industry “go-to” magazine for resources, tips, and to learn about the technology that shapes our world of communications.

The article mainly focus’ on the nuts and bolts; how the project came to be, and ultimately, how it was managed by a project standpoint (how did we manage over 3,000 assets?). It’s a pretty interesting read (if I may say so myself. I ended up writing it). It was great to step back and look at the project from a birds-eye view, and really nice to sit with Toshi and just talk about the experience. Toshi has some great viewpoints that I rarely get to hear.

The online article is not as pretty as the magazine spread…….but there is far more information contained in the online version. Go figure. I’m thinking of the beauty and the image of the darn thing…..

http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/designing-the-neil-young-archives

If you would like to see the magazine spread, you can download the 6MB file here - just select the “Download Read Friendly Spread”.

http://magazine.creativecow.net/issue/heavy-lifting

Making Data Engaging

Genentech, Inc / June 6th, 2009

- Patrick Roche

How do you make forty-plus minutes of educational video content engaging? That was the challenge we were faced with recently while planning a project for Genentech.

The training video is designed to educate Genentech’s field representatives on the company’s reimbursement program, which assists patients in gaining access to medications.

While designing the piece, we wanted to find creative ways to get a lot of text information across to the audience, while keeping the piece visually interesting.

We designed a graphic template that we could easily modify for the required text. This would give the piece a unified look throughout the piece, while allowing us to streamline our post-production workflow to meet the tight deadline.

Since the majority of the piece was shot documentary style using a hand held camera, we also decided to shoot our host segments against pure white. This gave us flexibility in post to add additional graphics over the host’s shoulder.

After 9 days of post with both an editor and graphic designer, we finally had a piece that accomplished our goals and worked really well. More importantly, we had a very happy client!

d

Sdan Francisco Video Production

Neil Young Archives - Behind the scenes of the Technology Pt. 2

From Back to Front / June 2nd, 2009

- Kris Kunz

Most design workflows would insist on designing the Blu-ray (HD) version first and then simplify what you have to create the DVD (SD) version, but when design for the Blu-ray version of the Neil Young Archives Vol.1 began, the DVD version was almost complete.

The reason why it had been done in the reverse order was out of necessity not negligence. We were pioneers often operating in the dark working to create something that had no precedent.

From the beginning of the Archive’s design Neil Young and Shakey Pictures had always intended on releasing the set on an HD optical disc format. When design began, both Blu-Ray and HD DVD had already completed and released their respective specifications and both claimed playback ability of two channel 24-bit/192 kHz audio. All of the other benefits of the two formats were of course beneficial in their various ways, but audio was the primary concern for Neil Young. Once the possibility of having such high quality audio accessibel from a disc looked to be near, the choice was obvious for them.

But it was yet unknown which format, HD DVD or Blu-ray would be accepted as the consumer standard.

(Part 1 can be found here)

http://totalmediagroup.com/2009/06/ny-archives-behind-the-scenes-of-the-technology/

Posts Tagged ‘San Francisco Creative Design’

Happy Holidays

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2009

Designing the Neil Young Archives - Article in Creative Cow.com

Making Data Engaging

Neil Young Archives - Behind the scenes of the Technology Pt. 2

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