Visit the home page for the website of iPhone-based home entertainment remote control innovator ThinkFlood, and you’ll see a DigiNovations-produced video, featured front-and-center.  We’ve already produced two videos for the launch of RedEye, an iPhone/iPod app that controls infrared-based home entertainment components from anywhere in the home.  Additional videos are already being planned.

In planning the video series for the RedEye launch, the company wanted a fun video for the home page, as well as a more informative feature video for use elsewhere.

Here are links to the pages containing the two videos:

• “Duel” — from the ThinkFlood home page
• “Getting Started” — from the RedEye information page

We’re pleased to report that DigiNovations has been named to the elite Brightcove Solutions Partner program, which opens up a whole new set of internet video capabilities to our production clients.  DigiNovations has been a pioneering user and developer on the Brightcove internet TV platform, and has created dozens of internet TV channels for clients all over the United States.

The designation as a Brightcove Solutions Partner ensures that DigiNovations producers have access to the latest and most sophisticated development tools and techniques, and that our web video channel designers and developers are current on the rapidly-evolving capabilities of the Brightcove system.

It also gives us the capability to set up Brightcove demo accounts and to work with companies and organizations to come up with innovative solutions to just about any web video need.

To start the conversation and set up your Brightcove demo account, click here.

DigiNovations executive producer Michael Kolowich answers audience questions at last night’s VISTA Awards ceremony (Photo by Paul Bosch)For the third consecutive year, a film by DigiNovations has won top corporate video honors from the National Professional Videographers Association of New England.  “Light the World”, a film produced for Boston College, won the 2008 Platinum VISTA Award in the Corporate and Industrial Videography category.  The honor was announced and presented last night in the professional association’s annual awards ceremony.

View the winning film, “Light the World”

The award marks the fifth time in six years that DigiNovations has been recognized by NPVA as the #1 achiever in corporate video.  “It’s a record of which we are very, very proud,” said DigiNovations executive producer Michael Kolowich.  “It reflects the tremendous attention our team devotes to fusing the power of great storytelling with a mastery of the craft of videography and editing.”

Kolowich was the lead producer on the “Light the World” project, along with associate producers Lee Phillips and Barry Ouellette, director of videography Bill Charette, and senior editor Mike Chapman.

Cross-country skiing on fresh snow, hiking along a wilderness trail, fly fishing a natural trout pond — these are some of the scenes that DigiNovations crews captured to tell the story of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s new venture into Northern Maine. Known as the Maine Woods Initiative, it is the most ambitious project in AMC’s 133 year history. The club’s goal: to help save Maine’s famed 100-Mile Wilderness for future generations to enjoy.

At the Appalachian Mountain Club annual meeting tonight, a film produced by Diginovations will premiere, taking viewers inside the initiative and the remarkable progress made in just a few years. DigiNovations has also created several other short films highlighting important features of the project, such as the AMC’s outdoor educational programs and their traditional Maine sporting camps. These short film stories will be released over the coming months, and all of them will soon be available on AMC’s new internet TV channel (“AMC-TV”) at http://www.outdoors.org.

View the Appalachian Mountain Club film

GlobalPost — a Boston-based web start-up which aims to fill a void in international news coverage — launched today, amidst a world economic crisis and escalating Israel-Palestine turmoil.  And a centerpiece of its pre-launch promotion ramp-up has been a web video program, created by DigiNovations, has showcasing the bold venture on GlobalPost’s home page.  (Post launch, it has moved to the Global Post “About Us” page.)

GlobalPost has put together a team of 65 correspondents in 45 countries, who are reporting on the world’s most critical issues and timely events. The free website aims to attract viewers who have been unable to access as many foreign stories from U.S.-based newspapers and TV networks, as traditional media cuts expenses, including foreign bureaus, due to declining readers/viewers and advertising dollars.

GlobalPost, founded by veteran journalists Phil Balboni, the Founder of New England Cable News, and Charlie Sennot, a former Boston Globe foreign correspondent and bureau chief, hired Diginovations to show web viewers what they could expect to see. DigiNovations created a 6-minute video program that presented GlobalPost’s profound mission of educating Americans with international stories that are increasingly not being told.

