When to Outsource?

FULL SERVICE PRODUCTION CENTER - When to Outsource?
By Bruce Dixon, Lindsey O’Neill and Victor Van Rees

You’ve set up a basic camera package and you’ve installed edit software on a laptop to handle interviews and training scenarios for your intranet. Now you’re tasked with creating a polished, complex corporate marketing, tradeshow or advocacy video. You can certainly handle taping the talking heads and cutting them with scenes around the office. Now’s the time to think about going outside for that polish, extra touch, sophisticated look and the rapid-response that a full service post-production center can offer.

Here are just a few services you might want to outsource...

SPECIAL EFFECTS AND ANIMATION: When your presentation has to stand out from the crowd and leave an impression, you want that extra sizzle that only motion graphic effects or animation can bring. A blend of multi-layered scenes with special transitions can create a pace and emotion to carry your message.

McAfee Promo for AOL
http://efxtv.com/media.cfm?m=1028

OPM Cloud Computing Animation

http://efxtv.com/media.cfm?m=2691

If you need to convey an intangible concept or bring a computer program to life, an animation might be the best, or only, way to illustrate it. Full service post-production facilities generally have motion graphic designers or animators on-staff that specialize in creating impressive or realistic effects, and have the knowhow to blend them seamlessly into an edited piece.

COMPLEX AUDIO TRACKS: A full service post-production facility has access to the latest in library music tracks pre-screened by pros, as well an impressive collection of professional voice-over narrators available at the drop of a hat. 

Access to those resources is coupled with an impressive talent for blending all the soundbites, background narration, music and sound effects by mixing the tracks for transparency and impact with just the right timing.

EXPERIENCED WORLD-CLASS EDITORS AND/OR PRODUCERS: You know your company and its message, but are you having trouble crafting a bunch of interview sound bites into a real story appropriate for your audience? A professional who has spent a career in developing insight and presentation skills for every occasion will add that extra something. Storytelling is an art requiring talent enhanced by experience. Balancing all the elements from effortless pacing to eliciting a specific emotion, are some of the advantages of working with an industry pro.

DISTANT LOCATION PRODUCTION: You need scenes shot in Juno, Wichita, Duluth or Hong Kong. How do you find a local crew you can trust to shoot with the right equipment, in the best quality, with the right attitude, who will show up on time? A full service production center like EFX Media can book a production package selected from their long list of trusted crews in nearly every state and twelve other countries.

FINISHING, DUPLICATION AND INTERACTIVE: Your production is complete… now what? A full service post-production facility has all the equipment needed to distribute a product for broadcast, web distribution, DVD or CD physical distribution, or for event playback. Most in-house production setups are unable to handle the complex routing, cabling and expensive equipment needed to go seamlessly from the edit suite to distribution.

The full-service production facility can master to just about any tape format in standard or high definition, create digital files for web distribution or embedding within a PowerPoint presentation, develop interactive menu driven DVDs or provide … you name it. Also included is an expertise when it comes to more complex needs like translation, captioning, package fulfillment or interactive programming to organize and host your digital assets.


MEDIA ARCHIVE SYSTEM: Say you’ve completed a complicated marketing presentation and a year later you have a new management team. Now you have to replace all the scenes with the old CEO, and many are multi-layered with special effects. Imagine having to re-digitize your master, find the old source tapes or files, and re-create complex edits. A media archiving system allows you to reinstate a project’s media files so you can pick right up where you left off. Everything is back in place, like nothing happened, and you’re back in business! When your project is archived, changes are easy, even months or years after the fact.

INTERCONNECTION TECHNOLOGY: At a full service post-production center you might likely take advantage of robust technology to boost efficiency, particularly during the busy season when ambitious projects require a rapid response. At EFX, for example, we have our Avid Unity - a SAN (Storage Area Network) connecting all our production computers via Fibre Channel (fiber optic cables). This high-speed data connection allows all the edit suites and other workstations at EFX to access the same drives and project files. Using Unity means our editors can all work on the same project at the same time when necessary. 


For example, on a quick turnaround job, we could be logging and ingesting footage on one system, while editing on a second system. On projects with lots of complex effects, we can break-up the rendering and spread it out among several machines for a faster turn time. While producing a large, multi-faceted project with little time to spare, you could have two or more edit suites working on various elements of the project simultaneously to finish within a very tight timeframe.