View the GlobalPost launch video

The website presentation has used compelling video and pictures of global conflict, some shot by GlobalPost correspondents themselves, who are using pocket-sized digital cameras to supplement their story-telling. DigiNovations’ story introduced some of the news operation’s seasoned correspondents, highlighted the regions they would cover, and teased the site’s viewers with bits of stories they could expect to see. GlobalPosts’ reporter roster includes veterans of major news organizations such as CNN, The Washington Post, Time magazine and The Associated Press.

In one sense, the timing of the website launch and preview video appears perfect, amidst continued worries about the global economy, terrorism, Middle East bloodshed, and climate change. Video interviews with Balboni, Sennot, and two of the venture’s lead investors portrayed a new news source that aims to seek out stories that are of importance to every American. In the story, Sennot says “there’s never been a time in our nation’s history where you needed to understand the world more… these are issues that are all globally connected.”

But the launch of GlobalPost comes amid a slowdown in the online advertising, the source of more than half of the company’s projected revenue. Implementing a video to help promote the site and attract viewers was deemed a smart investment. DigiNovations’ Senior Producer Mont Fennel, lead producer for the web video, says “It was challenging to put together the visuals for a 6-minute- long story whose product, a website, had not even taken shape, but with creativity we made it work, and GlobalPost tells us it was very pleased with the results.”

GlobalPost also showcased DigiNovations’ story at the company’s launch party in October.

Last night at the MITX Interactive Awards in Boston, one DigiNovations client after another heard their name called for awards honoring New England’s best creative and technological accomplishments in New England.  Four clients won five awards for their video-enabled websites, and another client was recognized as a finalist.

DigiNovations created a “video practice case” for Bain’s recruiting website.Bain and Company was a big winner of the night, taking down awards for Best Corporate Training and Support site and for Best User Experience for their microsite, JoinBain.com.  During the development of the site, DigiNovations worked with interactive design firm Sapient to develop a simulation of a Bain job interview, complete with a “video practice case” to be “cracked” by the interviewee.  It’s a great way for prospective job applicants to see what a case-centered interview is all about, and to try their hand at one before entering the pressure-cooker of an actual interview.

The DigiNovations-produced film, “Inside the Case Method”, is embedded in the MBA website’s bannerHarvard Business School’s new MBA admissions site won the best site award for an Educational Institution.  Designed by iFactory, one of the centerpieces of the new admissions site is a film created by DigiNovations called “Inside the Case Method” — an intimate, unusual look at what goes into the teaching method that HBS has taken to a whole new level.  (For more on the development and presentation of this film on the web, click through to “Harvard Business School and the New Art of Web Video Staging,” posted earlier this month on DigiNovations’ Web Video Expert blog.

Video plays from the Revels front page, and invites the viewer to click for moreThe performing arts organization, Revels, won the top award for not-for-profit and government organization websites.  Featured prominently on the redesigned Revels front page is a video program entitled “This is Revels”, produced by DigiNovations for the organization.  Click on “More Videos” and you’ll see an internet TV player designed and implemented by DigiNovations.  It contains many video programs created by DigiNovations over the years.  We’ve been videotaping Christmas and Midsummer Revels performances for more than ten years.

 Twitter is just one of the many companies whose DigiNovations-produced snapshots are featured on the Charles River Ventures home pageCharles River Ventures won the fifth award in the Financial Services category.  One of the most prominent features on the CRV home page is a series of video profiles of young companies in the Charles River Ventures portfolio — including some that are just now becoming household names, like Twitter.  These video profiles were produced on a modest budget and on a tight deadline for last Fall’s limited partner meeting at CRV.

Keith Lockhart is one the people we interviewed for this video case study for PermissionTVFinally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention one of our clients who was a Finalist.  PermissionTV was selected as a finalist in the Professional Services category.  During the past year, DigiNovations has created several video case studies for PermissionTV, going beyond client testimonials and into storytelling about how PermissionTV came up with a unique solution to their client’s needs.  One such story was about the implementation of the Boston Pops Orchestra’s video website.

Version 3 of Brightcove’s breakthrough internet TV channel platform is here, and DigiNovations has wasted no time in adding advanced Brightcove channel design and customization to its portfolio of services.

The “Best of DigiNovations” 2.0 player is implemented in Adobe Flex and Brightcove’s new player markup languageAnd where better to demonstrate its new capabilities than with an upgrade of the popular “Best of DigiNovations” player, which now features more than 50 of the projects we’ve produced for corporate, education, not-for-profit, and political clients over the last four years.

Click here to view “Best of DigiNovations” 2.0

DigiNovations’ internet TV channel guru Alex Kieft designed the new channel using a combination of Adobe’s Flex 3 programming environment and the new Brightcove Extended Markup Language.  In combination, these tools allow us to execute a wide variety of custom designs for presenting video on websites, and to deploy them so they can be viewed easily and seamlessly all over the world.  And because it’s all presented in Adobe Flash, these players are compatible with more than 95% of the personal computers in the world.

What all that technical talk really means is that we’ve maintained and fortified our lead as one of the most active and capable internet video design and implementation shops in Boston — and in fact, in all of New England.  I’m a strong believer that content design and presentation go hand-in-hand on the internet, and I don’t know of any other creative shop who’s invested more in this breakthrough capability.

Boston College kicked off a $1.5 billion capital fundraising campaign tonight, with a DigiNovations-produced film entitled “Light the World” at the centerpiece of a spectacular event.  The 13-minute film begins at the dramatic sunset Freshman Convocation in September, at which incoming students are challenged by the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola to “Go, Light the world aflame”.  It then features Boston College alumni who have chosen, in their lives, to light the world in special ways.

Watch “Light the World”

Produced in the spectacular new XDCAM-EX high-definition video format, the film was displayed on a huge 10-by-15-foot plasma video screen, while John At the launch event, “Light the World” was displayed in high-definition on a huge 10x15 foot plasma screenKeltonic’s music score, weaving together well-known Boston College musical themes, complemented the powerful words of BC’s alumni.

While the film features eight alumni, a special internet video website, to be launched shortly, will feature longer profiles on fifteen leaders who were interviewed for the project from all over the country.

DigiNovations has been honored with the highest award for educational video in the 29th Annual TELLY Awards, an international competition recognizing the best video and film productions of the year.  The award was given for the firm’s work on “Engineering the Future”, a DVD and internet video guide for teachers on how to teach engineering to high school students.

Produced for the National Center for Technological Literacy at the Museum of Science in Boston, the film supports teachers in adopting an exciting new engineering curriculum now being rolled out across America.  Shot in four different high school classrooms and at the Museum of Science, the film tells of the importance of teaching engineering in high school, and shows the curriculum being taught by cutting-edge teachers.  It also gives teachers 22 tips on how to teach engineering concepts to high school students.

The contents of the DVD are laid out in an interactive internet TV channel that has become a popular destination on the web for teachers wanting to learn more about teaching engineering in high school.

A documentary film produced by DigiNovations for the 2008 presidential campaign of Governor Mitt Romney has been awarded the 2008 TELLY Award for Editing.  “24 Hours on the Trail” was also given a bronze statue for non-broadcast documentary in the 2008 awards, an international competition.

The film takes viewers behind the scenes for a hectic, sometimes touching portrait of Romney and two of his sons as they campaign across Iowa in the final days before the August, 2007 Iowa Straw Poll.

The producer of the film was Michael Kolowich, who also was the principal editor; associate producer was Jillayne Smyth.  Videographers were Bill Charette, Larry LeCain, Rob Hennings, and Michael Kolowich.

In addition to the documentary, the team produced a sixty-second trailer that was distributed on YouTube and other internet video sites to attract viewers to the release of the film 4 days before the Straw Poll.

Video profiles of some of the hottest startup companies in America are in the spotlight on a brand-new website from Charles River Ventures, one of the most successful venture capital companies in America.  The venture firm commissioned DigiNovations to produce the series of two- to three-minute snapshots, featuring CRV investments from California to Massachusetts.

“Meet some of the companies we believe are headed for greatness,” proclaims the website.  The first profiles feature Charles River portfolio companies Jitterbug, Eons, Vlingo, Geni, Twitter, Verenium, and Conduit.

DigiNovations Senior Editor Mike Chapman gave a presentation at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Post Production World Conference in Las Vegas about shared storage for post-production facilities this past April.  Some 200 attendees listened as Chapman described the advantages and potential pitfalls of integrating shared storage solutions into a post production workflow.

DigiNovations has implemented a “storage area network” (SAN) within its Concord-based production studios, hooking together eight post-production workstations on a high-speed optical fiber network to a central storage array with more than 20 terabytes of storage.  This enables any post-production workstation within DigiNovations to access production project files with performance comparable to storage on a local hard disk, and allows multiple editors to collaborate on a single project.

Chapman was a beta-tester for shared storage at leading companies such as Avid, Pinnacle and Facilis before joining DigiNovations in 2006.

When Harvard Business School held a big gala last night at Gillette Stadium near Boston to celebrate its 100th anniversary, a film produced by DigiNovations kicked off the festivities.  “Living the Mission” draws its material from historic photographs, interviews with graduates and faculty, and contemporary videography to tell the story of Harvard Business School, using the past as a platform to build toward its next century.

John Keltonic composed a lively score to go with the photos and interviews.

The film is being shown to kick off many dozens of centennial events for Harvard Business School around the world during 2008.

Mont FennelThe most experienced business news reporter on New England television is joining DigiNovations as Senior Producer.

Mont Fennel is a four-time Emmy award-winner and a 16-year veteran at New England Cable News (NECN). His nightly business reporting on the nation’s largest 24-hour regional news channel reached 3.7 million subscribers in more than 1,050 cities and towns across all six New England states. Fennel’s reporting won four Emmy awards for NECN, and was nominated 17 additional times. “Mont Fennel is an NECN pioneer,” said NECN News Director Thomas R. Melville. “He was on our air on Day One - March 2, 1992 - and he has been there ever since as the only full-time business reporter on television in New England. He is a masterful producer of television news reports. As a master, he has used the medium to bring complex business topics to the small screen in creative and interesting ways. He is a great storyteller.”

Fennel joins the staff of one of the fastest-growing creative video production firms in New England. As a leader in the field of web video and internet TV, DigiNovations lately has seen client interest explode in the area of internet video production. “Internet video demands a blend of new skills and attitudes with well-established disciplines,” said DigiNovations executive producer Michael Kolowich. “What appealed to me about Mont is his instinctive eye toward finding the core of the story and then using the medium to bring that story alive. I believe he’ll flourish in the new medium of internet video, just as he’s done in traditional broadcast journalism.”

“We will miss him — in our newsroom and on our air,” noted NECN’s Melville. “I predict a very bright future for Mont as he brings his vast set of skills to his new position with DigiNovations.”

Fennel also served as Boston correspondent for the Nightly Business Report on public television.

In Iowa, Romney videographer Michael Kolowich (behind, on top of the MittMobile) covers the Straw Poll VictoryDigiNovations Executive Producer Michael Kolowich was featured in an interview by blogger Jason Bonham this morning, talking about Mitt TV.  Since the suspension of the Romney for president campaign, Michael has also been blogging quite actively on the Web Video Expert blog about the experience of running the Tactical Video Unit for the campaign.  Two posts are especially relevant:

• “Ten Lessons from Mitt TV”
• “In Political Campaigns, YouTube is a Two-Edged Sword”

Ellyne LonerganWe’re pleased to report that an extraordinary producer and former public television executive has joined the DigiNovations team as Senior Producer, effective today.  Ellyne Lonergan brings a deep background in creating both documentary and television series for national distribution, as well as a wide array of client-driven marketing and training programs.

Ellyne recently relocated to the Boston area from Tampa, Florida, where she was Senior Vice President of Content for public television station WEDU, and has run her own production company, Glass Onion Productions.

“Ellyne brings a tremendous range of skills to DigiNovations that will strengthen and broaden our offerings to clients,” said executive producer Michael Kolowich.  “Her graceful style of writing, producing, and client relationship-building fits right in with our approach.  We couldn’t be more pleased to add her to the team.”

Click here for a complete profile of Ellyne Lonergan.

DigiNovations swept all four top awards given out for corporate video production today in the annual VISTA awards competition sponsored by the National Professional Videographers Association of New England.  The awards were presented at the Pro Video 2008 show in Easton, Massachusetts.  Executive Producer Michael Kolowich, Director of Photography Bill Charette, and Senior Editor Mike Chapman were on hand to receive the awards.

Here’s a rundown of the winners, as well as links to the videos themselves:

• Platinum Award - “Beginnings” - Client: Beginnings Child Development Center (not yet released for the web)
• Gold Award - “Learning 24/7” - Client: Sacred Heart University
• Silver Award - “Inside the Case Method” - Client: Harvard Business School
• Bronze Award - “Consider the Abbey” - Client: Portsmouth Abbey School

This is the fourth consecutive year in which DigiNovations has placed among the top corporate video productions of the year in the VISTA competition, and the third out of the last four years in which DigiNovations has captured the top Platinum award.

The next time our clients work with us, chances are there will be something important missing — videotape!

DigiNovations began a major digital technology upgrade this week, as it started to swap out its fleet of HDV cameras with the latest new high-definition technology from Sony, the XDCAM EX1.  Many, many new improvements come with this format — full 1920x1080 resolution, dramatically improved audio fidelity, larger video pickup chips for improved low-light capability and improved depth-of-field.  But the most obvious new feature is the fact that these cameras don’t record on tape; they record their hi-def magic onto solid-state memory cards instead.

Executive Producer Michael Kolowich with one of the new XDCAM cameras“The tapeless workflow means we can be much more efficient with our post-production efforts,” said DigiNovations Executive Producer Michael Kolowich.  “Often we’ll come back from a two-day, two-camera shoot with 7 or 8 hours of footage, and it takes a whole day to digitize the footage.  Now, we can start the editing process in the car or on the airplane on the way in, and we can be editing within minutes of reaching the studio.”

A 16GB solid-state memory card stores 50 minutes of hi-def videoDigiNovations Director of Photography Bill Charette and Senior Editor Mike Chapman are working on designing all of the new workflow approaches that go with the new format.  “Among other things, we need to almost immediately transfer all our footage to our central storage facility,” said Kolowich, “because the memory cards are very expensive and we need to constantly reuse them.”

The move to the XDCAM high-definition format reflects DigiNovations’ commitment to stay on the leading edge of high-quality, low-cost video technology that keeps production affordable while keeping the bar on production values very high.

The winners of the 23rd Annual Admissions Advertising Awards were announced today, and once again this year, our clients at every level — college, graduate schools, and private schools — took home awards in both the Video/CD Viewbook and TV Ad categories.

• Harvard Business School took home the Gold Award for Video Viewbook in the Graduate School category for the film “Inside the Case Method,” produced by DigiNovations for its MBA admissions effort.
• Sacred Heart University was recognized with the top prize for Video Viewbooks for colleges between 5,000 and 10,000 students for “Learning 24/7”, a project produced by DigiNovations in partnership with Keating Associates.  Sacred Heart also won a Merit award for a DigiNovations-produced TV Ad that runs regularly during NCAA sports broadcasts.
• Portsmouth Abbey School was awarded a Silver Award among Secondary Schools for ”Consider the Abbey,” an admissions video produced by DigiNovations in 2007.
• And St. Joseph’s College of New York was awarded Merit recognition for a TV Ad produced by DigiNovations.

We’re proud of the work we’ve done for New England’s great educational institutions — not only in admissions but also in fundraising and institutional image.  Congratulations and thank you to all the winners!

Another DigiNovations web video project is creating a sensation in the legal recruiting world.  This time, it’s the Navy JAG who’s taken to the web with a powerful video recruiting message.

Our legal marketing partners, Legal Insight Media, Inc., developed the strategic approach for the video and DigiNovations was responsible for all the production (videography) and post-production (editing and encoding for the web).  The result is a hard-hitting, 3-minute video created from nine interviews with recent Navy JAG recruits.

The result, writes Larry Bodine in a posting today on the LawMarketing Blog, is a another example of why “video is a must for recruiting Web pages.”

Larry quotes LCDR Colleen M. Shook, JAGC, USN, JAG Corps Detailer for Accessions and Recruiting, as saying, “This compelling Web video captures the sense of adventure that attracts lawyers to become JAGs better than any other medium could.”

The U.S. Navy JAG and Legal Insight Media join a growing list of clients who have turned to DigiNovations to fill their recruiting web video needs — from international law firm Ropes & Gray LLP to Harvard Business School to Sacred Heart University.

Watch the Navy JAG Recruiting Video